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?

Memo to Leslie Gelb: The Neocons Never Left

There are a few points to be made here. The first is that the neocons never went into a political grave. Instead, they took over the Republican foreign-policy establishment. Think of the list of foreign-policy advisers released recently by the Romney campaign. Now try to envision a different candidate Romney who wanted to have his campaign dominated by realists instead of neocons. What names would appear? It’s a remarkably hard question to answer.

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.”)

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Right-Wing Website: 99 Percenters’ Twitter Hashtag Symbol Is ‘Bizarre Neo-Swastika’

The attack unleashed mostly by the neoconservative right on the 99 Percent Movement for alleged pervasive anti-Semitism reached absurd new heights over the weekend and early this week. An ad launched last week by the Bill Kristol-led Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) — whose hedge fund bankroller happens to really hate financial regulation reform — made the rounds of the mainstream media, getting picked up by Politico‘s Ben Smith and the Washington Post‘s neoconservative blogger Jennifer Rubin.

The ad, which was largely ripped off from a pseudonymous Israeli neocon blog (whose author proclaims to be a “friend” of ECI’s executive-director-in-title-only Noah Pollak), portrayed anti-Semitic sentiments in videos of two people — one of them an admitted petty thief and apparent camera-hungry provocateur — and a photograph of a sign-holder. And other websites posted a woman expressing anti-Semitic sentiments on a Reason video apparently at L.A.’s protest. That’s four people out of hundreds of thousands worldwide that have participated in 99 Percent protests. The “few Jew-baiters,” wrote Michelle Goldberg, “are marginal, particularly compared to the large numbers of Jewish activists taking part.” She wrote that ECI’s accusation was “dishonest and deceptive.” It’s worse: If it weren’t such a serious subject — Marc Tracy calls the accusation “highly irresponsible” — labeling the whole movement as “anti-Semitic” would be laughable. Dan Sieradski of Occupy Judaism, which is seeking to rally Jewish supporters to the 99 Percent movement, dismissed the “couple of jerks and idiots” and noted that a thousand people turned out for high holiday services organized for the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Hawks Behind Iraq War Rally for War With Iran

Key neoconservatives and other right-wing hawks who championed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq are calling for military strikes against Iran in retaliation for its purported murder-for-hire plot against the Saudi ambassador.

Leading the charge is the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), the ideological successor to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which played a critical role in mobilizing support for “regime change” in Iraq in the late 1990s and subsequently spearheaded the public campaign to invade the country after the 9/11 attacks. The group sent reporters appeals by two of its leaders for military action on its letterhead Monday.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Mitt Romney’s Neocon Foreign Policy Plan

If current polls are correct, Mitt Romney seems likely to become the 2012 Republican presidential candidate and, quite possibly, the next president of the United States.

Therefore, we should carefully examine his first major foreign and military policy address — delivered on Oct. 7 at the Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina — and ponder the question: Is Mitt Romney ready for the world?

Romney began his speech with a heavy dose of fear. Iran, he warned, could well become “a fully activated nuclear weapons state, threatening its neighbors, [and] dominating the world’s oil supply.” Indeed, “Iran’s suicidal fanatics could blackmail the world.”

Monday, October 17, 2011

So much for that neocon plan for Iraq

Looks like as of January we will have pretty much nothing to show for the big neocon war in Iraq.

Former Vietnam Green Beret and Mideast expert Pat Lang weighs in:

The fact is that the Iraqis won. The various insurgents and terrorist groups fought us to a standstill. The "Surge?" What crap! The Sons of Iraq ended the insurgency. They will be back in opposition to the Shia run government of Iraq. The Iraqis won politically as well. Proof? They have now shown us the door.

Oh, yes! The Iranians won as well.

Herman Cain Being Pressed On If He's A Neocon On Meet The Press

Cain: ‘I’m Not Familiar With the Neoconservative Movement’

Herman Cain is “not familiar with the neoconservative movement.”

In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Cain told David Gregory that the writings of John Bolton, Henry Kissinger, and K.T. McFarland have shaped his foreign-policy views.

But Irving Kristol? Not so much.

GREGORY: So, do you describe yourself as a neoconservative then?

CAIN: I’m not sure by what you mean by a neoconservative. I am a conservative, yes. Neoconservative — labels, sometimes, will put you in a box. I’m very conservative.

GREGORY: But you’re familiar with the neoconservative movement?

CAIN: I’m not familiar with the neoconservative movement. I’m familiar with the conservative movement. And let me define what I mean by the conservative movement: less government, less taxes, more individual responsibility.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Is Mitt Romney a Neocon Purist?

Poor Romney. Here's a guy who assembled a team of neocon retreads to write his foreign policy white paper, "An American Century." He allowed the title to be an obvious homage to the neocon Project for the New American Century, which in the 1990s built the ideological framework for the disastrous Iraq War and other "regime change" strategies of President George W. Bush.

Romney even recruited Eliot Cohen, a founding member of the Project for the New American Century and a protege of prominent neocons Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, to write the foreword. And Romney still can't get the neocon editors of the Washington Post to overlook his suggestion that the Afghan War shouldn't be endless.

NeoCon Herman Cain is a fraud

It seems that the loud-mouthed and obnoxious neoconservative Herman Cain (the diversity lapdog of the Federal Reserve) is largely a creation of the Koch Brothers. Anyone surprised? Just as Obama was created by Soros and friends, so Cain has been created by Koch and crew. In fact, Cain and Obama have much in common, as noted by BATR:

The truth about Herman Cain is that he shares many commonalities with Barack Hussein Obama. Both can deliver a stirring speech, both are establishment corporatist favored candidates, but the factor that ultimately bonds them together, is that each are beholden to their Wall Street masters.

Has the US declined so much that it will be impossible ever again to elect a man of the caliber (e.g. Calvin Coolidge) but the US will forever be locked in Third World Oprah Winfrey-style politics electing diversity-vetted mediocrities like Obama and Cain? Will talented European Americans be de facto barred from the presidency?

Friday, October 14, 2011

Obama Is the New Neocon Idol

A pagan one, of course. But V.D. Hanson — perhaps a classicist, but certainly no ethicist — cheers Obama for putting all those moralistic "liberals" in their place:

"Antiwar protestors demonstrate in response to American soldiers getting killed, but rarely about robotic aircraft quietly obliterating distant terrorists. American fatalities can make war unpopular; a crashed drone is a "who cares?" statistic."

But wait — does Hanson's conscience still have a faint pulse?

"Still, there are lots of questions that arise from this latest American advantage. Waterboarding, which once sparked liberal furor, is now a dead issue. How can anyone object to harshly interrogating a few known terrorists when routinely blowing apart more that 2,000 suspected ones — and anyone in their vicinity?"

Now that Eric Holder has deflected attention from his possible perjury with an allegation of Iranian terrorism, it might be time to revisit Paul Craig Roberts's 2009 warning about "Guns and Butter": Maybe Obama sees that as his only redemption (pagan, again) in 2012.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Mitt Romney Recasts Himself as a Neocon

Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP frontrunner, gave his first major foreign policy address at The Citadel military academy in South Carolina last Friday.

He mentioned President Ronald Reagan twice, and although his speech largely portrayed policies and positions that closely resemble those of George W. Bush, he neglected to mention the latter.

Despite the severe budgetary woes, which will force the scaling back of defense programs at the Pentagon, Mr. Romney sought to portray himself as a hawk and argued for increased military spending, especially for the U.S. Navy.

The Neocon GOP: By Design or Default?

With 44,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and another 94,000 in Afghanistan, and with powerful events shaking the international system in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, one might think that the race for the Republican presidential nomination would spawn plenty of discussion and debate on the state of the world and America’s role in it. But no such discourse has emerged. There hasn’t been much engagement on foreign-policy issues.

Still, based on the candidates’ occasional pronouncements and proposals on their websites, we can discern in general where the Republican party stands on foreign policy. A National Interest review of those pronouncements and prescriptions indicates the party isn’t likely to move far beyond the foreign policy of George W. Bush.

Romney Goes Neocon

Last week Mitt Romney gave a hawkish speech at The Citadel, South Carolina’s revered military academy, during which he rained shot on President Barack Obama's national security policy like Old Ironsides dismasting the Guerriere.

That Obama subscribes to the apologize-for-America wing of liberalism is no surprise to anyone, nor is the fact that Obama has failed to maintain and promote U.S. supremacy.

The problem with Romney’s speech was not what he said, but what he left out.

Romney’s solution to Obama’s failures was to announce a national security team made-up of Bush-era Neocons and to propose that we spend not just more, but a whole lot more on the military. This undoubtedly made the defense industry insiders and contractors who are supporting Romney happy, but will it make America safer?

(Click to read the entire article)

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Romney’s Neocon Foreign Policy Plan

Presidential contender Mitt Romney has laid out his vision for a foreign policy in a Romney administration – and it looks like it could have been dreamt up by the same neocons who guided George W. Bush’s disastrous pursuit of permanent U.S. military dominance.

If current polls are correct, Mitt Romney seems likely to become the 2012 Republican presidential candidate and, quite possibly, the next president of the United States.

Therefore, we should carefully examine his first major foreign and military policy address — delivered on Oct. 7 at the Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina — and ponder the question: Is Mitt Romney ready for the world?

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Is Mitt Romney a Neocon, A Realist, Or Both?

Jonathan Rauch, a contributor to the National Journal and author of several books, weighed in on foreign policy debates in the Sunday New York Times to defend realism. Realism, he noted, is a lonely credo. He thinks it is finding more of a home among Democrats than Republicans. Rauch lamented the fact that the GOP has, by and large abjured realism in favor of neoconservative triumphalism about the greatness of America. As Rauch sees it,

Despite getting terrible press and having more or less no explicit defenders on the American political scene today (prediction: not one Republican presidential candidate will embrace the term “realist”), realism remains the indispensable foreign-policy doctrine — or, really, attitude, since it is not doctrinaire. Without it, nothing else works.

Eat your broccoli, kids: More on the Marxist roots of neocon ideology

Many of my readers dislike it when I force them to immerse themselves in the Trotskyite roots of the "neo" conservative ideology that still dominates in the Republican Party.

Tough luck. I understand this. And the great mass of people who think of themselves as conservatives don't.

That's why the Republican presidential primaries remain dominated by politicians who espouse a left-wing, internationalist ideology. Only Ron Paul offers the right-wing, American-first approach, and he is treated like some kind of weirdo by all those who have been brainwashed by the left.

Sunday, October 09, 2011

Romney Picks Notorious Neocon as Lead Foreign Policy Adviser

GOP front-runner Mitt Romney – who has promised us another century of mass murder and crimes against humanity – has picked a neocon as his new foreign policy adviser.

Walid Phares is a Lebanese terrorism “expert” who often makes the rounds to denounce enemies of the empire (usually Iran and Syria) and is featured as a speaker by Benador Associates, a public relations outfit promoting the worst of the worst in the neocon constellation.

Phares is also connected to David Horowitz, the former Marxist magazine publisher who has taken money from CIA operative Richard Mellon Scaife.

Saturday, October 08, 2011

When Moralism Isn’t Moral

Years ago Irving Kristol, the prime mover of American neoconservatism, said to me, in typical aphoristic style: “The orthodox are always right.” What he meant, I think, is that the enduring truths of traditionalism may at times be hard to grasp, but they endure for a reason. In foreign policy, it is realists who are, in Kristol’s sense, always right.

Despite getting terrible press and having more or less no explicit defenders on the American political scene today (prediction: not one Republican presidential candidate will embrace the term “realist”), realism remains the indispensable foreign-policy doctrine — or, really, attitude, since it is not doctrinaire. Without it, nothing else works. Yet Kristol’s younger neoconservative successors, baby boomers who proved susceptible to their generation’s narcissistic radicalism, have driven the approach that succeeded so well for Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush from its traditional home on the American right. Like some unrestful soul, it wanders in search of a new corpus. Alan Wolfe’s intelligent and often brave new book, “Political Evil: What It Is and How to Combat It,” is the latest sign that realism is finding fresh support on the left, or at least on the center-left.

Hey National Review, where did Trotsky go? Don't ax!

If you think I'm joking about the Neocon Review being Trotskyite in its orientation read the article (excerpted here) in which a famed neoconservative writer explains how the so-called "neo" conservative philosophy adopted by the Bush administration originated with Trotsky.

The National Review and the rest of the neocon crowd derive from the left. That's not my opinion. That's the National Review's opinion. Read it for yourself- if you can find it.

Wondering why the NR crowd, the radio talkers and all the rest of the neocons hate Ron Paul so much? Simple. It's tough to have your entire life revealed as a fraud.

Barack Obama: Peace President or closet Neocon?

­Many people criticized the decision by the Nobel Committee, arguing it was too early to give Obama prestigious honors that he had had no time to implement. After all, the decision to elect Barack Obama for the 2009 award was made just 12 days after he entered the White House. This was putting tremendous faith in one man, whose only accomplishment up to that time was getting elected. Now, with the Nobel Committee set to announce this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, some are saying the prestigious prize has been discredited.

President Barack Obama is about to begin a bitter battle for another four years in the White House. Thus, it is worth asking how he has fared in introducing peace around the globe. After all, thousands of US troops are still on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, while the American president’s “iron-clad” promise – to close Guantanamo Bay – remains unfulfilled. Some analysts fear that the nearly 200 detainees of Guantanamo will be rushed through military tribunals just so the Cuban-based complex, which has been dubbed the “Gulag of our times by Amnesty International,” can be shuttered before next year’s campaign season kicks off.

Phil Giraldi Interview LPAC 2011

The Rebirth of the Neocons

Perhaps the worst thing to ever to confront the conservative movement and hinder our advancement has not been the old Leftism of the Soviet Union or even the new Leftism of the Fabians or SDS, but rather the leftism from within our own ranks that calls itself neoconservatism. With its roots in an unholy marriage of Trotskyism and corporatism, neoconservatism has been the foremost tool used by the enemies of freedom and culture to divide and dismantle the authentic conservative movement of the United States.

With the end of the Bush era and his administration discredited by a failing economy, two endless wars, corrupt bail outs, a deteriorating border situation, along with a retreat in the culture war, it appeared in 2008 that neoconservatism was finally done for and a revival of constitutionalism and sober policy by way of the Tea Party was filling the vacuum. This rise of the Liberty movement begs the question: is neoconservatism dead? The answer has become clearly evident: no.

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Herman 'No Pain' Cain

Now that Herman Cain has become the latest Great Neocon Hope, I took a quick look at his website. Like the GOP-controlled House, he is unable to come up with a single department, agency, or even program to cut. While he doesn't use the meaningless cliche "waste, fraud, and abuse," he alludes to it. That is, he wishes to assure the rank and file that he will cut spending but wishes to assure all those who receive federal spending that he actually will not. Cain proposes new taxes such as a national sales tax and a Fair Tax which he claims will be "revenue neutral." Accepting that dubious assumption leaves us with huge deficits which will of course mean that the Fed will need to finance the debt with inflation and continue the bubble/bust cycle. Yawn.

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

You're so smart, you sort out the Mideast

It’s been more than 10 years since the United States embarked on a mission to liberate the nations of the Mideast. That mission was dreamed up by the so-called “neo” conservatives. But in all that time, no one has ever come up with a way of determining just who is and who isn’t a neoconservative.

To that end, I’ve come up with a two-question quiz:

1. Do you believe that if we let too many Muslims immigrate to the West, they will use the power of the vote to implement Sharia law and impose violence on non-believers?

2. Do you also believe that if we give Mideastern Muslims the power to vote in their own countries, they will decide against imposing Sharia law and will live peacefully with nonbelievers?

Did you answer “yes” to both questions? Congratulations. You’re a neocon.

Monday, October 03, 2011

Is Chris Christie the neocon's last hope, someone explain what's going on?

What's going on behind the scenes here, evidently the neocons do not want to nominate Romney (despite the fact he tries to emulate them) and obviously they are trying to neutralize Paul. Their bid with Perry has failed and they have no other viable candidates. Are they trying to use Christie as their last hope to get a neocon in?

10/1 Sources: Christie Reconsidering Decision to Stay Out of GOP Race
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/01/sources-christie-...

Wealthy, Influential, Leaning Republican and Pushing a Christie Bid for President
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/nyregion/some-of-the-men-p...

Sunday, October 02, 2011

The Cult of Reagan, and Other Neocon Follies

Conservatives see in Jacobin principles a hair-raising obliviousness of life’s complexity. To implement such principles may devastate a society. A society may be wholly unsuited or unprepared for changes demanded of it. So what, say America’s neo-Jacobins. We need moral clarity. What was there before does not matter. "Democracy" must take its place. One model fits all. To ensure a democratic world, America must establish armed and uncontested world supremacy.

The will to power is here bursting at the seams. What argument could be better for placing enormous power in the hands of the neo-Jacobins than a grandiose scheme for remaking the world. At lunch yesterday we got to hear [from Max Boot] the pure, undiluted neo-Jacobin message.

We should be free to disagree

You have to hand it to the neocons. In a world where most of us prefer not to appear too ridiculous, they don't give a flying fig.

Exhibit A? Doubletalk.

The current poster boy for neocon doubletalk is Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who once again this week formally denounced anti-Semitism, a position about as applepie incontestable as you can get. If anti-Semitism isn't criminally deplorable, what is?

So the declaration must be put into context. And here it is, framed in the neocon colours Kenney gave it last week in New York, when he declared his Conservative government would never accept "the new anti-Semitism" - that is, negative attitudes toward Israel, as opposed to Jewish people.