The subhead to Joshua Muravchik’s “Operation Comeback,” a strategy memo for his fellow neocons that appears in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine, reads:

Neoconservatives have the president’s ear, but they also have lots of baggage. To stay relevant, they must admit mistakes, embrace public diplomacy, and start making the case for bombing Iran.

Which I might ordinarily chalk up to mischief by a smartass editor, but in this case it’s a fair summary of the piece.

First among the mistakes Muravchik says neoconservatives need to own up to? “We are guilty of poorly explaining neoconservatism.” Apparently it’s the packaging, not the product, that has led the American public to reject perpetual war aimed at “transform[ing] the political culture of the Middle East from one of absolutism and violence to one of tolerance and compromise.”

There’s no need to give up on that dream, says Muravchik. We can get ‘er done with a bigger army, and by repairing America’s public diplomacy apparatus abroad. That problem with the packaging? Leave it to the folks who designed the product–they’ll fix it: “No group other than neocons is likely to figure out how to [repair public diplomacy]. We are, after all, a movement whose raison d’etre was combating anti-Americanism in the United States. Who better, then, to combat it abroad?”

Wasn’t this the movement that once styled itself as “liberals mugged by reality”? Somewhere along the line they really learned how to fight back.