Only Sy Hersh believes that neocon sleeper cells are controlling U.S. foreign policy, but yesterday’s launch of the Foreign Policy Initiative has captured the imagination of several writers. The New Yorker‘s George Packer wrote that FPI was the “ideological descendant” of the Project for the New American Century, which “put the squeeze on Bill Clinton to sign the Iraq Liberation Act, and then provided George Bush with many of his top officials, who ran and wrecked the liberation of Iraq.” As former PNAC director Gary Schmitt pointed out in the comments (Schmitt is, apparently, the blog’s only commenter), no PNAC official ever worked in the Bush administration (nor did the group “squeeze” the President of the United States). Packer apologized for the error in a subsequent post that contained still more errors (again, see the comment below). Likewise, Stephen Walt wrote on the launch of FPI:
Of course Walt believes that (Jewish) neoconservatives are to blame for all the world’s problems, but only one of these charges contains anything more than opinion — that neoconservatives “helped derail efforts to reach a two-state solution.” No one associated with FPI or PNAC ever worked against a two-state solution. This is pure fantasy. In just the last three months THE WEEKLY STANDARD has published two cover stories that envision a two-state solution (including this week’s cover story by Gershom Gorenberg). Since Walt is a “scholar,” perhaps he has some other evidence to back up his charge, but he fails to provide it. As for the rest of Walt’s rant, one would be on far sturdier ground laying the blame for these failures at the feet of the Bush administration’s “realists,” who were determined not to do the hard work of state-building in the first place. The good folks at PNAC were calling for more troops from day one, and for Rumsfeld’s resignation before the war even started. But none of this much matters, since only Sy Hersh will be able to blame the neocons if this new administration fails to deliver peace in the Middle East — or will George Packer blame FPI for “putting the squeeze” on another Democratic president?
