It ought not to be surprising that the neocon community, who only just sent a memo to the President three weeks ago calling for a no-fly zone over Libya, are now escalating the bid to call for a regime change in Libya. Again, from the FPI:

On Saturday, the Arab League endorsed Libyan opposition calls for a no fly zone.  We call on you to urgently institute a no fly zone over key Libyan cities and towns in conjunction with U.S. allies.  We also call on you to explore the option of targeted strikes against regime assets in an effort to prevent further bloodshed.  The United States should also immediately recognize the Libyan National Transitional Council and take all necessary actions to support their efforts to unseat the Qaddafi regime.

As Tom Ricks points out, yes, in fact the cheerleaders for the preventive invasion of Iraq and eternal presence in Afghanistan are now asking for your support to go to war against Libya. And not that there's any significant national security interests in Libya, we're supposed to go to war because of the Libyan people's cries for freedom. It's all about exporting the moral imperatives of democracy and freedom, moving the American culture by any means possible into other countries. I'm sure that they think it won't cost more than a few billion and will only last less than a few months, tops. Just like it did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just in case you think I'm exaggerating, take a look at Max Boot, one of the signatories of both FPI memos. He's calling for direct support to the rebels in the form of special operations troops on the ground in Libya, "the same combination that proved so effective in toppling the Taliban in 2001 and ousting the Serbs from Kosovo in 1999." Really, Max? Aside from the lack of success in Afghanistan, we still have US and NATO troops in the former Yugoslavia. You really think military power is the only tool in the US government, and that those cases are your basis for action in Libya?

These people really frighten me.

In this Washington Post op-ed ridiculously titled "Egypt protests show George W. Bush was right about freedom in the Arab world," Elliot Abrams attempts to show how GWB's democracy agenda forecast the desire for the Arab peoples of the Middle Eastern nations to be free. He says:

The three decades Hosni Mubarak and his cronies have already had in power leave Egypt with no reliable mechanisms for a transition to democratic rule. Egypt will have some of the same problems as Tunisia, where there are no strong democratic parties and where the demands of the people for rapid change may outstrip the new government's ability to achieve it. This is also certain to be true in Yemen, where a weak central government has spent all its energies and most of its resources simply staying in power.

All these developments seem to come as a surprise to the Obama administration, which dismissed Bush's "freedom agenda" as overly ideological and meant essentially to defend the invasion of Iraq. But as Bush's support for the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon and for a democratic Palestinian state showed, he was defending self-government, not the use of force. Consider what Bush said in that 2003 speech, which marked the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, an institution established by President Ronald Reagan precisely to support the expansion of freedom.

"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe - because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty," Bush said. "As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export."

Now I'm no foreign policy expert, but I'm thinking that GWB was meaning to use this phrase in the context of his preventive invasion of Iraq, to justify the burning, looted buildings and mass chaos that he left in the wake of that unnecessary violence. As Greg Sargent points out, the sad thing about neocons claiming credit for the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt is how they think that the model for democracy requires using foreign military intervention as a prerequisite. Yes, if only Elliot Abrams had been in charge of developing foreign policy in the Middle East so that democracy and freedom could "reign" across the region. Oh, wait. HE WAS.

While neocons want to somehow take credit for understanding the Middle East, the current conflict is more indicative of the failures of US foreign policy than any successful understanding. Considering that Abrams was heavily involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, a signatory of PNAC, and one of the main cheerleaders for the Iraq invasion, you'd think that he would be the one of the last people on earth that a responsible Democrat in the White House would call. And you would be wrong. Really, Mr. President? Have you no pride or sense at all? What a mistake.

Jonah's new pal, Max Boot says: "This is not meant to suggest that everything is wonderful in Iraq. The situation remains grim in many respects. But the most disheartening indicator of all is simply the American public's loss of confidence in the war effort. Abu Musab Zarqawi may be losing on the Arab street (his own family has disowned him), but he's winning on Main Street. And, as the Vietnam War showed, defeatism on the home front can become self-fulfilling....read on"

Arthur correctly states: "We control nothing, and cannot dictate even the most minuscule part of the outcome. Yet if we fail, it will be our responsibility and no one else's. This is the ethos of our time." ...read on