This is overstated. The administration has been split from the beginning--hell, from before the beginning, as the neocon/realist splits were obvious well before the election, and were pointed out as such by some prescient observers--and continues to be split now.
Some of the "hawks" cited in that piece are smart, serious people whose views can and should be taken into account. Some of them are smart and serious but ideologically extreme. And some (like Frank Gaffney, for example) are just egregious buffoons.
Moreover, the positions of their opponents may not be what casual observers think. To take an important example, there are at least three positions on Iraq that are being taken seriously these days--containment/deterrence, regime-change-via-the-opposition-and-air-campaign, and regime-change-via-invasion--and the players do not necessarily line up where one might think.
The coming months and years will be very interesting for American foreign and defense policy. At least as important as the hardliner/softliner split will be other divisions within the administration, such as smart-sane/stupid-insane, defense-reformer/status-quoist, and domestic-political-hack/national-security-professional.
Those seriously interested in these issues, btw, really should subscribe to the magazine mentioned in the thread header, 'cause it continues to showcase the most serious argumentation on a broad range of foreign policy issues. It sticks somewhat close to the professional mainstream, as JohnM has pointed out, but there's a reason why the mainstream is where it is, and those who favor non-mainstream approaches (of any variety) would do well to consider why they are not broadly accepted--and what would have to change for them to be so.
tb@softlinersmartsanereformerprofessional.com |
