When he wants to say nice things about the neocons' goal of exporting democracy he mentions that there were a bunch of elections held soon after Iraq was invaded.
Then when he wants to warn against Fukuyama's position with regard to Islam, he mentions all of the nasty Islamists who came to power through the very same elections that he had previously lauded.
And this is just one of many weasely self-contradictions in the piece.
He claims that some neocons wanted to put in a dictator right after Saddam was deposed, even mentioning Chalabi. But Chalabi was the one that claimed there would be no need for lots of troops as we were going to be welcomed by peasants with flowers in their arms.
He claims that the liberals and the realists have no strategic plan and so there is nowhere else to go but neoconservatism.
A quick Google search reveals libraries of books and articles written by liberals and realists on what we should be doing instead of invading and getting bogged down in Iraq.
And the greatest nonsense is that he tries to isolate neoconservatives from particular strategic decisions, e.g. de-Baathification, insufficient troop levels, disbanding the Iraqi army, etc.
Either the neocons are pure idealists and should never have been trusted to launch a real war, or else what pragmatism they have is insufficient and likewise should have disqualified them as warmongers.
The whole idealist vs. realist debate is a silly canard.
If there is no reason for a particular foreign policy then there will be no motivation to craft a pragmatic plan. If there is no pragmatic plan, then no ideal, no matter how lofty, will be successfully implemented.
We need both ideals and pragmatism.
We failed to create a democracy in Russia, and we have failed to create a democracy in Iraq.
China and Singapore do not have pure democracies yet seem to be on tracks which will result in their countries approximating ours a lot sooner than Russia and Iraq.
Evidently the neocons were unable to actualize their ideals and only made a mess of things in the process.
This is a just a silly apology for all their nonsense.