I usually give neoconservatives the benefit of the doubt and assume that they don’t actually believe the strong form of democratic peace theory—namely that armed conflict between democracies is somehow impossible.

But sometimes I’m proved wrong. Case in point, Jackson Diehl is disappointed in the Iranian Greens:

Ataollah Mohajerani, who has been a spokesman in Europe for presidential candidate-turned-dissident Mehdi Karroubi, came to Washington to address the annual conference of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The mostly pro-Israel crowd was primed to cheer what they expected would be a harsh condemnation of Ahmadinejad and his bellicose rhetoric, and a promise of change by the green coalition.

What they heard, instead, was a speech that started with a rehashing of U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup in Tehran and went on to echo much of Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric about the United States and the nuclear program.

Neoconservatives do recognize that even if the Palestinians had a perfectly representative government, they’d continue fighting against Israel, right? They recognize that there are certain wars, like wars over territory, which are not affected by the political systems of the warring parties, right? Right…?

I continue to believe they’re not complete ideologues, despite frequent evidence to the contrary.