The left lacks an analysis of the neocon rise

All The other night on CSpan, I watched Rachel Maddow give a lecture at Mount Holyoke College about her foreign policy book Drift. The speech was amusing, and her condemnation of Obama's use of drones was excellent, as was her sympathy for military families who have borne the brunt of these wars inside the U.S. But the speech was singularly lacking in analysis. Why are we mired in Middle Eastern wars? Maddow's analysis seems to be, That's just us. We've got a military establishment. They do this stuff. They can't be stopped. They build drones and like to fly 'em.

The same aphasia is at work in Ari Berman's piece on Romney's neoconservative braintrust in the Nation. It's a well-reported piece on the prevalence of neoconservatives in the Republican Party. And the Nation knows that neocon is now a curseword. It's on the cover of the magazine in huge letters.