Robert Kagan, the American historian and political analyst would normally be considered a neocon though he prefers the term “liberal interventionist”. He sees the current events in Iraq as an opportunity for the interventionists. Hilary Clinton’s expected foreign policy is something neocons are quite comfortable with. Jason Horowitz writes in the New York Times:
…… He (Kagan) called for Mr. Obama to resist a popular pull toward making the United States a nation without larger responsibilities, and to reassume the more muscular approach to the world out of vogue in Washington since the war in Iraq drained the country of its appetite for intervention. ……. Mr. Kagan, 55, prefers the term “liberal interventionist” to the neoconservative label, but believes the latter no longer has the stigma it did in the early days of the Obama presidency. …..
But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his “mainstream” view of American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes. Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.
“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”
Hilary Clinton has not yet confirmed that she will run for President in 2015 but being seen as a secret neocon will not be helpful – especially if the current mess in Iraq (and in Syria) will still be bloody chaos at the end of 2015. She must already contend with Benghazi being part of her baggage.
The k2p blog 