The Neo-Con philosophy

I really want you to go read an article called "The Great Experiment in (Neo-con) Freedom". It's hard to do it justice in an excerpt, but I'll tell you how it gets started and also share one important point made toward the end of the article:

God bless our Neo-cons. They believe in Freedom. With a capital F. They believe that government is the enemy of Freedom.

Iraq - partly consciously, and partly unconsciously - was their great experiment.

The United States, driven by neo-con theology, and frequently run by neo-cons, went into Iraq. They removed the government. They removed the police.They removed the army. They removed the top administrators of all those horrid government bureaucracies. Then they stood back and watched what happened.

Then the looting started. The US, with the only government and only armed forces and only police powers around, stood back and watched.
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But like domestic law, international law has grown out of experience. Certain conflicts and disasters have come up over and over again. So nations got together and said, let's make laws, so we don't have to guess each time what to do, we know how the games is played, and, in fact, we'll establish rules that we think generally lead to the best outcome and avoid disaster.

One of those laws - inscribed variously in the Hague Conventions of 1907, the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter - is that if a country conquers another country and becomes the occupying power, they are responsible to establish law and order, to protect the civilian population and property, supply food and medical care.

The failures to do those things, are crimes.

Any way you slice it, we're criminals. I do recommend that you click through and read the whole article. It's about the importance of the rule of law and the neo-con contempt for law. Very illuminating.