Fukuyama: "Leninist" Bush

[swag]

From a larger Bloomberg article (this will draw out Fukuyama's just detractors -- why didn't he go public with his objections before the war, and before the war became such a complete mess? -- but it's an interesting read nonetheless):

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000088&sid=aAJEL3fbQNcw&refer=culture

Neocons in the Bush administration bent his theories to their own purposes, embarking on what political scientist Ken Jowitt calls a ``Leninist'' foreign policy designed to drive history in a certain direction.

``I did not like the original version of Leninism,'' Fukuyama notes acidly, ``and was skeptical when the Bush administration turned Leninist.''

You don't win friends in the Republican Party by comparing President George W. Bush to the Bolshevik with the pointy beard. Yet the comparison is valid. Unlike Marx, who believed that the global adoption of communism was inevitable, Lenin insisted on helping it along, with massive violence if necessary. Similarly, Fukuyama believes liberal democracy is inevitable, while Bush's neocons seek to promote it with tanks.

The difference between the two positions may sound academic. Far from it. A gulf separates them, with important consequences.

. . .

[bridgit]

1. there was a piece over at a site that admin prefers i do not post...

reference to from here, but at it; they flat-out call out Cheney as, in fact & by all other inference: a Leninist.

If you've ever played the board game: Risk, you can see how seductive it is to push world played about, gobbling up whole tracts of land in the process...but the real life expenditure of blood & treasure is very like far, far more a shock to the system having to witness that level of imperial, hegemonic intent 1st hand; than even HBO can bring into American homes by way of Rome.

Oh yes, it's a quaint little notion this St Patty's, the Irish playing their pipes and all...but they were war pipes then, and when the populace heard them coming all would scatter before Caesar.

Cheney just loves that kind of scatter & dislocation in others is my sense.