The neoconservatives were right

The last six years have been fallow ones for the neoconservatives. From around 2005, when Iraq began its descent into chaos, the ideology that did so much to shape US foreign policy became marginalised as, first, George W Bush turned increasingly realist and, then, Barack Obama continued where his predecessor left off.

While ideas are not responsible for the people who hold them, it did not help that, after President Bush left office, those who espoused a neoconservative outlook included the likes of Sarah Palin.

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Funding for democracy-promotion was slashed, and the focus for aid programmes became “accountability” – with the word “democracy” banished from sight.

To declare oneself a neoconservative – or even to believe that democracy might be possible or even desired in the Middle East – became akin to admitting some sort of punishable deviancy.