same-same

From the Japan Times:

...The fact is that neo-libs and neo-cons in the U.S. are cut from the same starred and striped cloth. They are convinced that the American system of democratic practices is amenable to implementation everywhere. But the Rusks, the Rostows and the Rumsfelds alike fail to realize that, in the long run, you cannot treat other nations solely as strategic territories in your own country's Grand Design. When your promises are accompanied by the indiscriminate destruction of their way of life, people mistrust political rhetoric -- whether that of "pacification," the neo-lib 1960s term, or "the spread of liberty," the current neo-con one.

So next time you feel like railing against those neo-cons, who have cloaked aggression in the language of liberty, give a thought to the neo-libs, who did the same thing four decades ago.

It is neither conservatism nor liberalism that has dragged the people of the United States and its allies into wars of aggression on foreign soil. It is the misconceived notion of a mission: that what works for them must prevail everywhere -- regardless of history, culture or the values of faith.