C-SPAN is ravished by neocons

John McCain will be speaking in a few minutes about Syria at the American Enterprise Institute. He's been calling for arming the rebels.

Then CSPAN is airing discussants on his talk. Three of the five--Michael Rubin of AEI, Lee Smith from the Weekly Standard, and Ammar Abdulhamid of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies-- are dyed-in-the-wool neocons. Though maybe it could be said that Abdulhamid parrots neocon talking points while working at a neocon thinktank. While another discussant, David Schenker, hails from the Israel lobby thinktank, Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Is this a real discourse? Can you get ahead in D.C. if you're not for U.S. aggression in Muslim world? Let's remember what the eminent Leslie Gelb of the New York Times and Council on Foreign Relations said about the necessity of maintaining one's career by supporting the Iraq war 10 years ago: