Adventure in Neo-Conservative land

Last week I made a rare trip to the bookstore. I picked up a copy of Adbusters and The Weekly Standard, perhaps the most polar opposites of political magazines. Adbusters is an anti-consumerism, well-designed slick, while the Weekly Standard is the hard right weekly edited by Bill Kristol, President of the Project For A New American Century.

I decided to give them a try and figured (in the case of the Standard) I may gain some valuable insight to war hawks. The lead editorial by Bill Kristol had my head spinning. He lays into quotes from Condoleeza that aren't war-centric enough for his Ravage The World mind:

hawks will worry that proclaiming "Iran is not Iraq" signals that the Bush administration is now terrified even to threaten the use of force against terror-sponsoring dictatorships seeking weapons of mass destruction.

Yes, everyone's big worry is that were afraid Bush won't rush to war with Iran.

"The Security Council is the primary and most important institution for the maintenance of peace and stability and security"--of course that's not true. But what's the harm in saying it? It creates goodwill as the United States goes through the Security Council process. Sure, that process won't lead anywhere. But then the Europeans will finally see that they've got to join us in serious sanctions.

I'm kind of surprised he even calls for sanctions here, instead of immediate shock and awe. Finally, it ends:

Much of the U.S. government no longer believes in, and is no longer acting to enforce, the Bush Doctrine. "The United States of America understands and believes that Iran is not Iraq." That's a diplomatic way of saying that the United States of America is in retreat.

I'd certainly hate to see us on the offensive.