George Will causes a firestorm

George Will has had enough of the neoconservative fantasy that the U.S can export democracy to the Middle East. The drumbeat to lob a few at Syria or Iran without looking at the larger picture is tempting. How many fronts can we attack. Is democracy building in the Middle East doomed? It's Will v. The Daily Standard.

The Bush administration has rightly refrained from criticizing the region's only democracy, Israel, for its forceful response to a thousand rockets fired at its population. U.S. reticence is seemly, considering that terrorism has been Israel's torment for decades, and that America responded to two hours of terrorism one September morning by toppling two regimes halfway around the world
with wars that show no signs of ending.

The administration, justly criticized for its Iraq premises and their execution, is suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from reality as to defy caricature. The national, ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East are opaque to most people, but to The Weekly Standard - voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism,
neoconservativism" - everything is crystal clear: Iran is the key to everything.

Dean Barnett will have none of it, however.