A growing faction of conservatives is voicing doubts about a prolonged United States military involvement in Iraq, putting hawkish neoconservatives on the defensive and posing questions for President Bush about the degree of support he can expect from his political base.
The continuing violence and mounting casualties in Iraq have given new strength to the traditional conservative doubts about using American military power to remake other countries and about the potential for Western-style democracy without a Western cultural foundation. In in the eyes of many conservatives, the Iraqi resistance has discredited the more hawkish neoconservatives — a group closely identified with Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, and William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard.
Considered descendants of a group of mostly Jewish intellectuals who switched from the political left to the right at the height of the cold war, the neoconservatives are defined largely by their conviction that American military power can be a force for good in the world. They championed the invasion of Iraq as a way to turn that country into a bastion of democracy in the Middle East.
"In late May of last year, we neoconservatives were hailed as great visionaries," said Kenneth R. Weinstein, chief operating officer of the Hudson Institute, a center of neoconservative thinking. "Now we are embattled, both within the conservative movement and in the battle over postwar planning.
"Those of us who favored a more muscular approach to American foreign policy and a more Wilsonian view of our efforts in Iraq find ourselves pitted against more traditional conservatives, who have more isolationist instincts to begin with, and they are more willing to say, `Bring the boys home,' " Mr. Weinstein said.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/19/politics/19CONS.html
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