Channeling Spengler, Daniel P. Goldman writes at Asia Times about the legacy - good and bad - of neo-conservatism. Basically he takes issue with a column by Stephen Walt deriding neo-cons as always wrong.
Goldman believes the neo-cons should get credit for the dowfall of the Soviet Union, but blame for the debacle of Iraq. The reason for this failure - they ignored Irving Kristol's insistence on understanding culture as a mediating variable.
The cultures of homogeneous Poland and fractious Iraq could scarcely have been more different. Yet the neo-cons took a one-size-fits-all approach to Iraq, ignoring all the ways it did not resemble Poland. He wisecracks that to a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Saddam's Iraq, properly understood, resembled Tito's Yugoslavia much more than it resembled a unified nation. When Tito's secret police stopped crushing separatist sentiments in Yugoslavia, it fell apart into, at last count, 7-8 mini-nations. Iraq has spent the time since Saddam trying hard to do likewise, to become 3 nations in the absence of Saddam's secret police repression.
Spengler/Goldman is sometimes good, sometimes tedious. This column is one of the good ones, worth your time. Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.
