Friday, December 30, 2011

Another neocon hit job on Ron Paul

Neoconservative Jonah Goldberg's recent column on Rep. Ron Paul ("The painful naivete of Ron Paul," Dec. 26) is one of many recent neocon hit pieces on the candidate since he rose to the top in the upcoming Iowa primary. Mr. Paul terrifies the neocons because, unlike them, he believes in peace over war, an end to our global empire that we can no longer afford and ending all U.S. foreign aid, including ending the $3 billion that we give to Mr. Goldberg's beloved Israel every year.

Rep. Paul believes in putting America's interests first and dialoguing and trading with friends as well as enemies, including Iran. Mr. Goldberg and his neocon allies, all of whom have close ties to Israel's right-wing Likud Party, promoted the disastrous Iraq war and now are trying to provoke the U.S. into an even more insane war in Iran, in order to remove another regime that is unfriendly to Israel.

Mr. Paul will make an excellent president because he is the only candidate who can turn our country around, both domestically and internationally.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Neocon Definition of Isolationism

Neocons love to kill in order to get their way. Want oil or any other resource? Kill the leaders that lay claim to the land were it is and install puppet leaders. The puppets get tired of listening to the Devil American politicians and they get killed, new puppets get installed. Sometimes the foreign barbarians get to far out of hand and American soldiers are used. Kill a few hundred thousand of the “enemy”, crush their spirit, take their land and their natural resources and give them a puppet dictator and a few baubles, that will keep them in line for a while.

The Neocons definition of isolationism is: Ron Paul will not let us kill everyone that gets in our way!

Ron Paul (and Michael Jackson and Ayn Rand) vs. Our Central Bankers and Neocon Overloads

Now that we have all these Paul-enthusiast readers, what do we do to keep them? When we said ambiguously negative things about Rand (or Randians) and Michael, we got lots of readers we soon lost when we lost interest in their heroes.

Well, one comment on Paul: The evidence is there that he endorsed the Lew Rockwell/Murray Rothbard strategy of allying with paleocons (meaning, in this context, redneck neoconfederates and such). That strategy was criticized by CATO, REASON MAGAZINE and other relatively mainstream libertarian groups at the time. There’s lots of evidence that Paul abandoned that strategy, although not to the extent of directly alienating those groups. It would actually help him to say he was wrong and distance himself explicitly from Rockwell.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

My Journey to Ron Paul, from a former Neocon

We can't be taken seriously in wanting to reduce government if we have our own sacred cows. By bringing our troops home from bases overseas they can protect the country and bring that money back domestically. I implore each and every one of you to look at the issues without a preconceived notion.

The way I see it now we have three realistic choices for President in 2012; re-electing President Obama, Mitt Romney or Ron Paul. Is your life better off now than when Obama took office? Mine certainly isn't. Our family has succeeded in spite of government policies rather than because of them. Is Mitt Romney the candidate you can rally behind? His Romneycare debacle in Massachusetts to flip flopping on issues like abortion and simply being a typical politician rule him out for me.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

One Way To Tell a Neocon

When he says, "America," he means the imperialist presidency's propaganda, conquering, spying, and police-state ops. Take a WaPo editorial writer, who distorts Ron Paul (part of the job description) for FOX.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Ron Paul: Propagandist or Prophet?

So, once again, we see that Ron Paul’s true sin is his failure to jump on board with the war propaganda. A further sin is that he said after 9/11 that “there was ‘glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq.’” But is the contention that those policymakers responsible for the war on Iraq were not happy that they now had the opportunity to do so sustainable? Is Rabinowitz unaware that in 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser coauthored a document prepared for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, which made the case for overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime? Or that the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), whose membership was a virtual who’s who of so-called “neoconservatives” calling for war on Iraq, had a manifesto calling for regime change and stating that the “process of transformation” of the U.S. military into a force to “preserve American military preeminence” around the globe “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor”? That PNAC director Robert Kagan acknowledged that the 9/11 attacks were the “Pearl Harbor” he and his ilk were looking for, writing in the Washington Post that 9/11 must be used to “to launch a new era of American internationalism. Let’s not squander this opportunity”?

Yet again, it becomes evidence that Ron Paul’s sin is that he is too willing to be honest with the American people and speak the truth about U.S. foreign policy. Just as Dr. Paul predicted and warned about the housing bubble and financial crisis of 2008, so did he predict and warn prior to 9/11 that U.S. foreign policy would result in what the intelligence community terms “blowback”. Ron Paul has a long record of speaking truth to power and making predictions that have come to pass.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

National Review’s Racist Rants

The whole world should know by now that the neocons at National Review magazine, the War Street Journal, and elsewhere will tell any lie in pursuit of political power. Lying the nation into war with Iraq by spreading the falsehood of "weapons of mass destruction" that were supposedly headed our way was the most atrociously evil act perpetrated by the U.S government and its propaganda organs in decades, having led to the senseless death of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

No one should be surprised that National Review is now engaged in a spectacular act of chutzpah, to put it mildly, by smearing Ron Paul as being insensitive on matters of race. Before anyone gives any credence to the latest smear campaign against Congressman Paul it would be useful to take a look at National Review’s own record of publications on the issue of race relations. It is not a pretty picture.

50 US Experts Implore Obama to Press Syria Harder


Around 50 US-based experts on Middle East policy and strategy signed an open letter to President Barack Obama this week imploring him to demonstrate greater leadership on the Syria crisis.

Their petition calls for tougher sanctions, greater contact with Syria’s opposition and the creation of havens for the protection of Syrian civilians. Signatories include expatriate activists from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt as well as commentators, academics and former top-level national security officials Elliott Abrams, L. Paul Bremer and Douglas Feith.

Possible Ron Paul Iowa Win Drives NeoCons to Apoplexy

Rep. Ron Paul’s top-tier status heading into Iowa and New Hampshire means he definitely can’t be totally ignored by the major media, as he has been in the past. So the censors and blackout artists have been replaced by the smear bund. This past week they got pretty well revved up, but they’re still probably a long way from being in high gear.

As The New American's Jack Kenny noted here a couple of days ago in his article, “Campaign Could Get 'Downright Ugly' if Paul Wins Iowa,” the Big Government Republicans are sharpening their knives for a bloodfest.

But they’re not waiting for the results of the January 3, 2012 Iowa caucuses to get ugly.

Over the past week, the apoplectic attack dogs of the neoconservative kennel were unleashed for a rabid, howling blitz against the Texas Congressman. It’s testimony to Dr. Paul’s squeaky clean personal and political life that the attackers have been forced to fabricate issues with which to clobber him. No sex scandals. No political payoffs from Freddie Mac or favoritism for Goldman Sachs. No political flip-flops on issues. No sellouts to special interests. So how do you attack a straight arrow such as Dr. Paul who is a constitutional purist and has doggedly stuck to his convictions for over three decades of public life? Well, they’re dusting off their playbook from the 2008 presidential campaign, and adding a few new twists. The smear bund is harping on several memes, hoping that sufficient repetition from multiple voices will convince voters that Ron Paul is “dangerous,” “crazy,” a “pacifist,” an “isolationist,” a “conspiracy crank,” and a “grumpy old man.”

Friday, December 23, 2011

I have 4 questions for neocon talk radio

I listen to the neocon assholes on talk radio all the time. I'm a delivery driver and I listen to those pukes a lot while I'm on the road. Next day off I get I'm gonna call into every show I can get in on and say something like this (please don't steal this idea yet)...

Question #1: What form of government did Iran have in 1951??

Answer: They were a democracy and they had elected a Prime Minister named Mohammed Mossadeq. In 1953, however, Eisenhower sent in the newly formed CIA and they overthrew this elected leader and installed the Shah, a theocratic dictator who ruled with an iron fist. He remained in power until 1979, at which time he was overthrown and our hostages were taken... in retaliation for installing the Shah.

Question #2: Who armed, funded and helped to bring to power Sadaam Hussein?

Answer: We did. Again, a heavy-handed dictator who killed his own people with chemical weapons we gave him. It took 2 wars, over 1 million dead Iraqis, and around 10,000 dead American soldiers to eventually remove him from power.

Question #3: Who armed and funded Bin Laden and the radical Islamists in Afghanistan in order to push back the Soviet invasion?

Answer: We did. And the result of that was the attack on 9/11, and thousands of dead American soldiers in the war in Afghanistan.

Question #4: Now do you understand what Ron Paul means by blowback, and how our meddling in the middle east causes more problems than it solves and increases hatred toward Americans?? They don't hate us because of who we are... they hate us because of what we do."

At some point, I'm sure I'll get interrupted, and to that I'll say...

Neocon Says Ron Paul Would Appease Hitler and the Nazis

The effort to viciously undercut Ron Paul’s bid for the presidency knows no bounds. Now that the establishment media campaign to ignore away Paul’s successful campaign has failed and he is rising in the polls as the Iowa caucus nears, the neocons are sharpening their knives.

For instance, Jamie Weinstein, who writes for the Weekly Standard and Fox News, has penned an op-ed over at the Daily Caller saying that if Ron Paul’s foreign policy had been in effect during the Second World War the Nazis would have ended up with nukes and would have won the war. It would have been the “Nazi Century.”

John Kampfner: How did Obama end up appeasing the neocons?

Last Saturday, as normal people were doing their Christmas shopping, I was hidden away in a Sky television studio in debate with a neocon. I was discussing the treatment of Bradley Manning, the American serviceman accused of leaking secrets to WikiLeaks, with John Bolton, one of the leading lights of the American right.

The point I was trying to make was fairly simple. As the self-professed leader of the free world, the United States should abide by the highest practices of international law. These arguments have been rehearsed incessantly over the past decade with reference to Guantanamo, renditions, Abu Ghraib and the Patriot Act. Yet the manner of Manning's incarceration has been truly horrific.

Warning! Neocon Push For War with Iran!

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Mainstream press sniggers at Ron Paul’s antiwar message

Last night I heard several more mainstream voices trashing Ron Paul for his spectacular anti-war comments in Iowa the other night--when he said the runup to war with Iran was reckless and could lead to another million dead, and Iran has good reason to want nukes-- and a couple of those voices were liberal! First neoconservative David Brooks on All Things Considered last night:

And then, Ron Paul really had a bad debate. People like the fact that he's forthright, but the Iran foreign policy, which is a more Libertarian foreign policy, is really unpopular in a socially conservative state like Iowa.

Gingrich Skulking Behind Ron Paul Attacks

GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich, a corporate-financier sponsored Council on Foreign Relations member also was a "distinguished advisor" at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a warmongering, Neo-Con think-tank and the architects of both the costly unending wars America has been fighting for the last 2 decades and the resulting war profiteering. The FDD is also the same think-tank from which attacks against Ron Paul are being launched via FDD "fellow" James Kirchick.

Compounding this immense conflict of interest and possible fraud, is the fact that Newt Gingrich is also a "former senior fellow," and currently a "scholar" at the American Enterprise Institute which hosted a recent GOP presidential foreign policy debate. Gingrich's biography on the AEI website also states that he is, "an advisory board member of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies," suggesting that indeed, he is a current adviser at the FDD from which recent attacks on Ron Paul have originated.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

America`s Global Warfare. Military Redeployment to Asia and The Pacific Threatens China

The 2000 Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which was the backbone of the NeoCon's agenda, was predicated on “waging a war without borders”.

The PNAC's declared objectives were to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars” in different regions of the world as well as perform the so-called military “constabulary” duties “associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions”. Global constabulary implies a worldwide process of military policing and interventionism, including covert operations and “regime change”.

This diabolical military project formulated by the NeoCons was adopted and implemented from the very outset of the Obama administration. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, Obama has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than his White House predecessor, George Bush Junior....

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Hayek Would Not Be Surprised by the Neocons

In his famous book, The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek gave several reasons why something like fascism could have been so appealing to so many in twentieth-century Europe. One ingredient, he said, was that it appealed to the lowest common denominator in terms of intelligence and therefore gained a wide audience. Another reason was that it is easier for people to focus on hatred of someone or something as opposed to a more positive outlook, such as a free society. According to Hayek, the Jews were a symbol of capitalism, which is one reason why they were treated the way they were in the Europe of his day. (Let's not forget that "Nazi" was an acronym for National Socialism).

This was brought to my mind from an email from Garrett S., who said that he has met numerous people who have told him that they used to be neocons, but after educating themselves a little in basic economics and the literature of liberty they have become libertarians and Ron Paul supporters. On the other hand, wrote Garrett, he has never come across anyone who has said, "I used to be a libertarian and a Ron Paul supporter, but now that I'm educated I'm a proud neocon."

The neocons are today's version of Hayek's lowest common denominator.

Sad neocon hit piece - The Company Ron Paul Keeps

So it's starting.. The hit pieces will be coming out in full force now that Ron Paul is surging into the lead in Iowa and moving into 2nd in New Hampshire. I found this sad piece of journalism if you can call it that. Full of lie's and brings up "his" racist newsletters.

http://www.webcitation.org/643gVAW6m

National ID Card Romney and the NeoCon Traitors

Ron Paul is surging because he opposes another neocon war for Israel

Iowa Republicans are not neoconservatives. Ron Paul has gained ground after a debate in which his refusal to join the Iran warhawks was front and center. Indeed, in my travels around the country, I don’t meet many neoconservatives outside of Washington and New York. It’s one thing to just adore Israel, as the evangelical Christians do; it’s another thing entirely to send American kids off to war, yet again, to fight for Israel’s national security.

Notice that he pins the tail on the ideology, neoconservatism. This is why David Brooks thought Paul had a "bad debate," because he is trying to tell Americans about a dangerous ideology, neoconservatism. Oh and look how much air the NYT gives Ron Paul in its Iowa wrapup this morning. About one paragraph.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Shocker! Neocon Elitists in Iowa Endorse Ted Kennedy Wing of the GOP

The neocons who run the Des Moines Register, which endorsed John McCain in 2008, have endorsed Romney in today's paper. What a surprise. They must have debated endlessly whether or not to endorse the Ted Kennedy wing of the party or the Al Gore wing, currently located in Texas with Governor Rick Perry having been Al Gore's campaign manager in that state when Gore ran for the presidency.

Neocon fantasy

The simultaneous publication of Pat Buchanan's column "Lessons the GOP won't learn," the editorial "North Korea's missiles: Meet the challenge" and Craig Smith's Q&A "Reassessing North Korea's nuke threat" (all Dec. 10 and TribLIVE.com) could not be more appropriate, although Mr. Buchanan's column should be retitled, "Lessons the GOP and the Trib won't learn."

The idea that the United States is threatened by North Korean (or Iranian or Russian) nukes is preposterous and can only spring from the demented Cold War minds of the warmongers at The Heritage Foundation.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Neocon Demagoguery on Earmarks

From Rick Perry, natch, advocate of presidential dictatorship. Those in favor of presidential power want all power to the executive branch; earmarks retain constitutional authority for the congress. Of course, Ron never voted for pork-barrel spending of any sort.

How Iraq Maneuvered the US Exit

The neocons’ treasured Iraq War myth of their “successful surge” is belied by the actual history of how Iraqi Shiite leaders collaborated with Iran to tamp down internal violence and then destroy neocon plans for long-term U.S. military bases to project power in the Middle East, as Gareth Porter explains.

The real story behind the U.S. withdrawal is how a clever strategy of deception and diplomacy adopted by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in cooperation with Iran outmaneuvered Bush and the U.S. military leadership and got the United States to sign the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Fact Check: Iran to get Nukes in Months … No evidence, Bachmann is wrong – Neo Cons unite against Paul

There is no doubt that Ron Paul hurt his chances to win the 2012 selection @ last nights FOX Debate in Iowa… By telling the TRUTH.

Voting for the candidate that most wants World War? There are many choices for you then (including Obama)…. Voting for sanity, liberty, and peace? Unfortunately you only have one choice. Ron Paul. – The Tea O Cons have been saying that Iran would have the bomb within months, for years now. Wrong every time, but right now?

And even IF Iran gets nukes, would they commit suicide by using it preemptively? (Haven’t we paid for a ‘Missile Shield’? Does Iran have war satellites to guide missiles to our shores?)

If you believe this propaganda then please tell me why no one has used a nuke since 1945. Answer? Because they would be annihilated. Oh… but Iran is craaaaazy, you know, like Ron Paul…. Like Kim Jong Il …right? That’s the excuse for attacking Iran. It makes no sense and provides no proof.

Friday, December 16, 2011

The Yankees are going home. Now what was that about democracy?

US neocon publications (The WSJ, Commentary, Weekly Standard etc.) are lamenting the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. With newly found prescience, the hacks predict much strife in the country, complete with massacres, deportations and foreign invasions neatly dovetailing with a civil war from hell. A prolonged US military presence would allegedly prevent such outrages, they claim. How prolonged? Well, who's counting among friends? A generation or two, maybe a century or two -- it's the thought that matters. Of course, American presence there since 2003 was coextensive with the best part of a million Iraqis (not to mention 4,500 Americans) dying violent deaths, a coincidence that hints at a causal relationship. But the neocons are adamant: no sacrifice is too big for Democracy. Those poor Iraqis had to die for the bright future of their country becoming like Norway.

Obama the Neocon Banging the War Drums Again? U.S. Troops Mount Near Syria

If Obama is hoping for a “rally around the flag” effect, maybe he shouldn’t hold his crotch during the national anthem.

There are reports surfacing of U.S. troops gathering in Jordan near the Syrian border. It is unclear if the exercise is merely saber-rattling, or the preparatory stages for an excursion into Bashir Assad’s Syria.

The Syrian government has been condemned for its human rights abuses by the United Nations Human Rights Council (which Syria was recently elected to) and even the Arab League.

Neo-Con Rising

The reports of the death of the Neo-Conservative Movement have been greatly exaggerated. Dick Cheney has become a cheerleader for Newt Gingrich whose sole intention seems to be to continue The Long War ad infinitum. On a day when we finally ended the most disastrous strategy of the Neo-Cons, the Iraq War, Gingrich is doubling down on the next war--In Iran.

He painted a chain of events in which an Israeli prime minister asked an American president for help with a conventional military invasion of Iran so that Israel would not have to use its nuclear arsenal to defend itself. Mr. Gingrich implied that he would go along. "What I won't do is allow Israel to be threatened with another Holocaust," he said. "This is a not-very-far-down-the-road decision."

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Lying 'Blackjack' Bill Bennett

Several years ago neocon icon and self-appointed national moral scold Bill Bennett, editor of The Book of Virtues, admitted to squandering his childrens' inheritance by losing some $7 million playing blackjack in Vegas. In addition to being a hypocrite, Bennett is also a liar. Tonight on Sean Hannity's Faux News show he said that Ron Paul believed in "conspiracy theories" about 9/11. He's lying. Ron Paul has been all over the "mainstream" media for the past five years explaining that he thinks 9/11 was a result of typical governmental incompetence. The FAA prohibited airline pilots from carrying firearms, Ron has endlessly pointed out. If they had not done so it is unlikely that 9/11 would ever have occurred. And of course the entire Defense/CIA/FBI establishment failed to even protect their own headquarters. Par for the course for inherently incompetent and bungling government bureaucrats. He has never spun any conspiracy theories and Bill Bennett knows it.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

American International Policy and the Neoconservative Legacy

But neoconservatism is not the issue here, and Jim Antle is quite right to say so. Neoconservatism is a set (scarcely a system) of ideas that evolved in conversations between, and exchanges of essays by, a group of friends, all more or less of the WW II generation or just after -- Irving Kristol, Daniel P. Moynihan, Robert Bartley, Leo Rosten, and a few others, notably Nathan Glazer and peripherally Mel Lasky (he and Tony Robinson and Stephen Spender were in a damp office in London). They were joined by still others, such as Norman Podhoretz and Neal Kozodoy and The American Spectator's Mr. Tyrrell. The conversation was almost entirely concerned with domestic issues -- civil rights and the public policies that ought, or ought not, to follow their legal and constitutional consolidation in the '50s-60s, welfare matters (e.g., "conservative safety net welfare state" vs. reliance on private goodness and free markets), and many more.

The foreign policy of the first Bush administration -- the resort to war to enforce international borders -- was widely perceived, and surely not inexactly, as a traditional exercise of state power, and it received broad support in our country as well as amongst others, including old allies like France and Britain and new-circumstantial ones like Syria and old-circumstantial ones like Saudi Arabia. Some of them even helped us, as per the Foreign Legion contingent that stayed in the rear, but I have it on good authority that was not for want of volunteering, only Generals Schwarzkopf and Powell were in the unilateral-chain-of-command mode where they felt comfortable and did it their way. The second war began as old-fashioned get-the-varmints warfare, but evolved with the nation-building ambitions of the move into Iraq. The notion of pre-emptive defense and punish-the-dictators and battle-cry-of-freedom-and-democracy beyond our own borders was not a neoconservative notion. It may have been a Wilsonian one, but I leave that to specialists in the matter, as it is not certain President Wilson's "make the world safe for democracy" fantasy was more important in his own mind and in its effect on 20th century history than his "self-determination for all peoples" one. And anyway, neither the president nor his top men were neos in any recognizable sense, certainly not Mr. Rumsfeld or Mr. Cheney or Miss Rice, nor Mr. Wolfowitz, who is widely called a neo but who had taken his distances from the Committee on the Present Danger in the '70s-80s when, organized by Democrats such as Mr. Nitze and Mr. Rostow and Mrs. Kirkpatrick and others and that attracted Senator Jackson as well as President Reagan (before he was president) and was championed by the then-neos, except Mr. Luttwak, but he too always took his distances from them, as did Prof. Bloom and Prof. Wohlstetter, Mr. Wolfowitz's great teachers. Please correct me if I am wrong in any or all of these characterizations, I am quite open to being corrected on points of fact, history, and even, yes, judgment.

Send the Neocon war mongers and war profiteers the bill

In the run-up to the Iraq war there was little serious discussion about what this war of choice by the Neoconservative Bush-Cheney administration would cost. When Lawrence Lindsey, President Bush’s economic adviser, suggested that it might reach $200 billion all told, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the estimate as “baloney.” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz went as far as to suggest that Iraq’s postwar reconstruction would pay for itself through increased oil revenues. Rumsfeld and Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels estimated the total cost of the war in the range of $50 to $60 billion, some of which they believed would be financed by other countries.

The true cost of the war in Iraq, according to our calculations, will, by the time America has extricated itself, exceed $3 trillion. And this is a deliberately conservative estimate. The ultimate cost may well be much higher.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

The 'Neocon' Monroe Doctrine

OK Jeff, I'll bite. If the Monroe Doctrine is neoconservative, when did the United States intervene militarily to spread a particular form of government throughout Latin America? Or pursue regime change in the hemisphere? Or wage preventive war, with or without regime change, against the European powers who might conceivably ignore the doctrine's warning?

It took until the Polk administration for the Monroe Doctrine to be applied in an especially expansionist fashion. After that there was talk of forcibly removing the Spanish from Cuba and the movement of U.S. troops to encourage an end to the French occupation of Mexico. It wasn't really interpreted as justifying U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Latin American countries until Theodore Roosvelt -- a good bit after the founding generation.

I'll grant that the Roosevelt Corollary is a precursor to neoconservatism. But the Monroe Doctrine was mainly a statement against European intervention in the region, later invoked against Soviet intervention during the Cold War. Noam Chomsky saw it as a statement of U.S. hegemony, however.

Neo-Con Historians Tom Woods and Kevin Gutzman?

Are historians and Ron Paul backers Tom Woods and Kevin Gutzman now well out front in betraying the Faith of Ron Paul by showing their true leftist...ahhhh.... Neo-Conservative colors?

Mr. Neo...sorry...Gutzman and his fellow leftist Mr. Woods recently appeared on The Mike Church Show to go after me for revealing that the Ron Paul version of the Founding Fathers, the Monroe Doctrine and non-interventionism was considerably less than correct. Doing this all the while defending the idea that the United States has some sort of God-given right to interfere in any country outside its borders -- as long as that country is in the correct hemisphere.

Constitutional Neoconmen

Neocons like Levin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh who now fancy themselves as constitutionalists since there is a Democrat in the White House are hypocrites of the first order. All during the eight years of the Bush regime their standard response to anyone who would object to the PATRIOT Act and myriad other attacks on constitutional liberty was to proclaim that "9/11 changed everything." Translation: the hell with the constitution; we’re engaged in a never-ending "war on terra," as George W. Bush called it. We need to destroy our constitutional liberties in order to protect our constitutional liberties, they told us. It is the hatred of those liberties by people in the Middle East that caused the terrorists to attack us on 9/11, they ludicrously proclaimed (and still do).

War is not just "the health of the state," as Randolph Bourne sagely stated in his famous essay of that title; it is the health of unlimited and unconstitutional government. Governmental powers always ratchet up during wartime at the expense of constitutional liberty (and prosperity) despite the fact that every federal politician, and every soldier, takes an oath to do the opposite – to defend the Constitution. This notorious "ratchet effect" is described in great detail in Robert Higgs’s classic book, Crisis and Leviathan.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Right-wing listserv targets Israel’s critics

The former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is shopping a 3,000-word trove of opposition research against bloggers critical of Israel to friendly neoconservative journalists.

I’ve obtained an email sent by Josh Block to a private listserv called the Freedom Community, in which he throws around accusations of anti-Semitism against liberal bloggers and calls on other list members to “echo” and “amplify” his assault and “use the below [research] to attack the bad guys.”

Breitbart Resigns From GOProud Board Over Outing Of Perry’s Strategist

Last week, Jimmy LaSalvia of conservative gay group GOProud called Rick Perry’s gay strategist Tony Fabrizio a “faggot” for working as the strategist in Rick Perry’s campaign—a campaign that aired an unapologetically homophobic ad.

But now Huffington Post co-founder and GOProud advisory board member Andrew Breitbart (the man who released pictures of Anthony Weiner’s privates over the Internet and destroyed Shirley Sherrod’s career with a spurious claim of racism) is outraged that GOProud might have vindictively outed Fabrizio over Perry’s ad.

As a result, Breitbart has resigned from GOProud’s advisory board as of this morning.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Gingrich, neocon wars, John Bolton as secretary of State?

Hope everyone caught Justin Sink's story in The Hill about Newt Gingrich saying he would name George W. Bush's United Nations ambassador, John Bolton, as his secretary of State. This is not surprising, but is deeply worrisome. Gingrich would bring the neocon war faction to his presidency. This will guarantee a clash with Ron Paul in upcoming debates, and it dramatizes why President Obama has a commanding position on national-security issues compared to Republicans.

John Bolton is one of the leaders of the neocon war faction. He would be an epic disaster as secretary of State. It seems, listening to various Republicans, that their obsessive attacks on Obama are based on their looking for new wars to fight, and current wars to never end.

At the Republican Jewish Coalition Forum

The Terror War years of 2003-2007 feel like ages ago now...though I fondly remember rooting on Jon Stewart as he launched into devestating send-ups of the Republicans and neocons. (That the Bushians and neocons were lunatics (or worse) was, of course, one of the few things that Stewart and I agreed on.)

I was reminded of this time watching Stewart's latest take on the Republican Jewish Coalition Forum. Whatever else he might be, Jon Stewart is brave. He makes criticizng Israel, Zionism, and American foreign policy funny and cool, and it's hard to imagine that won't have consequences.

Friday, December 09, 2011

The Neocons Have Finally Snapped

Any doubt we might have that the Israeli right has lost its mind should be eliminated by the latest column from one of its most prominent media figures, Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post.

Glick, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, has flipped out over some remarks (which we'll get to later) made last week by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, and Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman. And here is how she explains those remarks.

Her first explanation is that "the Obama administration is an ideological echo chamber in which only certain positions are permitted".

"Restrained by ideological thought police that outlaw critical thought about the dominant forces in the Islamic world today, US officials have little choice but to place all the blame for everything that goes wrong on the one society they are free to criticise - Israel."

7 Nations on Neocon Hit List

Some 10 years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., top neoconservatives in the Pentagon orchestrated a major “policy coup” to start wars with multiple Middle Eastern countries and secure total domination of the Middle East in order to take their oil. That’s according to a top former U.S. military officer.

In a speech in San Francisco, top Gen.Wesley Clark recounted a memo drafted by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office in the wake of 9-11 that was brought to his attention by a top Pentagon official. The neocons’ plot, he was told, was “to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.” Clark said the neocons “wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.”

Thursday, December 08, 2011

Newt the Neocon calls for military action against Iran

"lrozen: Gingrich calls for regime replacement in Iran, block its imports of petrol, sabotage their refinery, support all dissident grps"

Because, of course, this has worked so well in the past, particularly in the Middle East.

Newt calls himself a student of history, but he hasn't got a fucking clue. Engaging Iran militarily would be a disaster.

Newt's a right-wing militarist, and here he's just sucking up to the neocons, and more specifically to the right-wing Israel lobby that is at the core of neoconservatism, hoping no doubt to secure some Jewish votes (with the early primary in Florida and an opportunity to crush Romney front of mind).

And, of course, he's also a shameless and largely unprincipled partisan. Remember when he was against President Obama's military engagement in Libya?

Neocons Don’t Believe Their Own Anti-Iran Propaganda

Occasionally, leading neoconservative intellectuals forget that the wider world is listening and say things that belie their own case for war. Take, for example, Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. In a recent video statement Pletka said,

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you that Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately. …”

And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

The Washington Post Editorial Board Makes a Hash of the Russian Election

The Washington Post editorial board has become something of a neocon doyen over the past couple of years. What annoys me far more than its politics, though, is the incredibly sloppy and lazy way in which it writes. Its editorial on the recent Russian elections is a perfect example of this.

“No less than Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Putin invited the backlash by choosing to retrench rather than reform his regime."

Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement

A book of mine, Leo Strauss and Conservative Movement in America: A Critical Appraisal, is about to come out with Cambridge University Press; and it has a special connection to the Mises Institute. Much of the critical thrust comes from attending conferences sponsored by the Mises Institute and from getting to know my fellow- participants and their writings. Although I harbored strong doubts about my latest subjects even before these encounters, my conversations with David Gordon, Murray Rothbard, Robert Higgs and Thomas DiLorenzo and later, discovering Mises’s comments about Strass gave additional substance to my suspicions. My project became a way of calling attention to a significant body of criticism that the liberal-neoconservative press and most scholarly organizations wouldn’t deign to present. I was upset in particular by the inability of David Gordon (and Lew Rockwell) to find a suitable publisher for a long, incisive work that David had produced about Harry Jaffa’s reading of American history. It was one of the most cerebral "value critiques" by a living thinker that I had seen.

Why, asks David, should Jaffa, a cult figure who is wined and dined by GOP benefactors, be immune from the type of assessment that other authors of scholarly works should have to accept? Why do Straussians like Jaffa, Allan Bloom, Thomas Pangle, and Charles Kesler achieve canonical status as "conservative" thinkers without having their ideas rigorously examined in widely accessible forums? It seems that the only appraisals such figures have to deal with are puff pieces in neoconservative publications and the scribbling of inflamed leftists attacking them as rightwing extremists.

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

How Iran Could Be The Next Neocon Target

Should a Republican nominee win the election, it is most probable that he will be either former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (shown here) or Mitt Romney.

No less a Republican conservative authority than Pat Buchanan ponders what such an outcome might produce:

Is a vote for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich a vote for yet another unfunded war of choice, this time with a nation, Iran, three times as large and populous as Iraq?

Buchanan finds an eagerness for war against Iran in Republican campaign rhetoric:

Mitt says that if elected he will move carriers into the Persian Gulf and “prepare for war.” Newt is even more hawkish. America should continue “taking out” Iran’s nuclear scientists — i.e., assassinating them — but military action will probably be needed.

DC Neocon Muses Over the Nomination

George Will doesn't like Romney or Gingrich. He does like Rick Perry, who enriches his family, and Jon Huntsman, the next establishment flavor of the week, or so they hope. As a good Beltwayian, George dismisses Ron Paul for being an "isolationist," i.e., an exponent of the Golden Rule and fiscal sanity, who is sick of corporatist mass murder. (Thanks to Murray Sabrin)

Bill Kristol Ignores Israeli Leaders’ Praise Of Obama, Claims The President Is Weakening Israeli Security

After a speech on Friday by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that implored Israel to make moves to thaw its cool relations with strategic partners and overcome its growing isolation, neoconservative commentators went bananas. Former Bush Mideast hand Elliott Abrams, speaking with neocon Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, wondered, “Does anyone wonder why Israelis don’t trust this administration to guard their security?” (In September, Abram’s himself said it was “true” that Israel and the U.S. enjoy “the best military-to-military relationship ever.”)

The most overblown response, though, came from right-wing don Bill Kristol. Speaking through a press release from the far-right-wing pressure group he heads, the Emergency Committee for Israel, Kristol attacked President Obama’s comments last weekend to Jewish donors that his administration’s security cooperation with Israel had reached new heights in the partnership. Kristol said:

Monday, December 05, 2011

How Iran Could Be The Next Neocon Target

Should a Republican nominee win the election, it is most probable that he will be either former House Speaker Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney. (shown above)

No less a Republican conservative authority than Pat Buchanan ponders what such an outcome might produce:

Is a vote for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich a vote for yet another unfunded war of choice, this time with a nation, Iran, three times as large and populous as Iraq?

Buchanan finds an eagerness for war against Iran in Republican campaign rhetoric:

Mitt says that if elected he will move carriers into the Persian Gulf and “prepare for war.” Newt is even more hawkish. America should continue “taking out” Iran’s nuclear scientists — i.e., assassinating them — but military action will probably be needed.

Sunday, December 04, 2011

GOP Presidential Hopefuls Turn to Neocons for Foreign Policy Direction

Newt Gingrich is relishing his new front-runner position. The media is slavering over the former Speaker of the House, endowing him with that most desirable designation.

As his poll numbers increase, so does the interest in the policies Gingrich advocates and the identity of the cadre of counselors who have his ear.

As to the former, Gingrich’s appearance at a recent GOP debate where he declared his support for an amnesty program for illegals has given pundits and his opponents plenty of fodder for attack.

In the case of the latter, the roster of advisors that Gingrich has announced reveals the true trajectory that the once and future neoconservative would take were he elected to the White House.

Saturday, December 03, 2011

The Neocon Rush to War Against Iran

Is Iran a threat to America? Or is it a fading power? The Iranian storming of the British embassy should not be interpreted as a sign of growing radicalism in Iran but as testament to the weakness of the regime. It has nothing in common with the 1979 takeover of the American embassy. There is no mass support inside Iran for attacking the United Kingdom. The calls in the Iranian parliament for "death to Britain" have an obligatory feel to them.

Yet the possiblity of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons has prompted a number of neoconservatives to maintain that it's imperative to launch a strike against it. Max Boot's column in the Los Angeles Times is a case in point. Paul Pillar points to the abuse of Nazi analogies in his post today. But Boot's column can be questioned on other grounds as well.

A neo-Can goes over the border in attacking Ron Paul

Only in Washington could a former Walter Mondale speechwriter who was raised in Canada be permitted to pose as a conservative.

That's Charles Krauthammer, who is seen above making an attack on Ron Paul that is positively bizarre.

Krauthammer is among a group of what I call the "Neo-Cans." There are liberal internationalists who have snuck in from Canada disguised as conservatives. Mark Steyn and David Frum also meet the definition.

In the above clip Krauthammer is asked which of the contenders for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination he could support.

Newt-Onian Foreign Policy

Just in case anyone criticizes his proposal for a half dozen or so new wars, Gingrich plays the standard neocon "ace-in-the-hole" strategy of quoting the "sainted" Abraham Lincoln. "We must think anew and act anew," he quotes Lincoln as saying. He praises Lincoln’s response to Fort Sumter, where not a single person was harmed, let along killed. In response to the knocking down of some bricks at the fort, Lincoln responded with a full-scale invasion of all the Southern states, waging total war on the civilian population as well, and killing some 350,000 American citizens in those states. This of course was the very definition of treason under Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution, which defines treason as only "levying war upon the states" or "giving aid and comfort to their enemies."

Gingrich says that secession would have meant "the end of the United States" when in fact the exact opposite is true: The voluntary union of the founding fathers – their United States – was destroyed by Lincoln’s war. To Gingrich, Lincoln’s unconstitutional invasion of the Southern states was "the road to victory." (Lincoln’s greatest failure was his failure to do what all the other major powers of the mid nineteenth century did with regard to slavery, and end it peacefully).

Thursday, December 01, 2011

Are You Ready for Some Neocons?

As the popularity of Newt Gingrich grows, it’s critically important that we understand that Newt is a Neocon, just how dangerous Neocons are, and what kind of foreign policy we could expect from Newt. Those of you who have been active long enough to remember PNAC, know what I’m talking about here. For starters, lets look at Newt’s foreign policy advisors.

When it comes to foreign policy, the Republican frontrunner likes it old-school. Neo-old school.

We’ve had two foreign policy themed debates in the GOP primary now, which have provided ample opportunity to see what a Republican foreign policy would look like in 2013. And in the case of Newt Gingrich, it would probably look like a kind of neocon fantasy land.

Neocons Preoccupied With Islamic Conspiracy Theories

For some in the media and the foreign policy punditry, any criticism of Israel, directly or implicitly, is unacceptable. Blogger Jennifer Rubin noted a sign held by an Arab American that said “Gaza Supports the Occupation of Wall Street,” which she described as a “vile scene.”

That is precisely what has triggered the neoconservative response in places like The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and the New York Post. In addition to Geller and the talk radio pantheon, the list of leading Republicans and self-styled conservatives who have attacked the Occupy movement is virtually a who’s who of the most passionate supporters of Israel and promoters of Islamophobia, many brought together by an organization called the Emergency Committee for Israel, which is headed by William Kristol of The Weekly Standard. ECI advocates the creation of a “pro-Israel presidency” for the United States.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Newt's Neocon Nattering Nabobs of Negativity

Newt's team, which has been working together informally for months, is led by Herman Pirchner, the founding president of a small, conservative think tank in Washington called the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). Also on Team Newt is AFPC Vice President Ilan Berman and AFPC Senior Fellow for Asian Studies Stephen Yates, a former staffer for Vice President Dick Cheney.

Cheney's top Middle East advisor David Wurmser is also part of the Newt campaign advisory team, along with former President Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, Reagan-era National Security Council (NSC) senior directors Norman Bailey and Ken deGraffenreid, Reagan-era Undersecretary of State for security assistance, science, and technology Bill Schneider, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and others. We're also told Newt is talking to former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace and former Central Command head Gen. John Abizaid.

The Left blows a gasket over the ‘neocon resurrection’

One of most entertaining reactions to last week’s AEI/Heritage/CNN debate has been the shock and horror of the left on discovering that the advocates of a robust conservative engagement in the world have not all disappeared. As they watched many of the Republican candidates answer questions from AEI scholars, it began to dawn on liberals that a GOP victory in 2012 could mean the return of many national security policies—from robust defense spending to enhanced interrogation and preemption—they thought they had assigned to the dustbin of history.

The liberal hand-wringing over the “return of the neocons” is fun to watch, but it is also a caricature of the state of the foreign policy discussion in the GOP. After all, it was just a few months ago that we were all debating the resurgence of Republican isolationism. Now, we are told, the GOP candidates (save Paul and Huntsman) are all Bush neocon retreads.

This of course ignores the fact that many neoconservatives were deeply critical of the Bush administration during its time in office (for coddling Mubarak and Putin and mishandling post-liberation Iraq, among other policies). And while liberal commentators were quick to point out that Paul Wolfowitz was a key architect of the Iraq war, his question to the candidates was about continuing the fight against AIDS and malaria in Africa—and he found some in the GOP field less than enthusiastic.

Newt’s Neocon Army

Here’s a taste of World Team Gingrich:

David Wurmser: Gingrich’s Middle East policy adviser was a notorious member of Vice President Cheney’s inner circle that pushed the U.S. into war in Iraq. Once he was questioned during an espionage probe while in the vice president’s office, and he was one of the names driving the initial support for the later disgraced Ahmed Chalabi. Asked by the Daily Telegraph in 2007 if he was a neocon, he offered this: “There’s nothing ‘neo’ about me. I’m a very medieval sort of guy.”

James Woosley: A former director of the CIA, Woolsey recently spoke at a panel hosted by the founder of Judicial Watch focused on President Obama’s “political jihad promoting Islam around the world.” Woolsey is a serious Iran hawk, warning that the way the West is dealing with the nation at the moment “rhymes with what was taking place in the 1930s [with Nazi Germany]”. Woolsey is a Democrat (of the Lieberman school) but he’s helped Republicans running for president before. In 2008, he advised John McCain.

Stephen Yates: Another ex-Cheney national security team member, Yates is known among other things for his work on China. One former U.S. ambassador to China familiar with Yates says he views “China as the solution to ‘enemy deprivation syndrome.’” As Counterpunch explained the theory, “You need some unifying enemy after the collapse of the Soviet Union.” Not exactly the most productive way to view one of America’s most important trading partner, perhaps.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

CNN National Security Debate: Bring on the Neocons!

The debate was sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and their fellow conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation and rather than moderator Wolf Blitzer asking all of the questions, we got treated to a host of neoconservatives questioning the candidates.

Among them were Iraq surge architect, Frederick Kagan, PNAC member and Bush era war propagandist Danielle Pletka, Mr. 'Iraq can pay for its own reconstruction' and fellow chickenhawk Paul Wolfowitz, Cheney's Cheney and torture advocate David Addington, and they wrapped things up by taking a question from his fellow torture apologist and former Bush speechwriter, Marc Thiessen.

CNN would have had a hard time coming up with a much more discredited lineup of war mongering, torture apologists to ask these candidates questions, but I guess they could have asked the Cheney's, John Yoo, John Bolton and Bill Kristol to round things out. Nothing like them giving air time to try to rehabilitate these Bush era neocons.

Glenn Greenwald: Is Obama Fulfilling the Neocon Dream of Mass Regime Change in Muslim World?

Monday, November 28, 2011

Manchester Union-Leader: Then and Now

Today’s endorsement of neocon Newt Gingrich further demonstrates that The Manchester Union-Leader has substantially changed for the worse since the death of long-time president and publisher William Loeb (an admirer of Old Right Republican Robert Taft) which can be illustrated by Mr. Loeb's personal response to this letter below.

Thank you for your good letter. It will be turned over to the editors for publication.

The problem is that the leaders of the American financial complex are such brilliant specialists in their own fields but so ignorant to the world as a whole and so isolated by their wealth that they think that they can make more money as Lenin once said, "manufacturing and selling the rope that will be used to hang them"; but they don't believe in the last apart of that equation.

Neoconservatives Planned Regime Change Throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa 20 Years Ago

I’ve repeatedly documented that the Neocons planned regime change in Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria and a host of other countries right after 9/11 … if not before.

And that Obama is implementing these same plans – just with a “kindler, gentler” face.

Glenn Greenwald provides further documentation that the various Middle Eastern and North African wars were planned before 9/11:

General Wesley Clark … said the aim of this plot [to "destroy the governments in ... Iraq, ... Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran”] was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s desires because, as Clark put it: “the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?”

Obama & Neo-Cons move to obliterate Posse Comitatus

America is a “battleground” says South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.

​The US government has been slowly eradicating the Posse Commitatus Act of 1878. That act banned the US government from using the US military in domestic law enforcement. Over the past few decades the US government has repeatedly violated the act. However, many Republicans have insisted that the Posse Commitatus Act needs to be respected to protect the rights of American Citizens.

South Carolina’s left-wing Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, however, is supporting provisions to eradicate Posse Commitatus and dramatically expand the powers of the Federal government.

The US Senate Armed Forces Committee, led by Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ), held a secret closed door session to insert ominous new Federal powers into the Defense Authorization Bill. This is the annual bill to fund the US military. These new powers were requested by the Obama administration.

The provisions would give the Federal government the power to insert the military into domestic law enforce and detain suspects indefinitely. While they claim that it will help “fight terrorism,” there is no limits to how the new powers could be abused. Critics call it an explicit creation of a police state.

American citizens would be denied all constitutional protections and there would be no oversight to prevent abuse. This is the same Federal government that intervened on behalf of the “underwear bomber” to get him on a plane to the US, even after his own father warned that he was a terrorist. This is the same US government that shadowed two of the 911 highjackers all the way from Malaysia, yet did nothing to stop them. We would be trusting the same people to decide who’s constitutional rights to suspend.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Showdown at Neocon Central

The Republican "national security" debate sponsored by Neocon Central the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation captured perfectly the intellectual and political bankruptcy of the Republican party when it comes to foreign policy. Here the party’s pandering demagoguery, reflexive ultra-nationalism, and visceral hostility to liberty was on full display in all its exhibitionistic belligerence. It was only natural, therefore, that the first question was asked by disgraced former US Attorney General Edwin Meese, who was forced to resign as Reagan’s AG as a result of his complicity in obtaining big defense contracts for a phony "minority"-owned company. Here is his "question":

"At least 42 terrorist attacks aimed at the United States have been thwarted since 9/11. Tools like the Patriot Act have been instrumental in finding and stopping terrorists. Shouldn’t we have a long range extension of the investigative powers contained in that act so that our law enforcement officers can have the tools that they need?"

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Israeli lobbies dragging US into wars

Press TV: Let's look at Ron Paul's comments about the situation in dealing with Israel and possibly attacking Iran. What makes Ron Paul able to speak in the way that he does? Because we know, in general, with anyone running for president in the United States, if they do not come a straight beeline in support of Tel Aviv policies, basically, they're finished. What makes the situation a little bit different for Ron Paul? And, thanks so much for being with us.

Morris: There's been a long running rift in the Republican Party, the neo-conservatives such as American Enterprise Institute which sponsored that debate tonight. And, mind you, it was hosted by the former AIPAC news letter editor, Wolf Blitzer, who use to be a correspondent for the hawkish Jerusalem Post whose issue really set the context for that too. And he's been pushing for war with Iran as well.

Iran Attack Dominates GOP Debate Sponsored by Neocon Institute

Prior to the GOP debate last night, the Obama administration sent adviser Tom Donilon to the Brookings Institute where he insisted Iran has been weakened under its sanctions regime. Donilon admitted, however, that sanctions have not led to Iran “fundamentally altering its behavior.”

Following the beating of the war drums at a debate sponsored by an organization responsible in large part for the illegal attack on Iraq under false pretense, Iranian General Yahya Rahim Safavi said his country is prepared “for the worst case scenario.”

Bush Officials Ask Questions At GOP Debate

A Question for the Bloodthirsty, Warmongering Neocon Strangelovians at AEI

What a spectacle the parade of bloodthirsty chickenhawks from the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation at last nights presidential "debate" was. Every question was essentially: "Would you as president bomb _______________ (fill in the blank) with expected applause if the answer is "yes" and silence from the most constipated looking audience in the history of television if the answer was "no."

Here's a question I would have asked to all the appointed question askers: "Since Israel has hundreds of nuclear missiles and could vaporize the Iranian capitol in an instant, what makes you so confident that the Iranian politicians are hell bent on committing personal and national suicide by attacking Israel?"

What a joke that "AEI" still claims to study "enterprise." (And weren't the question askers the most unhealthy-looking group of people to appear on television in recent memory — especially Paul Wolfowitz, who looked like a ghost?)

A Neoconservative Thanksgiving Celebration

Scott Horton of Antiwar.com joins Daily Paul Radio with Kurt Wallace for ‘A Neoconservative Thanksgiving Celebration’ to discuss the history of neoconservatism through today. Scott Horton exposes the people behind the neocon movement and how they have influenced war policy through think tanks, the media and ways they operate today to promote unconstitutional wars of aggression.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Neo Con Sites and Pro Israel Christians Still Trying to Find an Excuse to Attack Iran

The oligarchs need a war really bad. They need a distraction from the bad economy. The occupy movement has now become a thorn in their side. Seeing all those unemployed people with time on thier hands and great number does not bode well with the politicians. The corrupt scandals in the White House are making headlines. Congress being caught doing insider trading has lowered further the approval rating of congress that make them less popular than Fidel Castro. Ron Paul is gaining ground in Iowa and all the so called top tier candidates are floundering. Mit Romney is the next card to fall giving eh Texas congressmen more appeal.

We have become a war weary nation. We are not please with drone warfare in Pakistan, and Somalia. The wars keep spreading like a cancer in Uganda and in Libya. The Americans are not pleased because we have not consented to these wars. Congress is acting like a potted plants doing nothing to keep a check on the power of the commander and chief. The national discontent among the people is coming to a flash point were the other side fears losing everything. The people do not see a democrat or republican party. We only see the globalist party representing the one percent and not the 99 percent.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

How can you tell a neocon is lying?

Q: How can you tell a neocon is lying?
A: His lips are moving.

Esteemed right-wing intellectual Charles Krauthammer — winner of the Breindel Award, the Irving Kristol Award, and the Bradley Prize, which are among the various prizes available to right-wing apparatchiks, as well as the Pulitzer Prize, which is available to right and left alike — is outraged that President Obama thinks Americans are lazy. Krauthammer presents his evidence that Obama secretly hates America:

“When you call your own country 'lazy' when you are abroad and you call it unambitious and soft when you're home, I think what you are showing is not tough love, but ill-concealed contempt," Krauthammer said on FOX News' "Special Report."

"Obama is ready to blame everybody except himself for the lousy economy. … And now he blames Americans' laziness. I think it's unseemly."

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Latest Set of NeoCon Lies: Iran and Nuclear Weapons

The same set of neocon liars who brought you the “Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction” lies have surpassed themselves in introducing the new bogeyman: Iran and atom bombs.

As the war drums against Iran beat ever louder, a closer look at the International Atomic Energy Association’s recent report on Iran has revealed that its sources have not been named but are, according to Reuters, “widely believed to come from US, its European allies such Britain, France and Germany as well as Israel.”

It will be recalled that these are the very same “intelligence” sources which claimed in 2001 that Iraq had chemical and atom bombs, something which has long since been proven to have been an outright lie, based on forgeries and fabrications.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

CNBC Censorship, Dangerous Neocon Rising, and OWS

Neocon Romney Pushes for War with Iran

There were some amusing gaffes in Saturday night’s little watched Republican presidential debate on foreign policy, but “Establishment” candidate Mitt Romney provided perhaps the scariest moment in his comments about Iran’s nuclear program.

Said the former governor:

… President Obama’s greatest failing, from a foreign policy standpoint, …is he recognized the gravest threat that America and the world faces was a nuclear Iran and he did not do what was necessary to get Iran to be dissuaded from their nuclear folly…He should have put in place crippling sanctions against Iran.”

And in what he surely hoped would be his tagline, Romney said: “If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Progressive, Neocon, whatever – it’s all Big Government

We’ve been arguing for some time (see here and here) that there’s no philosophical or practical difference between the “Progressive” and Neocon agendas. Oh, how good it feels to see someone from the left validate that message. Here’s Glenn Greenwald:

As I pointed out just yesterday, many Democrats not only passively acquiesce to Obama’s continuation of core Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, but enthusiastically cheer it as proof that they, too, can be Tough and Strong (manly virtues demonstrated by how many human beings their leader kills from afar). So here you have Think Progress heaping praise on Obama for seizing what is literally the most radical power a President can seize: the power to target — in total secrecy and with no checks or due process — their fellow citizens for execution: specifically, assassination-by-CIA.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

So you want to be a neoconservative? C’est facile!

Recently I read that Robert Kagan is the smartest neocon around and, being enormously competitive, I bought a couple of his books-- skinny ones--to figure out what makes him so goddamn smart. And then it came to me: I have to spend more time in the south of France! A few of Kagan's mots juste:

Louis XIV remarked, "L'Etat c'est moi"

Napoleon attempted to promote egalite and fraternite with the sword

France's proposed defense budget increase will prove, like the force de frappe

Hubert Vedrine coined the term hyperpuissance to describe an American behemoth
But leaving aside French amour propre

Some Frenchmen still yearn for la gloire

Joschka Fischer's volte face was the most striking

Neocon Graham on Iran: "Destroy their Air force, sink their Navy"

Monday, November 14, 2011

The Neocon Playbook

“If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will get a nuclear weapon,” he said. “If we elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not.” -Mitt Romney during last night’s GOP debate

Nook-uh-lur weapons! Mushrooms clouds! Booga booga!

Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice would be so proud.

The ironic thing is, President Obama is already doing everything the GOP nominees claimed they would do if they were in charge during last night’s debate. A wide range of economic sanctions and diplomatic measures have been deployed against Iran in an attempt to dissuade them from pursuing advanced weaponry.

Friday, November 11, 2011

What Ends Nuclear Weapons Programs

A recurring canard, which neoconservatives are especially fond of perpetuating, is that the late Libyan ruler Muammar Qadhafi gave up his unconventional weapons programs (and his involvement in international terrorism) because the war in Iraq scared him into thinking he would also be a target of regime-changing U.S. military force. This notion serves the dual neocon purposes of suggesting that military force is the fail-safe solution to nuclear proliferation problems and salvaging some supposed value from the blunder known as the Iraq War. Joshua Muravchik repeats the notion in a piece this week (although Muravchik, unlike most other neocons, has in the past acknowledged that the Iraq War may have been a bad idea to begin with). The trouble with this notion is that Qadhafi had made his decision about ending his weapons programs and getting out of international terrorism years earlier, when the Iraq War was still only an out-of-reach dream in the fevered minds of out-of-power neocons. Following the Libyan dictator's decision, secret talks with the United States began in 1999 (which I know first-hand, because I participated in the initial rounds of the talks). At most, later events in Iraq might have helped to give the later rounds of negotiations a final nudge; they certainly were not a cause of Qadhafi's drastic redirection of policy, which he had decided on previously.

The Iraq liars target Iran

Over the past several weeks, neoconservative hawks were gleefully predicting that the International Atomic Energy Agency’s new report on Iran’s nuclear program would provide the spark needed to ignite and justify a U.S. or Israeli attack.

But apparently some people still take these warhawk neocons seriously. After all, if it weren’t for them, no one here would be contemplating a third war in the Middle East, one far more dangerous than the other two. In fact, it is impossible to find a single politician or journalist advocating war with Iran who is not a neocon or an AIPAC cutout. (They’re often both.) And even when not specifically advocating war, they ratchet up the tension by predicting it, as if, by definition, an Iran with or on the verge of developing nuclear weapons means war. (This, obviously, has not been the case with the seven other nations that have gone nuclear since the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.)

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Tough guys: GOP’s Rick Perry and Rick Santorum go neocon on Iran

In their desperate bid to avoid any of the really critical issues that are affecting the United States of America, most runners in the GOP presidential race have opted instead to play the fear card, and build-up those crucial neoconservative credentials before the 2012 primaries.

Bilderberg candidate Rick Perry (TX) and rear guard runner Rick Santorum (PA) took the opportunity during their recent Iowa campaign trail to hop on the war hawk’s bandwagon ahead of today’s IAEA’s intelligence assessment on Iran’s allegedly nuclear weapons program.

The New York Times reported today that both men have taken clear pro-war stances, pledging their support for both joint and unilateral pre-emptive military strikes against the Islamic Republic.

Paul Craig Roberts: Neo-Cons want war with Iran just like Iraq


Iran is being targeted by The International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA is claiming Iran is gathering essential materials to build a nuclear warhead. Some critics feel this is reminiscent to the situation when the US had “concrete” evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but were never found. Is Iran trying to acquire nuclear weapons or is this another ploy by the Western powers? Paul Craig Roberts, former Reagan administration official and columnist, helps us answer some of these questions.

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Why I don't care if Herman's squirmin'

And then there's the fact that this ardent advocate of the "neo" conservative cause is not even aware there's a difference between that left-wing ideology and genuine conservatism:

On "Meet the Press" Sunday morning, host David Gregory asked Cain who has shaped his views on foreign policy.

"I've looked at the writings of people like Ambassador John Bolton," replied Cain. "I've looked at the writings of Dr. Henry Kissinger -- KT McFarland, someone I respect."

John Bolton? That Captain Kangaroo clone is perhaps the single most clueless exemplar of neoconservatism in America. If we'd followed Bolton's advice, we'd be in several more wars at the moment, none of which would be accomplishing anything whatsoever for our national interest.

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Michael Jansen: Beating the war drums

Israel and its neoconservative champions in the US and elsewhere are, once again, playing a dangerous game by threatening to bomb Iran. The aim, say Israel and its allies, is to destroy Tehran’s nuclear facilities before it is able to, to quote Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, “achieve nuclear [weapons] capability,” i.e., the ability to build nuclear bombs rather than actual possession of bombs. Barak can count on an arsenal of at least 200 nuclear devices and advanced delivery systems, thanks to French and US support.

This time the Israelis began beating the war drums ahead of a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran’s past attempts to achieve the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons. This report is expected to prompt the US and France to step up pressure on members of the UN Security Council to agree to toughen sanctions against Iran.

Neocon angst over Iraq

Krauthammer today bemoans BO's "failure" to pressure Maliki into granting American troops permanent legal extraterritoriality in Iraq. He clearly believes that Iraq was willing and eager to be a satrapy of a growing American/Israeli imperium. That imperium has always been the desired end state envisioned in neocon efforts over the last decade. All their protestations concerning modernity, democracy, etc. are just chaff. These lies are and have been distractions, dust thrown in the eyes of the gullible.

The Iraqi Shia Arabs have now asserted the ownership of the country that the US neocons bestowed on them. Proof of that ownership has been delivered in the form of effective expulsion of US forces.

Assessing Obama’s ‘Peace’ Moves

American neocons are accusing President Barack Obama of “losing” Iraq with his final troop withdrawal – and some anti-war activists are encouraged by his possible strategy shift away from combat in Afghanistan. So, is there a sea change underway in the course of the U.S. ship of state, asks Robert Parry.

The two developments represent a defeat for the neocons, who have long advocated an unapologetic American imperialism especially in Muslim lands, and a victory for the American anti-war movement, which has joined with the Occupy Wall Street protests in calling for a redirection of budget priorities away from coddling bankers and spending on wars to programs to create jobs and rebuild the middle-class.

Saturday, November 05, 2011

Bill Bennet Responds to Feedback, Ignores Men, Bashes them Again

Bennet remarked that he received a fair amount of reader response from his recent piece excoriating young men for failing to “man up.” He says that he received responses from both men and women, and then proceeded to ignore what men had to say in favor of listening to the females:

My first CNN column on this subject identified what I think are the common problems with some men today: deficiencies in work, marriage and faith. The overwhelming response I received, from men and women alike, worries me.

Many women told me the problems are much worse than I described. They explained to me how they have to lower their standards to find a man. Young women, in particular, complained that men are dragging them down and holding them back. As one woman told me, if 60 is the new 40 for men, then 25 is the new 13…

Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Neocon Lamentations on Iraq

Neocons are attacking President Obama for his plan to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq by the end of December. Never mind that Obama is operating under the contractual agreement entered into between former President Bush and the Iraqi regime his invasion installed into power. And never mind that there will still be thousands of U.S. diplomats, military personnel, security people, contractors, and CIA spies and assassins in the vast Vatican-sized U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. What matters is that Obama had a moral duty, the neocons say, of continuing the U.S. occupation of Iraq indefinitely into the future.

Why do the neocons want to continue the U.S. occupation of Iraq? Because they know that 9 years of military invasion, war of aggression, undeclared war, and occupation have produced nothing but failure, and hope springs eternal. Neocons think that another 9 years of occupation, and perhaps another 9 years after that (a 9-9-9 plan for the occupation of Iraq) will finally produce an economic paradise, one with peace and stability, governed by a loyal member of the U.S. Empire.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Neocon TV Personality: Disarm the Citizenry

Has Charles Krauthammer, who tells us Ron Paul and his budget are terrible and “extreme,” revised his position on this? From “Disarm the Citizenry, But Not Yet,” Washington Post, April 5, 1996 (with thanks to J.M.):

Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed in sister democracies like Canada and Britain….

Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic — purely symbolic — move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation….

Yes, in the end America must follow the way of other democracies and disarm.

Occupy is NOT anti-capitalist. That is sloppy NeoCon propaganda.

"There are indeed some anti-capitalist protesters among the people at Occupy Wall Street, just as there are protesters who are against the death penalty, or want to combat climate change, or any number of other causes, which is the norm at most mass protests. Some of the protesters are even supporters of the ultra-capitalist REP. RON PAUL (R-TX).

But the actual organizing principle of the demonstrations is to speak with moral clarity of the economic inequality of our current system. The purpose is not to attack capitalism but rather an industry whose wealth was guarded to the hilt by government intervention — backed up by trillons of dollars of taxpayer money through programs like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and near-zero interest Federal Reserve lending."

Friday, October 28, 2011

Foreign Policy: Herman's a Neo-Cain-servative

If Herman Cain is elected President, America’s soldiers are not going to be coming home from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq anytime soon. To the contrary, they can expect more foreign deployments than they are experiencing today under the Obama administration. Asked his view of foreign policy, presidential candidate Herman Cain told NBC’s Meet the Press host David Gregory that he’s most impressed with the opinions of establishment neoconservatives, though he said he was unfamiliar with the term “neoconservative”: “I’ve looked at the writings of people like Ambassador [John] Bolton,” Cain said October 16. “I’ve looked at the writings of Dr. Henry Kissinger and K.T. McFarland, someone I respect.” All three are establishment neoconservatives and have been Council on Foreign Relations members — internationalists of the first order — who are among the “experts” most interested in expanding America’s foreign wars.

Asked about his views on the Iraq War and if he was familiar with the neoconservative movement, Cain told Gregory, “I’m not familiar with the neoconservative movement.... I don’t think the war in Iraq was a mistake, because there were a lot of other reasons we needed to go to Iraq and there have been a lot of benefits that have come out of Iraq. Now that being said, I don’t agree with the President’s approach to draw down 40,000 troops and basically leave that country open to attacks by Iran. Iran has already said that they want to wait until America leaves.... I would want to leave American troops there if that was what the commanders on the ground suggested, and I believe that that’s what they are saying.”

Thursday, October 27, 2011

News Flash! Neocons Discover That Iran Has Influence in Iraq!

For neoconservatves to argue that the withdrawal of the few thousand remaining U.S. troops from Iraq significantly worsens that aspect is either obtuse or disingenuous. If they didn’t want Iran to gain significant influence in the region, they should have thought of that danger in 2002 and early 2003, instead of lobbying feverishly for U.S. military intervention against Iraq. The United States has paid a terrible cost—some $850 billion and more than 4,400 dead American soldiers—to make Iran the most influential power in Iraq.

And the pro-war camp cannot even claim a consolation prize—the emergence of a truly democratic Iraqi government. Evidence mounts that that the Maliki regime is becoming ever more authoritarian and corrupt. Such abuses as jailing (and even torturing) critics, harassing independent news media outlets and trying to bar Sunni political opponents from running for office have become increasingly common features in the “new Iraq.” And corruption has reached epidemic proportions.

None dare call it treason, so let's just call it stupidity

Many Americans are under the mistaken impression that the term "Arab Spring" is of recent provenance. Not at all. Way back in 2005, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe wrote a column headlined "The Arab Spring."

"For those of us in the War Party, these are heady days," he wrote. "If you’ve agreed with President Bush all along that the way to fight the cancer of Islamist terrorism is with the chemotherapy of freedom and democracy, the temptation to issue I-told-you-so’s can be hard to resist."

Jacoby went on to quote the usual assortment of "neo" conservative politicians and pundits to the effect that a wave of democracy was about to sweep the Mideast and that this would be a wonderful thing for all concerned.

The Neocons Are Coming!

They're back! The neoconservatives who gave America clueless, unpaid-for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a near doubling of military expenditures during the Bush years, have risen from their political graves. Someone, maybe a media tiring of President Obama's interminable plight, pulled the stake from their heart. Now they've returned to the op-ed pages, the talk shows, the think-tank discussions, and the advisory ranks of Republican presidential candidates.

Once again, the neoconservatives mount their steeds. They hint that we need another war or at least a little military strike, this time against Iran. They're pushing to increase military spending; the China threat, you know. They're also trying to further weaken Obama by charging that he's losing Iraq to Iran by not keeping US forces there (without mentioning, of course, that Iraq is throwing them out).

The Iraq war is finally over. And it marks a complete neocon defeat

But the past is still with us. A key lesson from Iraq is that putting western boots on the ground in a foreign war, particularly in a Muslim country, is madness. That point seemed to have been learnt when US, British and French officials asked the UN security council in March to authorise its campaign in Libya. They promised there would be no ground troops or occupation.

This should also apply to Afghanistan where Obama claims to be fighting a war of necessity, unlike the war in Iraq which he calls one of choice. The distinction is false, and the question now is whether he will pull all US troops out by 2014.

Neocons and the Incredible Jewish Ethnic Infrastructure

Yet another glimpse into the massive Jewish ethnic infrastructure, the infrastructure that undergirds the power of the Israel Lobby. A column by Justin Logan in The National Interest (“Memo to Leslie Gelb: The neocons never left“) points out that neocons are alive and well, dominating the foreign policy of the Republican Party. Logan points to Mitt Romney’s foreign policy advisers, most of whom are neocon Jews. And we certainly can’t expect anything better from the likes of Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain.

The reason the neocons have been so successful in taking over the Republican foreign policy establishment is that they provide careers for like-minded people:

As Scott McConnell has pointed out, neoconservatism is a career. Or as Bill Kristol remarked in 2005, the neoconservatives have done such an excellent job building institutions and infrastructure for developing the next generation of neocons that “soon there are going to be more neoconservative magazines than there are neoconservatives.” There are dozens of twenty-something, thirty-something, forty-something and older neocons throughout Washington, working at think tanks, editorial pages, in government and elsewhere. I could probably count on two hands the number of youngish national-security types I know in town who I could strain to call realists. This imbalance among foreign-policy elites helps create the mistaken impression that there are lots of neoconservatives in America generally, which there aren’t. Neoconservatism really is a head without a body.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Neocon WWIII Scenario? Frank Gaffney: Rise of Sharia Rule in the Arab World Will Bring War

A career Islamophobe, Frank Gaffney, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense working under Richard Perle [1] during the Reagan administration, warned Newsmax of what he perceives as the escalating dangers of Sharia in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

Gaffney predicts WWIII will unfold in the form of a US defense of Israel against a united alliance of Arab/Sharia states that will not be confined to the Middle East.

Gaffney describes Sharia as, "Communism with a god" and, "the most urgent and grievous challenge we face as a free people."

“I’m afraid there’s a war coming, a very serious, perhaps cataclysmic regional war... It will be presumably over, at least in part, the future existence of the state of Israel. It may involve all of its neighbors, as they have in the past, attacking Israel to try, as they say, to drive the Jews into the sea.

“It may involve the use of nuclear weapons,... But whatever form it takes and whenever it occurs, it is unlikely to be contained to that region, and we must do everything we can to prevent freedom’s enemies from thinking they have an opportunity to engage in that kind of warfare.” Gaffney: Rise of Sharia Rule Will Bring War to the Middle East, NewsMax, October 24, 2011)

Who is Mitt Romney anyway?

Like the White House, it seems that the media has decided that, momentary signs of life notwithstanding, Rick Perry will not be defeating Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination next year, that we will have our first Mormon candidate for President challenge our first African American Presidential incumbent. And so the stories now begin to flow in, all attempting to answer that most vexing question—who is Mitt Romney anyway?

If one judges the man by his recent foreign policy address, the conclusion most easily drawn is of Romney as a Mad Man neoconservative; Don Draper with dreams not of the suburban utopia but of razing Tehran. One might have guessed that, following the political and foreign policy catastrophe that was the Iraq War, no Republican today would seek to align himself with the previous GOP President’s signature intellectual legacy (indeed, Bush himself largely abandoned neoconservatism during much of his second term). But Romney’s speech in South Carolina sounded as if it were plucked from time, transported from the heady days of 2002 and 2003, when preposterous announcements of America’s reality-making power were taken gravely—and disastrously—seriously. Like Draper during a sales pitch, Romney certainly can talk the talk:

Leading Neocon Says She Wants To Feed ThinkProgress Writer To Sharks

Last week, a well-connected neoconservative pundit and board member of a high-profile right-wing pressure group wrote, after the prisoner swap deal that freed an Israeli soldier, that Israel should now take Palestinian militants — and their “devils’ spawn” children — and “throw them… into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.”

When the blog post, by Rachel Abrams (wife of top Bush adviser Elliott Abrams), got some media attention — highlighted by both liberal and conservative writers — the progressive Jewish-American group J Street demanded that the right-wing Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) cut ties with the neoconservative doyen.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Did John Bolton Just Admit All These Wars Are For Oil?

The Last Neocon Standing?

Jim Antle is disappointed that Romney's campaign for a new American century has effectively ended the meaningful foreign policy debate happening within the party:

The former Massachusetts governor seems ... to have considered the case for foreign policy restraint. Alone among the top-tier GOP presidential candidates in 2008, he refused to say whether the decision to invade Iraq was correct in hindsight. Romney drew a rebuke from Sen. John McCain for seeming to equivocate about the success of the surge. McCain chastised Romney again just this summer for appearing too willing to exit Afghanistan. It seems that Romney has since decided to move in the opposite direction. He now resists further cuts to the defense budget, arguing instead that military spending should be increased. He argues for a larger role for the U.S. military on the world stage. He warns against “isolationism” — though the country is now engaged in three wars.

It is indeed the least-remarked upon development in this campaign. As the GOP field began to tackle the consequences of the Iraq catastrophe with some actual candor, Romney smacked the debate down with a pure reprise of Bush post-9/11. One critical question in this coming election is whether the US is going to back West Bank settlements and bomb Iran (the Likudnik policy platform). Romney insists on no daylight between the US and Israel (meaning Israel's interests will always trump the US's) and the threat of military action against Iran. What would Romney do in office? On his own, anything that might win support. But with his neocon brigade of advisers? The mind boggles. Mark Krikorian holds out hope for 2016:

The Neocon Response to Obama's Iraq Decision

It probably shouldn’t be surprising to see the Republican presidential candidates piling on President Obama in the wake of his announcement that all American troops are coming home from Iraq at year’s end, save a few hundred for routine embassy security and the like. After all, they want his job and can’t very well praise his stewardship, even on matters beyond the water’s edge. And given the nature of American politics these days, nobody should be startled at the tone of their rhetoric—Mitt Romney suggesting, for example, that the decision betokened either “naked political calculation” or else “sheer ineptitude in negotiations” (because Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki couldn’t be persuaded to accept an ongoing U.S. troop deployment); and Herman Cain dismissing the decision as “dumb” (this from a man who hasn’t managed to articulate a coherent framework of thought on foreign policy since he emerged as a player in the early nomination maneuverings).

More interesting, though hardly more surprising, is the reaction of the neoconservative commentators. An effort to parse their expressions offers a revealing window on this influential contingent of thought leaders. Max Boot, probably the most stark-minded advocate of U.S. imperialism in post-9/11 America, called the decision “a shameful failure of American foreign policy” because it “risks undoing all the gains” of the American occupation and extended troop deployment. He adds that the Iranian Quds Force “must be licking its chops” at the prospect of a defenseless Iraq in the post-U.S. days ahead.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Neocons Blame Obama for Iraq Disaster

And, since the neocons retain enormous influence in the opinion circles of Official Washington, they will likely have a great deal of success in rewriting the history of the Iraq War into one that depicts a brilliant neocon “victory” squandered by the reckless “peaceniks” surrounding Obama.

The neocon message is this: If only Obama had listened to us – like George W. Bush did – everything would have worked out just wonderfully. However, since he didn’t, Obama will have to shoulder the blame for what the world will see as a humiliating U.S. retreat from Iraq.

The Iraq war is finally over. And it marks a complete neocon defeat

Their hopes of making Iraq a democratic model for the Middle East have been tipped on their head. The instability and bloodshed which the US unleashed in Iraq were the example that Arabs sought to avoid, not emulate. This year's autonomous surge for democracy in Egypt and Tunisia has done far more to galvanise the region and undermine its dictatorships than anything the US did in Iraq. And when the Arab spring dawned, the Iraqi government found itself on the defensive as demonstrators took to the streets of Baghdad and Basra to protest against Maliki's authoritarianism and his government's US-supported clampdown on trade union activity. Maliki hosted two Syrian government delegations this summer and has refused to criticise Bashar al-Assad's shooting of protesters.

But the neocons' biggest defeat is that, thanks to Bush's toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iran's greatest enemy, Tehran's influence in Iraq is much stronger today than is America's. Iran does not control Iraq but Tehran no longer has anything to fear from its western neighbour now that a Shia-dominated government sits in Baghdad, made up of parties whose leaders spent long years of exile in Iran under Saddam or, like Sadr, have lived there more recently.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Falling for New Neocon Propaganda

One not-so-funny fact about Washington is that nearly all the news media stars who fell for neoconservative falsehoods about Iraq are still around to fall for new ones on Iran, even some like Richard Cohen who briefly regretted his earlier gullibility, notes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

Paul R. Pillar, my former colleague in the CIA’s analytical division, has raised a warning flag, cautioning that the same imaginative neocon composers who came up with the various refrains on why we needed to attack Iraq are now providing similar background music for a strike on Iran.

He is right. And as one of my Russian professors used to say, “This is nothing to laugh!”

Pillar’s piece – dissecting an op-ed by the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen about the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington – first appeared on The National Interest Web site. On Oct. 21, it was posted at Consortiumnews.com under the title “Sloppy Iran Think by WPost’s Cohen.”

Saturday, October 22, 2011

‘Neocon’ is suddenly a bad career move (and Rachel Abrams ain’t helping the Elliott Abrams brand)

Being a neoconservative is suddenly what they used to call a CLM at Goldman, Sachs. (Career Limiting Move).

Update. Justin Logan at the National Interest on neoconservative career-making in Washington, titled, The Neocons Never Left

The irony here is that it was with the help of people like Leslie Gelb that the neocons took over the GOP establishment. When he was at the helm of the Council on Foreign Relations, Gelb brought in a real neocon’s neocon, Max Boot, to be a senior fellow, giving perhaps the most fervid neocon around the CFR stamp of approval—the imprimatur of the foreign-policy establishment. (It should also be acknowledged that Gelb himself supported the neocons’ Iraq project, shrugging afterward in the passive voice that his “initial support for the war was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility.”)

As Scott McConnell has pointed out, neoconservatism is a career. Or as Bill Kristol remarked in 2005, the neoconservatives have done such an excellent job building institutions and infrastructure for developing the next generation of neocons that “soon there are going to be more neoconservative magazines than there are neoconservatives.” There are dozens of twenty-something, thirty-something, forty-something and older neocons throughout Washington, working at think tanks, editorial pages, in government and elsewhere. I could probably count on two hands the number of youngish national-security types I know in town who I could strain to call realists. This imbalance among foreign-policy elites helps create the mistaken impression that there are lots of neoconservatives in America generally, which there aren’t. Neoconservatism really is a head without a body.

Ending the Iraq Catastrophe

President Barack Obama will talk about “a promise kept” as he brings the last U.S. troops in Iraq “home for the holidays”; the neocons will try to spin the exit as “victory, at last”; but the hard truth is that the Iraq War has been a largely self-inflicted strategic defeat for the United States.

When Bush’s war bandwagon rolled past – with the neocons at the controls – nearly everyone who mattered clambered onboard, from star Democratic senators like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to the brightest lights of the New York Times, the Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and on and on.

The unabashed neoconservatives are still holding down lucrative think-tank jobs (and some key posts in the Obama administration). They regularly opine on the op-ed pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times. They are recruited by leading Republican presidential candidates.

Mitt Romney entrusted neocons to write the “white paper” on his future foreign policy. Rick Perry joined with the neocons in berating Obama for deviating even slightly from the demands of Israel’s Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to opinion polls, it also seems likely that the neocons will follow the victorious Republican nominee – whoever that is – back into the White House in 2013. Just as the Wall Street bankers landed on their feet, so too do the neocons

Liberating the Heart of Africa: A Case Study of the Classical Monkey Syndrome

We finally now seem to be militarily committed to chase down the Lord’s Resistence Army as an opening to liberate the Heart of Africa. The Neocons did not create AfriCom in 2007 under President Bush for nothing. It is responsible for all of Africa, including Libya, but excluding Egypt. Unfortunately not a single one of the 57 African countries has been willing to host it, so it is based in Stuttgart, Germany, where for a couple of decades or longer we have had no business having any troops either. Africa has a lot of natural resource wealth, which, of course, is rightfully ours as a reward for liberating Libya and its oil for humanity. Our presence in the center of what for years has been considered a “world war” for the heart of Africa is strictly humanitarian, according to Obama.

Once we are committed to this world war, it will be harder to get out than it has been in Iraq and Afghanistan. When I was Director of Third World Studies at the Hudson Institute in the 1960s, I was in charge of writing scenarios for the DOD designed to justify our invasion of nine different countries. The Congo was one of them, so I have been following events there for many years. Strangely, I never had to write scenarios about how we could get back out again.

The Claremont Institute, Ron Paul, and the State of Conservatism

Leslie Gelb's piece in the Daily Beast lamenting the resurgence of the neoconservatives has attracted the ire of Justin Logan, who suggests that neocons have taken over the Republican establishment and, moreover, that being a neocon amounts to a kind of career. But are the neocons slated to remain dominant? Yesterday I attended a stimulating conference held by the Claremont Institute at the Marriott Hotel in Washington, DC called "The Constitution and Our Politics." It offered a tutelary seminar in the thinking that has, more or less, informed (or at least characterized) the rambunctious Tea Party when it comes to constitutional issues.

In speaking during the lunch break with Sam Tanenhaus of the New York Times, Brian T. Kennedy, the president of the Claremont Institute, suggested that he has been trying to place his fellows in conservative think tanks in Washington such as Heritage and AEI. Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation, who spoke at lunch, is a former Claremontian, as is Stephen F. Hayward of AEI. Claremont has been ahead of the curve on constitutional issues that have not always been taken as seriously by the neocons. I don't mean to exaggerate the differences between neocons and the Claremont faction, which is deeply influenced by Harry Jaffa, who, in 1987 in Social Research, identified the existence of a West Coast branch of Straussianism—the piece was called the "Crisis of the Strauss Divided." There are clearly fructifying influences betwen Claremont and the neocons: Hayward, for example, has a temerarious cover story in this month's Commentary about the sudden spate of admiration for Ronald Reagan from the Left. But Claremont has focused tenanciously on the matter of the expansion of the American government.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Much Ado About ‘Adbusters’ Relationship to the Jews

It’s true that there is some really inflammatory rhetoric in the Adbusters‘ listicle of the Jewish neocons they produced, and even more in the response to criticism that editor-in-chief Kalle Lasn eventually gave. (Note: original spelling left intact):

The list of Jewish neocons we came up with is a provocation, I’ll admit. And if it were a list of dentists or firefighters or stockbrokers, then that would indeed be very offensive. However, the neocons are no ordinary group – they are the most influencial political/intellectual force in the world right now. They have the power to start wars and to stop them. They are the prime architects of America’s foreign policy since 9/11 – a policy that is heavily weighed in favor of Israel and a key-source of anti-Americanism in the world. So I think it is not only appropriate, but necessary to put them under a microscope. And if we see maleness, Zionism, or intellectual thuggery there, then let us not look the other way.

On the ethnic question: Is it not just as valid to comment on the Jewishness of neocons as it is to point out that the majority of them are male or white or wealthy or from the Western world or have studied at a particular university? If half the neocons were Palestinians, would the US have invaded Iraq?