Neocons vs. Non-Interventionists: Let the Games Begin!

the intraparty fight among Republicans over foreign policy escalated further this week when former House Speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said that it was time to take stock of failed U.S. military interventions over the past decade, and acknowledge key anti-interventionist critics as important voices within the party.

Gingrich told the Washington Times in an interview he still considers himself a neoconservative, but said that “at some point, even if you are a neoconservative, you need to take a deep breath to ask if our strategies in the Middle East have succeeded.” Questioning the approach of exporting democracy through the barrel of a gun, Gingrich went on, “I think it would be healthy to go back and war-game what alternative strategies would have been better, and I like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul because they are talking about this.”

http://prospect.org/article/neocons-vs-isolationists-let-games-begin

Newt Gingrich sees major Mideast mistakes, rethinks his neocon views on intervention

Mr. Gingrich said it is time for Republicans to heed some of the anti-interventionist ideas offered by the libertarian-minded Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, and Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, tea party favorite and foreign policy skeptic.

“I think it would be healthy to go back and war-game what alternative strategies would have been better, and I like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul because they are talking about this,” Mr. Gingrich said.

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Gingrich: Neocon Support for Paul, Cruz?

Mr. Gingrich said it is time for Republicans to heed some of the anti-interventionist ideas offered by the libertarian-minded Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, and Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, tea party favorite and foreign policy skeptic.

“I think it would be healthy to go back and war-game what alternative strategies would have been better, and I like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul because they are talking about this,” Mr. Gingrich said.

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Newt Gingrich Rethinks Stance On U.S. Military Interventions

“I am a neoconservative. But at some point, even if you are a neoconservative, you need to take deep breath to ask if our strategies in Middle East have succeeded,” Gingrich said. “It may be that our capacity to export democracy is a lot more limited than we thought."

Gingrich told the Washington Times that he no longer believes interventionist policies are effective.

“I think we really need a discussion on what is an effective policy against radical Islam since it’s hard to argue that our policies of last 12 years have effective,” he said.

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Forget the Quran, the neocons must have burned their history books

Never mind history, though. The so-called “neo” conservatives are still at it, none more prominently than Newt Gingrich.

After that Quran crisis erupted last week, Gingrich tried to score some political points at President Obama’s expense by attacking him for apologizing to the Afghan people.

"There seems to be nothing that radical Islamists can do to get Barack Obama's attention in a negative way, and he is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the President of the United States, period," the ex-House Speaker said on a campaign stop in Washington state.

Newt Gingrich the Skunk Vomit NeoCon

Don Imus yells the slur “Skunk Vomit” as a description for Newt Gingrich. Coming from the erratic “Old Cowboy” and shock jock legend that lives on outrage and offense is nothing new to his listeners. This successor to the Andy Rooney curmudgeon institution is hardly a clarion voice of time-honored conservatives. So too, with a little investigation into Newt Gingrich you will see that the former Speaker is no true conservative. His rhetoric at times can seem appealing, but strip away the high tone platitudes and you are left with the assertions of an opportunist and a New World Order proponent.

Newt Gingrich’s Deep Neocon Ties Drive His Bellicose Middle East Policy

If elected, Gingrich would be the first American president to emerge from the dark think-tank world born in the Reagan era that gave us the Iraq war and lusts now for an Iranian reprise. The Daily Beast closely examines Gingrich’s long-time association with this discredited group.

Casino king Sheldon Adelson’s multi-million-dollar cache of chips-on-the-table for Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign has at last made him a household name outside of Las Vegas. But it isn’t just Adelson’s brand of pro-Israel, donor-driven saber-rattling that’s pushing Gingrich into far-out positions on virtually every Middle East-related question, from applauding the assassination of Iranian scientists to painting Palestinians as an historical concoction to requiring loyalty oaths from Muslim governmental appointees.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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).

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.

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.