James Traub writes in the NYT:
Neoconservative foreign policy — which is to say bellicose nationalism crossed with an idealistic faith in America’s capacity to transform the world for the better — is dead. Iraq was its Frankenstein’s monster, and the beast has turned on its creator. Our central task today is to devise a new way of thinking about the post-9/11 world. In the meantime, we can learn something of how we reached this pass by reflecting on the doctors who carried out the experiment.
Despite its thunderous subtitle — “The Kingdom, the Power, and the End of Empire in America” — Alan Weisman’s “Prince of Darkness: Richard Perle” has little to say about the way forward. A former producer at “60 Minutes,” Weisman has assembled a book-length version of the kind of diligent, unimaginative profile that constitutes the show’s stock in trade. He has, however, effectively humanized a figure at the heart of the neoconservative enterprise who is usually rendered in cartoon terms, showing how Perle’s personal gifts contributed to his impressive success.
