Romney reveals neocon tendencies

What is clear is that this Republican assault was not a spur of the moment off-hand verbal gaffe. Rather, it was a coordinated attack that reflected a consistent mindset shaped by the neoconservative criticism of Obama's Middle East diplomacy and, I might add, diplomacy in general.

The world, as seen by the neocons, is one of black and white absolutes. We, Americans, are good. Inherently good. And our goodness is measured not by what we do, but who we are. Our goodness is ordained to confront evil and is destined to triumph. But our victory is assured only if we remain resolute, because our enemies take advantage of any display of weakness. For that reason, neocons maintain that we do not negotiate with evil - hence diplomacy is eschewed in favour of military strength and "resolve".

Michael Tomasky on Mitt Romney’s Total Neocon Meltdown

We know that we saw something appalling yesterday, in Mitt Romney’s response to the violence in Cairo and Benghazi, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that we’re witnessing something historic too. This isn’t simply the end of the Republican Party’s decades-long political advantage on foreign policy that we’re observing. Rather, we are simultaneously able to see how the party is reacting to and dealing with the disappearance of that advantage. It’s like those villains in the movies who not only are dying, but who register on their face that they can’t comprehend they’re dying, that Hell has finally called their malevolent number, like Julia Roberts’s husband in Sleeping With The Enemy. God, it’s fun to watch. But it’s also a reminder of the danger of handing power to this man and the people he would bring in with him.

Marx would be completely dead if we didn’t have the Republicans around to prove him right every so often. Yet here we are in 2012, able to say definitively that the moment of greatest apparent Republican foreign-policy triumph—spring and summer of 2003—contained, in good Marxian fashion, the seeds of its own destruction. That’s when neoconservatism and its grand theories seemed to be on the cusp of a great vindication. The Iraq effort became disastrous, but even into 2005, with the advent of the great uprising in Lebanon and the blessed end of the Syrian occupation, for which Bush deserved and received some credit, no honest liberal skeptic could be completely sure that Wolfowitz & co. had everything wrong.

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.

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.

Libya and Syria: The Neocon Plan to Attack Seven Countries in Five Years

Neocon Jeffrey Feltman Visits Libya Brandishing The Dahiyeh Doctrine and “The New Realities”

Even some of the by-now-familiar cast of characters are the same in Libya as in Lebanon, including certain neocons at the State Department, National Security Agency, and Pentagon as well as Congressional war mongers like John McCain and one of John’s favorite drinking buddies, arch-Zionist John Bolton.

So it was no major surprise here in Tripoli when who appeared just next door across the Libyan border on 7/17/11 but the region's nemesis, US Undersecretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and former US Ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman.

Neoconservative Says Killing Libyan's Will Save US Pride

With President Obama's Libya policy staggering from one embarrassment to another, last week he and Secretary of State Clinton outdid themselves. They publicly welcomed Russia's effort to insert itself as a mediator, an act of such strategic myopia that it must leave even Moscow's leadership speechless.

Permanent Security Council members Russia and China abstained on the initial resolution authorizing force to create a Libya no-fly zone and to protect innocent civilians. By not casting a veto, Russia thereby tacitly allowed military action to proceed. As they did, Russia repeatedly second-guessed and harshly criticized NATO's operations. Now, as a mediator, Russia will, in effect, have the chance to rewrite the Council's resolution according to its own lights.

Given the uncertain trumpet sounded by both Obama and NATO, and the still-inconclusive outcome of the "kinetic military action," the reputation and credibility of U.S. and NATO, militarily and politically, have been gravely impaired. The President likely doesn't appreciate these wounds as he leans over backwards not to be seen as the regime-changing unilateralist he imagined his predecessor to be.

Our intervention in Libya makes the definition clearer than ever

Recently, my father suggested that it might be helpful if I explained what the term "neoconservative" means. "A lot of people don't know," he said. As usual, dad was right. I mentally filed away my father's suggestion, agreeing that an explanation of "neoconservative" might be helpful when the time was right. And now — as the American intervention in Libya has drawn a clearer line between neoconservatives and conventional Republicans than any event in recent memory — the time is right.

The "neocons" believe that American greatness is measured by our willingness to be a great power and that we accomplish that through a virtually unlimited global military involvement. As a result, the problems that other nations are experiencing become our own.

PNAC Cabal Warns Congress To Back Off Over Libya

The chicken hawk neoconservatives that make up the Project For A New American Century cabal have written on open letter to House Republicans warning them not to reduce or cut funding for U.S. involvement in the military aggression against Libya or face becoming an ” irresolute” nation.

The group, now re-named The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), also claims that though it shares with Congress “concerns” over the conduct and justification of the military mission, “The problem is not that the President has done too much… but that he has done too little to achieve the goal of removing Qaddafi from power.”

Neocon Group Calls On House GOP To Press For Widening Libya War

Foreign Policy Initiative issued an open letter to House Republicans calling on them to maintain funding for U.S. military action in Libya and press the Obama administration on expanding the war. The group, effectively Bill Kristol’s successor to the Project For a New American Century, got 38 neoconservative foreign policy pundits to sign the letter. They wrote that the administration “has done too little to achieve the goal of removing Qaddafi from power,” adding that the U.S. “should be doing more to help the Libyan opposition.”

Libya: another neocon war

That agenda fit perfectly with the plans of Washington insiders, such as those who famously spelled out their intentions in the reports of the thinktank called the Project for the New American Century. The fierce Iraqi and Afghan resistance didn't fit at all. Neither did the nonviolent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. But taking over Libya still makes perfect sense in the neoconservative worldview. And it makes sense in explaining war games used by Britain and France to simulate the invasion of a similar country.

The Libyan government controls more of its oil than any other nation on earth, and it is the type of oil that Europe finds easiest to refine. Libya also controls its own finances, leading American author Ellen Brown to point out an interesting fact about those seven countries named by Clark:

Libya is a Continuation of Neocon War to Remake Middle East

This is not really a new war. It is in fact a continuation of the neoconservatives’ 22-year war to remake the Middle East. Unfortunately the president has ignored the US constitution and decided instead to continue this misguided policy. This is a deeply flawed foreign policy that will only lead to escalation, blowback, and unintended consequences. Ultimately it is leading us to financial catastrophe. We must abandon the fantasy that we can police the world before it’s too late. Congress must stand up and say “no” to this illegal war.

The Neocon-Liberal Alliance

Stephen Walt -- now of Harvard and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and formerly of Princeton, the University of Chicago and the Pentagon's Institute of Defense Analyses -- obviously has a blue-ribbon foreign-policy pedigree. That's what makes his argument this week that George W. Bush and Barack Obama are fundamentally rooted in the same view of the world -- and what to do about it -- so interesting:

The only important intellectual difference between [Bush's] neoconservatives and [Obama's] liberal interventionists is that the former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on U.S. power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance. Both groups extol the virtues of democracy, both groups believe that U.S. power -- and especially its military power -- can be a highly effective tool of statecraft. Both groups are deeply alarmed at the prospect that WMD might be in the hands of anybody but the United States and its closest allies, and both groups think it is America's right and responsibility to fix lots of problems all over the world. Both groups consistently over-estimate how easy it will be to do this, however, which is why each has a propensity to get us involved in conflicts where our vital interests are not engaged and that end up costing a lot more than they initially expect.

The Neocons Regroup on Libyan War

American neoconservatives worried that the pro-democracy wave sweeping the Middle East might take out only "moderate" Arab dictators, but the neocons now see hope that uprisings will topple "enemy" regimes in Libya and Syria.

Yet, in rallying U.S. support for these rebellions, the neocons may be repeating the mistake they made by pushing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They succeeded in ousting Saddam Hussein, who had long been near the top of Israel’s enemies list, but the war also removed him as a bulwark against both Islamic extremists and Iranian influence in the Persian Gulf.

Neocon Maximalists Call for Ground Presence in Libya

Even if the military goal doesn’t start with regime change, without a strategy for what happens next it could easily move to that. Gadhafi will not leave willingly. Without air support, he and the rebels can just play out a long-term civil war. So to protect the population and achieve the long-term goal of regime change, the coalition will have to end up doing more. Which implicates them deeper.

Conservatives, faced with a President who basically acted on their initial request, have just moved the goalposts again without a hint of irony. There is a muddled response from Republicans in total: some are simply bound by hatred of Obama and will just prescribe the opposite of whatever he does, some in the Tea Party are genuinely conflicted about military action abroad, and some, like neocon Max Boot and his allies, will just pursue a maximalist strategy. And the neocons still have the main hold over Republican foreign policy. So Obama will have to respond to this. And I’m not sanguine about the outcome.

Libya Exposes Obama As Our Latest Neocon President

Obama — amid loud applause from neoconservative cheerleaders at The Weekly Standard, excuse-making “anti-war” leftists at The New Republic, and the seeming approval of 70% of the American people — defends his invasion and occupation of Libya on the grounds that it is not truly a “war” but instead a “humanitarian” mission. By that he means U.S. lives and wealth are to be sacrificed in order to prevent a savage political regime from harming or killing its own citizens, even if they are “rebels” of equal or greater savagery. This is not “humanitarian” or moral in the least; it’s an evil act, resting on an evil premise (that sacrifice is “noble”) and an obscene abuse of American lives and liberties, with not a single selfish gain to be had in return.

The neoconservative approach is clear, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. If American interests are truly assaulted, Washington doesn’t respond with a robust self-defense, but if “rebels” are attacked internally by an autocratic regime it will respond, by sacrificing American soldiers and wealth. This self-effacing, self-defeating approach is typical of neoconservative foreign policy — regardless of whether it is practiced by Democrats or Republicans — and it is anti-self because it presumes self-interest is evil. The stance is timid, cowardly, apologetic and reserved when American self-interest and security are at stake, but bold, eager, unilateral, and warmongering whenever victims abroad, who mean nothing to us (or indeed, are the sworn enemy, like the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda) are “victimized” and we sacrifice to “save” them.

The Surprising PNAC Connection to Libya

PNAC- Project for a New American Century Agenda Rolls On

If you’ve done your homework you know this neocon “think tank” led by Kristol at the turn of the century announced their intentions to militarize the US and roll on through the middle east towards global hegemony. Almost all signatories of the PNAC Statement were also members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the admitted steering committee on U.S. policy.

If you want to know exactly what’s happening or about to transpire, keep an eye on Neocons like Bill Kristol at rabid Zionist Murdock’s Fox News, the former head of PNAC when they made their famous study, proposal and ‘Statement of Principles’ preceding the staged 9/11 events and ensuing bogus “war on terror”.

It looks like despite Obama’s “promises” to not send troops, we’re about do it anyway. Surprise. So expect a real good reason to be fabricated soon, like tales of horrific atrocities by Gaddafi, to make sure the public is behind it. A false flag or two within Libya is probably on the table right now, like the staged theatre fire massacre in Abadan, Iran during the Iran revolution.

Neo-Cons Applaud Obama’s War, Call For Occupation Of Libya

While applauding Barack Obama’s involvement of U.S. forces in air strikes, influential neo-con Bill Kristol told Fox News that America should go further than merely bombarding Libya and send in ground troops as “peacekeepers,” embroiling the bankrupt United States in yet another foreign occupation while enabling Muslim extremists fighting Gaddafi to rise to power.

Enthusiastically backing Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama’s decision to follow UN orders and launch air strikes against a sovereign nation with zero congressional approval, Bill Kristol, co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, the infamous group of neo-cons that called for the U.S. government to exploit a “new Pearl Harbor” before 9/11 as a means of aggressively expanding the U.S. empire and occupying the middle east, appeared on Fox News yesterday to make it clear that the number one aim of the mission in Libya was neo-colonial regime change.

What intervention in Libya tells us about the neocon-liberal alliance

The only important intellectual difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is that the former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on U.S. power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance. Both groups extol the virtues of democracy, both groups believe that U.S. power -- and especially its military power -- can be a highly effective tool of statecraft. Both groups are deeply alarmed at the prospect that WMD might be in the hands of anybody but the United States and its closest allies, and both groups think it is America's right and responsibility to fix lots of problems all over the world. Both groups consistently over-estimate how easy it will be to do this, however, which is why each has a propensity to get us involved in conflicts where our vital interests are not engaged and that end up costing a lot more than they initially expect.

Neocon States of America To Attack Yet Another Muslim Country

The US electoral dictatorship will now, with its NATO minions, attack Libya, North African treasury of sweet crude, to expand and tighten the empire’s grip on the Muslim peoples, and to be able to deny oil to China. And no, this scheme is not to put down tyranny, which the US engineers in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc., etc., and exemplifies itself.