@Bella Dea,
Bella Dea wrote:
No, not at all. I mean it as very conservative.
Yeah, neo-conservative has become something of a throw-away label to apply to anyone who's, well, really conservative. But that's wrong; it has a more specific meaning than that, it refers to a specific strand of conservatism. See for example the difference between neo-conservatives like, say, Donald Rumsfeld and so-called paleo-conservatives like Pat Buchanan. Both are very conservative, but within the conservative movement they're each others polar opposites.
Basically - and what follows is my take, anyway, differing arguments are welcome (Finn?) ...
... Neo-conservatives (who include a notable number of converts with a lefty and far-lefty past) apply an aggressive intervenionism to foreign policy, which is framed in a language of idealism. They reject a narrow definition of national interest as purely reacting to direct threats and attacks, and believe that the US should aggressively use its military power to spread democracy and face down totalitarian regimes as a matter of principle. The world can only be safe when the scourges of terrorism and totalitarianism are eradicated, they argue, so it's within a broader definition of national interest to go after them in general, even without provocation.
This attitude contrasts with that of traditional conservatives, who accept that there will always be totalitarian regimes in the world and just want American foreign policy to focus on defending concrete and immediate US interests.
It contrasts even more starkly, in theory, with the realpolitik policies that marked Kissinger-type foreign policy. Realpolitik figureheads would have laughed off the very idea of applying the yardsticks of human rights and democracy in practical foreign policy dealings - that kind of thing was stuff for those naive lefties. Every enemy of your enemy was your friend, even if he was an asshole - he'd be
your asshole. That's how you ended up helping those Latin American dictators impose state terror against everyone remotely leftwing, and arming the predecessors of the Taliban to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The Reagan era saw the use of some of the grandiose neo-conservative language (spreading democracy across the globe, etc), even as day-to-day foreign policy was one of wholly unscrupulous realpolitik (see: Latin-America). The influence of the neo-conservative framing of foreign policy returned much more strongly in the early Bush years, however, when it informed their fierce interventionism and grandly phrased goals.
Of course, the aftermath of those years have shown their strategies and tactics to be a bust. By declaring a mission far grander than the US had the means to enact and getting bogged way over its head straight away in two wars, the Bush administration just made America look weak. And once America got truly bogged down in Iraq, it just went straight back to realpolitik alliances (such as those with local Sunni paramilitaries) to stabilise the situation.
In fact, right from the start, the idealistic-sounding neo-conservative framing of the war contrasted sharply with the much more unscrupulous ulterior motives that were also at work -- getting control of Iraqi oil, turning the new Iraqi regime into a pliable American base in the Middle-East. The neo-conservatives didn't necessarily see the contradiction: they saw all this in the same terms of establishing an era of benevolent American hegemony in the world. But the contrast was shrill enough to end up making America just look hypocritical and fuel violent local resentment.
So the whole neoconservative project ended up being, well, counterproductive at best. But it was definitely a different kind of conservative project from previous and competing conservative concepts, ranging from those of conservative isolationists to those of the defenders of pure realpolitik. Now all of those people are very conservative, much more conservative than you, but they are very different from each other.
