The NY Times' gloating article on conservatives second-guessing the Iraq invasion includes this good question about "big government":

Most blame the administration for botching the mission, and some are also questioning their own judgment. How, they wonder, did so many conservatives, who normally don't trust their government to run a public school down the street, come to believe that federal bureaucrats could transform an entire nation in the alien culture of the Middle East?

-The New Yorker's 12th hundred days