Bloody Neoconservatives
These people are either intentionally disengenuous or utterly clueless. At this point, does it matter which? The problem is, the poor neocons are homeless at the moment, their legitimacy trashed by the Iraq Civil War. "But wait," the neocons say, "we had nothing to do with invading Iraq in 2003 and we are shocked, just shocked, at how poorly the Bush administration has prosecuted this war."
Fuck off.
Now, I'm unfairly lumping "neocons" into one convenient group. But agreement between them can be reached on several key points:
- hostile, dictatorial regimes must be dealt with overwhelming military force
- democracy will flourish in those states where the hostile regime has been removed
- neoconservatives have been unfairly criticized and labeled by the left
- when we are not taken seriously, America suffers
All of this is confirmed today in two sources. The first is a Vanity Fair postmortem on the noecons falling fortunes. The second is an AEI defense of the neocon movement. Both contain outrageous quotes from poor, misunderstood, neocons, who at heart had America's best interests in mind when they advocated the biggest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam (bear in mind, most neocons were forged in America's defeat in that war).
Where to begin...
It's been beaten to death, but consider again the formative neoconservative statement on Iraq. This was the policy advocated by a group of people who, while in political exile during the Clinton years (why else would they draft the letter in this fashion?), were hardly uninfluential people. Richard Perle's name is on that statement, along with the current secretary of defense. Vanity Fair:
Richard Perle: "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I'm getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, 'Go design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that."
Perle resents the guilt-by-association argument I'm making. How then, could someone who feels so passionate about the Iraq situation not press a sympathetic administration to take action? Does Perle expect anyone to believe that he had no audience with Donald Rumsfeld? That they never discussed the Iraq invasion? Perle may not have designed the invasion logistically, but he bears as much responsibility as everyone on that statement for making the suggestion of military overthorw of Saddam Hussein a reality. In fact, if he claims no responsibility for the postwar efforts, then he is doubly culpable: imagine advocating the overthrow of a regime without advancing any ideas about what would happen after that overthorw? That is not only irresponsible, it is immoral. Yet Perle lectures the Bush administration for botching the war he advocated. Fucking asshole. He has blood on his hands. Kevin Drum:
What's more, despite their conveniently-timed hand wringing about incompetent execution, there's little evidence that the apologists would have done anything very different — in fact, little evidence that they cared very much about anything beyond "bringing down Saddam." Rather, neocons have always been focused on conventional military power, and plenty of it, primarily aimed at potential enemies like China. (Despite the revisionist history spit out now and again by their supporters, terrorism simply wasn't a major neocon focus prior to 9/11.) But conventional military power wasn't the problem in Iraq. The problem was in the occupation, an area that neocons have never cared a fig about. Peacekeeping forces? Nation building? Multilateral legitimacy? Language and cultural training? Counterinsurgency? Economic engagement?It's easy to cherry-pick the neocon archives to find bits and pieces where they talked up some of this stuff. But their overall focus has always been on the use of overwhelming force and intimidation, with a sideline in democracy promotion rooted more in fantasy than in a hard look at what it takes to actually make democracy take root in a region with none of the economic or institutional infrastructure to support it. Anybody with ground-level experience in nation building could have explained the problems, but they didn't want to listen. A sufficient show of force was supposed to be enough to make democracy flower.
The neocons have always been idealists, and their ideals saw full flower in the Iraq war. A show of force in one country, plenty of threats against its neighbors, a disdain for multilateral action, and an occupation designed to be a showpiece of conservative ideology rather than a serious attempt at reconstructing a society. That's what the neocons wanted, and that's what they got. The rest is details.
The failure of Iraq is inherent in the naive idealism and fixated ideology of neoconservatism, and shame on us if we let them get away with suggesting otherwise. This is one rehabilitation project that needs to be stopped dead in its tracks.
Exactly. It is the ideology of neoconservatism that is fundamentally flawed. Fatally flawed. The Bush administration would have had to marshall the best and the brightest, all of America's resources, shared sacrifice, etc., in order to successfully execute what the neocons wanted. But since they're unserious about governing the world's only superpower, they made a bad idea worse. Think about it: Rumsfeld is still Secretary of Defense. That is outrageous. Future Defense Secretaries will study him to learn precisely how to not run the US military.
But the neocons have not learned anything. Other than Francis Fukuyama--who I would consider perhaps the only living conservative intellectual I respect--they are undeterred in the validity of their convictions. Their god has failed but they are not shaken in their faith. Best of all, they blame everyone--and I mean everyone--but themselves:
Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar: "Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes."
Whoa, slow down there professor! You mean to tell me the President of the United States is at the mercy of a former librarian, a secretary of state who still thinks we're fighting the Cold War, a Texas lawyer and a speechwriter? Dick Cheney is less powerful than these women?
Give me a fucking break.
Ledeen can make statements like this if he wants. But shouldn't AEI's reputation be damaged by such nonsense? Shouldn't AEI start looking for a new "freedom scholar?" Of course not. After all, AEI believes its own lies. Check out their plan for rehabilitating neoconservatism:
One area of neoconservative thought that needs urgent reconsideration is the revolution in military strategy that our neocon hero, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, has championed. This love affair with technology has left our armed forces short on troops and resources, just as our execrable intelligence in Iraq seems traceable, at least in part, to the reliance on machines rather than humans. Our forte is political ideas, not physics or mechanics. We may have seized on a technological fix to spare ourselves the hard slog of fighting for higher defense budgets. Let’s now take up the burden of campaigning for a military force that is large enough and sufficiently well provisioned--however “redundant”--to assure that we will never again get stretched so thin. Let the wonder weapons be the icing on the cake.
I don't understand what's being argued here. If political ideas are their forte, does that mean then that their big political idea was that removing a dictator would lead to democracy? Muravchik is right to dismiss the idea that neoconservatism can be traced back to Leo Strauss; Strauss was a real intellectual, these idiots (excepting Fukuyama, a Straussian disciple, incidentally) will never be. But it gets even better. More serious ideas:
The Bush administration deserves criticism for its failure to repair America’s public diplomacy apparatus. No group other than neocons is likely to figure out how to do that. We are, after all, a movement whose raison d’être was combating anti-Americanism in the United States. Who better, then, to combat it abroad?
"Combating anti-Americanism in the United States," in this context, was making sure no one learned from the mistakes made in Vietnam. It also included exaggerating the threat the Soviet Union posed to the United States in the 1970s, and ignoring the lessons of Russia's own little Vietnam experience in Afghanistan. I was going to write about this separately, but I'll say it now: anti-Americanism is not a real problem. That sentiment, which always follows the biggest dog on the block, has been transformed into anti-Bushism. Those who disagree with or hate the policies of the United States are not anti-American, they are opposed to the criminal George Bush and his stunning ability to take the worldwide sympathy aroused by 9/11 and turn it into a global credability crisis for the United States. And since Bush is not intellectual, he relied upon other "intellectuals." That would be Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the neocons. Neoconservatives know nothing about fighting anti-Americanism, they are in fact responsible for its revival. Particulary when advocating wise foreign policy like this:
Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office. It is all but inconceivable that Iran will accept any peaceful inducements to abandon its drive for the bomb. Its rulers are religio-ideological fanatics who will not trade what they believe is their birthright to great power status for a mess of pottage. Even if things in Iraq get better, a nuclear-armed Iran will negate any progress there. Nothing will embolden terrorists and jihadists more than a nuclear-armed Iran.
Makes my head hurt. Let me get this straight. Neocons are the best equipped to restore American greatness. And to do this they will continue a policy of pissing off the entire world and radicalizing militants against us? A nuclear Iran will embolden terorists? Huh? What about an Iran politically and religiously unified after strategic US airraids? Iran will be sympathized in the Middle East after a US bombing (excepting Israel). Iran is not a threat to us, just like the Soviet Union was not 30 years ago when the neocons were hatched. See a pattern? As for "religio-ideological fanatics," look in the fucking mirror. The only reason the religious fanatics in the United States think that the religious fanatics in the Middle East are religious fanatics is because they think their God is better than their God. And vice versa. I wish these people would come out say this. If religion X is True and religion Y is false, why not say so? Isn't God on your side? Are they trying to be "sensitive" to religious tolerance? Sounds like something a goddamn liberal would say. But then again, the neocons are the real liberals. Need proof?
Recruit Joe Lieberman for 2008. Twice in the last quarter-century we had the good fortune to see presidents elected who were sympathetic to our understanding of the world. In 2008, we will have a lot on the line. The policies that we have championed will remain unfinished. The war on terror will still have a long way to go. The Democrats have already shown that they are incurably addicted to appeasement, while the “realists” among the GOP are hoping to undo the legacy of George W. Bush. Sen. John McCain and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani both look like the kind of leaders who could prosecute the war on terror vigorously and with the kind of innovative thought that realists hate and our country needs. As for vice presidential candidates, how about Condoleezza Rice or even Joe Lieberman? Lieberman says he’s still a Democrat. But there is no place for him in that party. Like every one of us, he is a refugee. He’s already endured the rigors of running for the White House. In 2008, he deserves another chance--this time with a worthier running mate than Al Gore.
Pretty much says it all, doesn't it? Joe Lieberman, who can't even be bothered to have a consistent position on Iraq (depends on what voters want him to think), is the neocon poster boy. Serenity now...
Neoconservatism is incoherent because the ideology supporting it is logically inconsistent and ignorant of history and reality both in theory and in practice. But neocons (save the intrepid Mr. Fukuyama) are unable to acknowledge this, which leads to cognitive dissonance, which leads to the absurd statements I have documented above. Whether it's foreign policy "experts" or media pundits, the problem is the same: Intellectual honesty is dead in America. That is the cancer of the republic I spoke of a few days back. And like the author of this NYT Sunday Book Review, I agree that the voters of this country will have to start refusing to tolerate such blatant lying and manipulation if we are to survive as a republic at all.