There's lots of buzz about this N.Y. Times piece by Frank Fukayama, attacking neoconservative foreign policy. It is indeed a well-written, provocative, and persuasive analysis of the foibles of neoconservatism.

However, I disagree with Fukayama's contention that only since the fall of Communism has neoconservatism abandoned its initial distrust of government in favor of an aggressive (and extremely naive) Wilsonianism calling for the use of American power, military and otherwise, to spread democracy throughout the world. I was attracted to neoconservatism as a college student, but abandoned it rather quickly when I realized that neoconservatives' faith in the government's ability to competently spread democracy to foreign cultures did not exactly jibe with their (and my) skepticism of government's ability to, say, run a competent welfare program. In other words, the follies of neoconservative foreign policy that Fukayama identifies were apparent to anyone who was paying attention in the mid-1980s. Fukayama's claim that they only recently became apparent, and that excuses his own long dalliance with neoconservatism, just doesn't hold up.