The perilous facts that made democratic construction the best choice among insufficient alternatives in the Spring of 2003 still remain valid today. Three years ago, when the United States military toppled Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime in Iraq, the Bush administration recognized two things: 1) the status quo in the Middle East characterized by authoritarian dictatorships presiding over rabid Islamist dissenters marked an acute security threat for the United States, and 2) democratization and liberalization marked the uniquely effective means of altering that status quo in a manner capable of creating a viable long term solution to Jihadist terrorism. ~Michael Brandon McClellan, TCS Daily

Mr. McClellan (the party hacks’ Irish answer to Michael Brendan Dougherty?) wraps his conventional defense of the war-for-democratic-enlightenment project (what he calls “democratic realism”) in what is supposed to be a critique of Fukuyama’s “After Neoconservatism” article and offers these gems for our consideration. Mr. McClellan reprises the “swamp” and “drain the swamp” theories. Obviously, it is much better to remove the authoritarian dictatorships that repress the Islamist dissidents and open the field to the Islamist dissidents themselves. They are much more amenable. Cut out the middle man–that’s always the best way to get wholesale-priced jihadis! It must be an ideal solution to the problem of jihadism to introduce the kind of government that can be most easily infiltrated and taken over by said Islamists in a completely “legal” way. Tell us more, O sage!

Then there is this gem:

However, he [Fukuyama] does so in a way that evidences his fealty to the eminently ineffective Woodrow Wilson. Wilson foolishly believed that peace could be promoted and that freedom could be defended in the absence of force.

Yes, that old wimpy peacenik Wilson. He doesn’t believe in using force. Except against the Germans. And the Bolsheviks. And Haiti. And Cuba. And Panama. And Mexico. And Nicaragua. No, no use of force and no use of the military for our man, Woodrow! I don’t know which is more pitiful: a Wilsonian who doesn’t know anything about Woodrow Wilson, or the “hard” Wilsonian who knows something about him and still thinks he was a good president. Get ready, Max Boot and Michael McClellan: the race to the intellectual bottom is on!