I was struck by a sentence in Francis Fukuyama’s recent op-ed in the L.A. Times about withdrawal from Iraq, which seemed as realist as one could be: “An intensifying civil war will be a tragedy for Iraq, but it is not the worst outcome from a U.S. standpoint to have a number of bitterly anti-American groups duking it out among themselves.”
All that seems a long way (or is it?) from the co-signed 1998 letter to Bill Clinton suggesting the preemptive removal of Saddam Hussein in the pre-9/11 climate: “In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy…We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power.”