The Neocons Surge and What It Will Mean

Ron Paul first warned about it and, now , Jacob Heilbrunn at FT backs up the analysis and provides a glimpse as to what will result:

For almost a decade, the neoconservatives who championed the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been widely regarded as a spent force. But with the Republicans’ sweeping victory in the American midterm elections, they may be about to stage a comeback. The result is that the Republican party is resurrecting the unilateral foreign policy doctrines that first took hold under President George W Bush and his vice-president Dick Cheney...

Perhaps no one has been more impassioned in their support of the foreign policy of George W Bush than Tom Cotton, a 37-year-old Iraq war veteran who has won election as senator in Arkansas. Mr Cotton has called the Iraq war a “just and noble” cause and said that victory in Afghanistan is simply a matter of finding enough willpower. In Iowa incoming Republican senator Joni Ernst, another Iraq veteran, also lauded the war. Based on her service in Iraq, she said: “I do have reason to believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

The influx of such politicians will allow Senator John McCain, the incoming head of the armed services committee, to attempt to implement the neocon wishlist. In January, Mr McCain will move to stop planned cuts to military budgets, block any nuclear agreement with Iran, send weapons to Ukraine and send troops back to the Middle East.

-RW