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| A particularly loathsome sort of politician is one who dodges his country's wars when of military age, and then wants
to send others to die in later wars.
Fred Reed Feb 10, 2019 | www.unz.com In his volume Cultural Insurrections, Kevin MacDonald has accurately described neoconservatism as “a complex interlocking professional and family network centered around Jewish publicists and organizers flexibly deployed to recruit the sympathies of both Jews and non-Jews in harnessing the wealth and power of the United States in the service of Israel.”[3]Kevin MacDonald, Cultural Insurrections: Essays on Western Civilizations, Jewish Influence, and Anti-Semitism, The Occidental Press, 2007, p. 122. The proof of the neocons’ crypto-Israelism is their U.S. foreign policy:
Laurent Guyénot, The Unz Review. Apr 8, 2019
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William Kristol (born December 23, 1952) is an staunch warmonger, neocon and a chickenhawk. He was the founder and was editor-at-large of the defunct political magazine The Weekly Standard. MIC also keeps him as a political commentator on several networks. Probably is upported by CIA as a part of of the their stable of "Mockingbird" journalists.
Like other neocon he should be viewed as a lobbyist of MIC. He also is a supporter of Israel aggressive policies in the Middle East.
In the past he was a vocal supporter of the Iraq war. As such he is a war criminal. But unlike Japanese militarist he has not honor and he did not commit harakiri after the war turned into the disaster for the USA.
He is argent promoter of Neocons Credibility Scam
Kristol was a vocal supporter of the "Never Trum" movement. Although he pretended to be a Republican in the past, Kristol opposed Donald Trump from the very beginning of the election campaign and has criticized what he calls the "Trumpified Republican Party."
In 1997, he co-founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) with Robert Kagan, which puts them into uber-neocon category -- the same category to which Dick Cheney belongs.
Kristol is associated with a several conservative think tanks. He is a member of the board of trustees for the free-market Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a member of the Policy Advisory Board for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and a director of the Foreign Policy Initiative. He is also one of the three board members of Keep America Safe, a think tank co-founded by Liz Cheney and Debra Burlingame, and serves on the board of the Emergency Committee for Israel and the Susan B. Anthony List.
He was an editor of Weekly standard, the magazine which recently folded. See the analysis of this event in The Weekly Standard A Record of Failed Regime Change by Jacob Heilbrunn
"... No such glasnost ever took place in the pages of the Standard whose reputation has become indelibly wedded to its cheerleading for the calamitous 2003 Iraq War. The neocons had confused the Soviet Union's forfeiting of the cold war with American triumphalism, seizing upon its peaceful conclusion to search for new monsters to destroy abroad, whenever and wherever they could. The Standard itself constantly published taradiddles about the Middle East and Islam. Stephen F. Hayes, its last editor, lauded for his "integrity and courage" in the Trump era by David Brooks, wrote a phantasmagoric book called The Connection: How al Qaeda's Connection With Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America , not to mention reverential biographies of Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. ..."
"... For his part, Kristol co-wrote a book with Lawrence F. Kaplan called The War Over Iraq that supported a worldwide crusade for democracy. Far from spreading democracy, the Iraq War ended up not only spreading chaos in the Middle East, but also enabling the rise of Trump. As Carlos Lozada recently observed in The Washington Post , "The Never Trumpers hold everyone culpable for the appeal of Trumpism except, in any worthwhile way, themselves." ..."
"... For most neocons, however, journalism has never been more than a Leninist means to an end -- to form an intellectual vanguard. For it is political influence that the neocons crave. In his memoir, Boot proudly recounts that he served as an adviser to Senator Marco Rubio as well as to Mitt Romney during his run for the presidency in 2012. Kristol worked to destroy the 1993 Clinton Healthcare bill and sought to mold first Dan Quayle, then Sarah Palin, into his political homunculi. During the 2016 primary, he desperately cast about for a viable candidate to oppose Donald Trump and incurred much ridicule when he floated the name of David French, a writer for the National Review . ..."
"... Kristol, Podhoretz, Boot, and others belong to a second generation of neocons that never drifted away from the Democrats toward the Republican Party. Instead, they were right from the beginning. While some have begun to duplicate the odyssey in reverse that neocon elder Norman Podhoretz chronicled in memoirs such as Breaking Ranks and Ex-Friends , many seem simply politically adrift, like Russian exiles stranded in Paris after the Bolshevik revolution pining for the ancien régime . ..."
"... For his part, Kristol refused to concede that the GOP was irredeemably tainted by Trump. He acknowledged, "there are recessive genes in the GOP. They were always there and a lot of us didn't want to look too closely. There was a shining moment when the Bill Buckley conservatives came together with the neoconservatives and with Ronald Reagan," but "that went away quickly." Explaining his backing for Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate in 2008, he said: "The instinct I had was you had to have a more populist flavor That would be a way to incorporate populist discontent." He concluded, "It will be very different if this ends up being a parenthesis or this is an inflection point where it becomes the culmination, or end point. That's a very different story We're less doomed than what some people say as a party and a movement." ..."
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Oct 10, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Originally from: Another Opinion Columnist Pushing War With Iran Who Doesn't Actually Exist - The American Conservative
dragnet20 Tradcon • a month agoNot very surprising to be honest, some people simply cannot go without regime change to the point where they have to parade people about who weren't even born in Iran and who have little to no support in the country as "dissidents" to try to guilt people into supporting intervention. Of course with that comes slander against those who warn against that, which unfortunately means TAC.
Clyde Schechter dragnet20 • a month agoExactly--these folks are addicted to regime change like heroin. Ignoring them is one thing Trump absolutely got right during his first term.
Blood Alcohol Clyde Schechter • a month agoTrump ignored them??? Hardly. He hired John Bolton as his national security advisor, and Rudy Giuliani is his personal attorney. Both of those guys are heavily tied to this organization and advocate its line. And while he did stop short of actually invading Iran, he was on the brink of doing so recently, talked out of it only at the last minute. I'll give him credit for not going all the way with them, but he's given them far too wide a berth and much too much influence in his foreign policy if you ask me.
dragnet20 Blood Alcohol • a month agoHe did not go all the way with them because he was told by the military and others, who take their jobs and missions to server the American people seriously, that his attacks on Iran - invasion was not "the table" at all - would face a humiliating defeat at the same level of what happened to his efforts to extend the weapons sanctions at the UNSC. Pompeo was sent home with his tail between his legs.
Carpenter E Clyde Schechter • a month agoThe idea that Trump would have invaded if allowed doesn't pass the smell test. He spent much of the 2016 railing against regime change and foreign wars. His recent instincts on this topic have been largely correct.
J Villain Tradcon • a month agoTrump did not want more war, and wanted to end the existing wars, that much is clear. At the same time as he believes the Israeli line about Iran. But he did not want war with Iran - he knows they would mine the Strait of Hormuz shut, and the U.S. economy would go into a depression along with the world economy. No president would survive that.
But, he has had to appease top donor *Sheldon Adelson, in order to prevent a GOP revolt in the Congress. The threat was always that they'd join the Democrats in impeaching him, that Mike Pence would call for the same, and people would leave his cabinet. So he caved by sanctioning Iran and destroying the lives of millions of people. And he had to appease Israel by taking Syria's oil fields via the Marxist Kurd mercenaries, and let them burn the wheat fields. But he did not start a war, and did not want a war.
Blood Alcohol J Villain • a month ago"The list of MEK disinformation tactics"
Lets be honest here. It isn't MEK disinformation tactics it is the tactics
of the US wrapped up and packaged as MEK. Just as Falon Gong is backed
by the CIA. MEK is a bunch of backwards ass hats with terrorist
tendencies. They are not some national level intelligence agency. This
is most likely crud made up by the US intelligence agencies sold as MEK
and pushed on the American people to convince them that Iran will be
dropping nuclear weapons on their house any minute now if they can stop
eating babies long enough, so they need to push their government to go
to WAR!!!!! with Iran and kill some Muslims. The gullibility of the
American people is why there will never be a time when they are not at
war.Carpenter E J Villain • a month agoThrow in "Saudi" Arabia and Israel, and France (the home of their leader) then you've got all of them in the same room.
Carpenter E Carpenter E • a month agoPossibly, but the MEK does have an online presence and such. But of course, it is all with Washington's money, and Washington's assistance.
For those who don't know: The MEK is a Marxist-Islamist group that initially supported the Revolution, but turned against Ayatollah Khomeini as they didn't get to share power. Because no one liked them. And Marxists were not allowed in revolutionary Iran - the MEK was chased out along with the Soviet-installed communist party in northern Iran.
The MEK have been killing Iranian police, bureaucrats and local administrators. This is their "revolution". They kill people mainly with bombs. The present Ayatollah's left arm is withered after one of their bomb attacks.
The MEK have been killing Iranian physics professors and technicians. They kill them with car bombs in traffic - a motorbike with two killers drive up to a car by a traffic stop and attach a bomb with magnets. Of course, you can wonder where they got the bombs, and money and transport. This is classic Mossad strategy. Likewise, dozens of technicians and professors in Iraq have been murdered. Israel hopes for a counter-reaction which the U.S. can exploit.
Rest assured, the political opposition in Iran hates the Marxist-Islamist MEK as much as the government does. Which Washington and Israel don't acknowledge.
The MEK was housed by Saddam Hussein in an old military base. They had to leave Iraq eventually after the overthrow of Hussein. The U.S. then shipped them to a brand new training base in Albania. Crazy as it might seem. Albania's government is of course as eager to be a paid Washington agent as the Kurds are.
Absurdly, this explicitly terrorist group has been taken off the terror list by Washington. While Iran is called "terrorist" for helping Hezbollah, who formed to fight back when Israel invaded Lebanon and massacred Shia villagers in the south with artillery, because they lived close to the Palestinian refugee camps. And then kept fighting when Israel occupied part of southern Lebanon, Shia land, as a "buffer zone" for many years.
disgustoo • a month agoThe MEK killed thousands of people, including Americans. But the Lobby always gets what it wants.
The MEK was founded in 1965 by three Islamic leftists with the goal of toppling the U.S.-supported regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
In the 1970s it undertook a campaign of assassinating U.S. advisers and bombing U.S. corporations in Iran. It supported the 1979 Revolution in Iran, but in 1981 it turned its guns against the Tehran government and began a campaign of assassinations and terrorist operations that resulted in the death of thousands of Iranians, including the executions of its own supporters by government officials, soldiers, police officers, and ordinary people.
It then moved its headquarters to Iraq, made a pact with the regime of Saddam Hussein, which was fighting a ferocious war with Iran. The MEK spied on Iranian troops for Iraq, attacked Iran at the end of Iran-Iraq war with Hussein's support, and helped Hussein put down the uprisings by the Iraqi Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south after the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.
The MEK is despised by the vast majority of Iranians for what they consider to be treason committed against their homeland.
"As a matter of journalistic ethics any organization engaging in systematic dishonesty like this has provided a very good reason to blacklist them. ...This is not a matter of foreign policy differences: if you wish to see the U.S. pursue regime change in Iran, the MEK does not help make that case. Any publishers or think tanks who are aware of this dishonesty and still treat them like a legitimate opposition group should be considered part of a campaign not wholly different from the last time we were lied into a Mideast war."
If MEK does NOT help to make the case for regime change in Iran - & outside sponsored regime change is not ethical - then it would be unethical not to support them, in order to help prevent unethical regime change. Although that's probably not what horrible Hillary had in mind when, as Sec. of State in 2012, she de-listed them from the U.S. official list of terrorist organizations. But if anyone will lie "us" into a war with Iran, it will be AIPAC & innumerable other dishonest zionist organizations working on behalf of the Jewish terror state, & it's new Saudi terror state partner; both of whom look with favor on MEK as a bit partner in their joint effort to take out the government of Iran. MEK is pretty small potatoes compared to The Lobby, who are waging another campaign not wholly different from the last time they pushed us into a M.E. war to benefit lying israel.
Blood Alcohol Guest • a month ago
Dodo • a month agoWhy, do you "like" sock puppets"?!
Schopenhauer Dodo • a month ago • editedDon't fall into this trap.
People tell you - You are a conservative, so do I. I support XYZ thus you should also support them.
Before the 2003 Iraqi War, Many then Bush administration officials and self-anointed "conservative opinion leaders" went on TV to lie to people to support their war. Today, we still suffer the consequence but they are preaching to us other wars.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
IllinoisPatriot Schopenhauer • a month agoIn no way should the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War be excused, nor should "conservative opinion leaders" be let off the hook, but the Congress was complicit, the Senate was complicit, the military was complicit, the intelligence community was complicit, and the majority of the electorate was complicit. Nobody cared whether the reason for the war was valid, people just wanted to vent their frustrations against terrorists on an unrelated Arab country that the US had already used as a whipping boy. What could happen?
Almost twenty years later and-- surprise! surprise!-- suddenly everyone recognizes the war for the folly it was. Some people, like Dreher, seem to have genuinely changed their stance based on what happened subsequently. But we'll all see what happens the next time the war mongers-- from both sides of the aisle and from all over the country-- start rattling their sabers.
Charles IllinoisPatriot • a month ago • editedThen there are the appeasers and anti-war peace-niks that would rather surrender than fight for liberty or that (if they are willing to fight) will on risk OTHER PEOPLE's (other American) lives, thus removing the need to ever put themselves at risk of learning what actually goes in in the countries they are so sympathetic to.
EliteCommInc. Charles • a month ago"Then there are the appeasers and anti-war peace-niks that would rather surrender than fight for liberty"
Would you expound on that vis a vis current situations. Your sentence is straight out of the Vietnam era,
Blood Alcohol EliteCommInc. • a month ago • editedThe complete idiocy regarding Vietnam is the anti-war rhetoric surrounding. But has laid the framework for installing fear into anyone who doesn't tow the ridiculousness of what is argued by protesters -- which in every way has nearly every argument backwards.
Since the aggressors in Vietnam were the communists of four countries, it is very safe to say that those opposed to defending an independent S. Vietnam were in fact appeasing communist aggression and that is accurate.
The nation of Vietnam has rarely known peace and the lines during the conflict generally mark the region that separated the country's territorial history. The South Vietnamese sound reason to seek defend their territorial and political independence and we had sound reason to defend the same.
It was during that era that the liberal foundations showed their true colors. And if one doubt it --- just look at the anti-Vietnam advocates -- the managers of the Iraq and Afghanistan missteps and p[perhaps even worse their willingness to destroy the lives of anyone who challenged their rational based on the very case they made -- which was unsupportable.
There are some issues which simply are not really issues,
1. the lives of black people in the country and how they were/are socialized and the consequence
2.what the civil war was really about
3.Mexican invasion of US territory to retake territory they lost to band of squatters (lousy immigration enforcement) a war that is now taking place via our failure to enforce border protection.)
4.loss of the War of 1812
and5. the colonial revolution and its justification
Schopenhauer Blood Alcohol • a month ago"Since the aggressors in Vietnam were the communists of four countries, it is very safe to say that those opposed to defending an independent S. Vietnam were in fact appeasing communist aggression and that is accurate."
It's safe to say that BS like this is not hard to come by in the right wing nutjobs' circles. No Vietnamese had/has ever attempted to attack, invade, kill and spray Agent Orange anywhere in the US. So how come they became the aggressors?!
Viet Nam became truly independent AFTER expelling the American military.Shiek Yerbooti Dodo • a month agoWhen it comes to discussing Vietnam with this guy-- it's Chinatown, there's nothing you can do.
Wallstreet Panic Dodo • a month agoIf you're talking about Bush I think the quote is more like this:
"fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."
chris chuba • a month ago"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again. You've got to understand the nature of the regime we're dealing with. This is a man who has delayed, denied, deceived the world." George W. Bush, September 17, 2002
Fletcher chris chuba • a month agoBless you for writing this but you are spitting into the wind. There are too many people who want to believe this. The IRaq war analogy is apt. You have govt in exile types like MEK (remember Chalabi) who have a vested interest in lying to us. You have the hyper-pro Israel crowd and the newly accepted pro-Saudi crowd w/money to burn. I actually expect and don't begrudge foreigners for trying to get the U.S. into their fights. I resent the MSM that is simply in love with U.S. military conflicts who accuse people who oppose them of being anti-American, conspiracy theorists.
The most laughable example was CNN accepting the notion that Iran has a massive cyber presence in influencing our elections because our Intel Agencies told them so. Iran is detested by the U.S. public as we steal civilian cargo from them that would make the lives of people in other countries better. We sell the stolen goods for our benefit and call them terrorists for their trouble. To suggest that they have sway over us is laughable yet this passes for journalism.
Iran will be the next Iraq. If there is a God it will be the rock that breaks us. If not then a crime of shocking proportions.
Blood Alcohol Fletcher • a month agoI largely agree but I think there's room for optimism, the US military particular the army is largely a broken instrument, morale is not good except for the contractors, General maintenance is down in favor of expensive toys that largely do not work. For all of the bluster of this generation of sociopaths the military in general is a shadow of itself not to mention we live in times of a rising China and the reemergence Russia, neither of which would allow in on opposed attack on Iran.
Fletcher Blood Alcohol • a month agoTrue, but the military has also been the biggest obstacle for tRump to make his Saudi/Israeli clients happy.
Blood Alcohol Fletcher • a month ago • editedHow so? Our government seems to be providing the Saudi's with with as many bombs as they need, Air Force retirees to fly in the backseatair of Saudi planes, we have slowed down on the transfer of Thermo nuclear Technology as well as I assume the the delivery systems for them true but that was likely just a temporary Flash of Conscience it'll probably never happen again for that individual but if there something I'm missing please do tell.
Sorosh Nabi • a month agoLook at it this way. Either the Saudi/UAE themselves have to deal militarily with Iran, or the US. The US military-industrial complex is for selling weapons to these client states whole-heartedly for obvious reasons. The Saudi/UAE has always expected and often demanded the US is the one to "cut the snake's head" as "king" Abdullah of the "Saudi" Arabia demanded frequently. These states know very well neither the "version" of the weaponry they buy from the West is capable of performing in a real war with a powerful enemy like Iran, nor are their personnel capable of operating them effectively. So what they say to the US is, OK we'll buy your junk, but you need to do the job. In other words, they want to fight Iran to the last AMERICAN soldier. The Pentagon wants none of that. But happy to run the cash register. I hope I made my point clear.
EliteCommInc. Sorosh Nabi • a month agoMEK have no support in Iran. If a MEK member would walk down the street there the people would tear them to shreds. When they started killing Iranians and cooperating with Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war they committed political suicide.
Sorosh Nabi EliteCommInc. • a month agoYou know, this really doesn't carry much weight. I am not going to dismiss the complaints of a group because the majority don't support them. That is not a case for regime change. I don't see a case for that as yet. But I don't buy this nonsense about Iran land of peace ----
They were instrumental in destabilizing any peace in Iraq and remain so. Their Islamic revolution has not passed and their ambitions are not as benign as as many including Iranians like to pretend.
Blood Alcohol EliteCommInc. • a month ago • editedWhat does that have to do with anything that I said? If you want to come to power you need the support of the people MEK don't have that so they will never gain power. Also MEK are responsible for the revolution in the first place, they are the ones that carried out bombing and assassinations even of Americans in Iran. They are the ones that attacked the US embassy in Iran and held Americans hostage. There is a reason they were on the US terror list until 2012. As far as Iran being the land of peace not sure where you got that from, Iran has never claimed that and infact Iran will conduct foreign policy that benefits its goals, which is true of any nation. You should try to stay on topic when you reply to somebody though.
Feral Finster • a month agoYes, as you know the Iranians attacked, invaded and looted Iraq's oil and cultural heritage. Had in not been for the US "rescue mission" Iranian would still be there. You must be tone deaf.
Gutbomb Feral Finster • a month agoSame playbook as in the runup to the War on Iraq.
IllinoisPatriot Feral Finster • a month agoMostly. They won't be bothering with the U.N. this time, though.
john • a month ago... or Trump's run-up to the 2016 election.....
Thump the conspiracy theories and emphasize the hard-line approach with no idea or intent to actually go through with anything should he actually win. I see reference to Q-anon and I immediately think Trumpian conspieracy.
I'll pass.
CPT john • a month agoConservatives are easy to target, they are prepared to believe all sorts of nonsense. Qanon aside they are prepared to believe that tax cuts pay for themselves and you can lose weight on a vinegar and ice cream diet.
Fletcher john • a month agoAs opposed to the people who believe that a man can become a "real woman" just by saying so, and nod approvingly when CNN shows the chyron "Mostly peaceful protests continue" over footage of burning buildings.
hooly • a month agoReally, that's pretty damn funny like you retards don't believe in a bunch of conspiracy nonsense and by the way don't put down Q is good fun to the geriatric Community on the other hand you clowns are playing footsie with actual Nazis in Ukraine while you accuse the right of being fascist that's beautiful congratulations it's going to be great in a couple years when this country has seceded from each other and all of you non-producers get to sort it out for yourselves, it's going to be magic.
Iustitiae Semper Valet hooly • a month agoFake dissident groups. Wow! Not even the Chinese are this duplicitous. And people whine and complain about Russian and Chinese 'infiltration' and 'meddling' ??
IllinoisPatriot Iustitiae Semper Valet • a month agoWhich fale dissident groups? I missed that. I am not being sarcastic. I see people who have been named as fake contributors all over the place. But I didn't see a reference to a fake dissident group.
PointyTailofSatan . • a month agoI'm still looking for the proof one way or the other of who the "good guys" are here.
Fake this, fake that I can get from Trump every time he opens his mouth about "fake news".
What I don't get from Trump (or from this article) is any references, documentation, or solid proof of any kind other than accusations and counter-accusations -- one side I'm supposed to believe because the author said so.
I'm not buying it without objective proof and trustworthy corroboration -- not just more sock-puppets.
Blood Alcohol PointyTailofSatan . • a month ago • editedI don't understand. The MEK hates the current Iranian government. Why the would the American Conservative be dissing them?
Steve Blood Alcohol • a month agoThey are being dissed by many smart conservatives and others, because they have become a tool of Saudi/Israel. They practically spearheaded killing Americans during the Shah, and now they are enjoying American political and financial support. In that vein the adage, my enemy's enemy is my friend, does not apply here. But if you are a money hungry Giuliani, Kennedy, Bolton or Howard Dean being a gang of killers, Saddam Husein mercenaries, and Saudi/Israeli agents don't matter.
Feral Finster PointyTailofSatan . • 19 days agoBravo for this comment!! loved it!
Dyerville • a month agoAnyone remember Ahmad Chalabi's "Iraqi National Congress" or whatever it was called?
Same schtick, new players, same CIA..
el disgustador • a month ago"We are especially on guard when it comes to unsolicited foreign policy commentary.""
So one would hope, but foreign meddling is rife. At least the Washington Examiner makes an effort, whereas the Washington Free Beacon functions almost openly as an Israeli organ inside the United States.
chris • a month agoEhem...The Israelis have admitted they essentially founded, financed and thoroughly and continuously infiltrated the Palestinian revolutionary group, HAMAS to counter the PLO achieve the ongoing ethnic destruction of Palestinian land freedom and society...the MEK and their front group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran are comparable Israeli emanations whose ultimate goal is the land grab from the Nile to the Euphrates known as the Greater Israel project. This is Israeli history text book material, it is not conjecture...Read what former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, former Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. had to say the New York Times in that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a "counterweight" to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as "a creature of Israel.") "The Israeli government gave me a budget," the retired brigadier
general confessed, "and the military government gives to the mosques." Moreover, "Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," said Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades to the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Deliberately planned, as far back as the mid-1980s, according to Cohen in an official report to his superiors playing the divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists, HAMAS was built up to become an "existential threat" fake tool of nuclear mighty Israel. In his report Cohen wrote, "I suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face," he wrote. That was the point exactly, poor victimized Israel "endowed with the right to defend itself". With Palestine now Kushnerized into oblivion, Iran is next ...Go figure...Go figure...
Billo • a month agopropaganda is unending when isn'treal wants more war isn't it?
Ram2017 Billo • a month agoLet the Israel Jews fight and die in their own war. Iran is not our enemy, Israel is.
ddearborn • a month ago • editedWho is funding the MEK ?
Hmmm
Means, motive, opportunity and who benefits spells out in no uncertain terms that the entire create a justification and then go to war with Iran originates in Israel and is being sold by the Zionists and Israel's literal army of jewish/Zionist/pro-Israel agents masquerading as "lobbyists", "activists", "think tanks" "academics", the Media, Hollywood, Congress, most of the White House Staff, etc., etc., here in the US. In other words, by an Israeli controlled army in America made up of traitors, liars and criminals.... A group who collectively ALWAYS put Israel Uber Alles.
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Sep 14, 2020 | www.firstthings.com
♦ Boys and girls are different. There, I've said it, a heresy of our time. We're not supposed to suggest that a woman shouldn't fight in combat, or that an athletic girl doesn't have a right to play on the boys' football team -- or that a young woman doesn't run a greater risk than a young man when binge drinking. We are not supposed to reject the conceit that the sexes are interchangeable, and therefore a man can become a "woman" and use the ladies' bathroom.
Male and female God created us. I commend this heresy to readers. Remind people that boys in girls' bathrooms put girls at risk, and that Obergefell is a grotesque distortion of the Constitution. True -- and don't miss the opportunity to say, in public, that men and women are different. This is the deepest reason why gender ideology is perverse. As Peter Hitchens observes in this issue (" The Fantasy of Addiction "), there's a great liberation that comes when, against the spirit of the age, one blurts out what one knows to be true.
♦ Great Britain recently announced regulatory approval for scientists to introduce third-party DNA into the reproductive process. The technological innovation that allows for interventions into the most fundamental dimensions of reproduction and human identity is sure to accelerate. Which is a good reason for incoming President Trump to revive the President's Council on Bioethics. (It existed under President Obama, but was told to do and say nothing.) We need sober reflection on the coming revolution in reproductive technology. Trump should appoint Princeton professor Robert P. George to head the Bioethics Commission. He has the expertise in legal and moral philosophy, and he knows what's at stake. (See " Gnostic Liberalism ," December 2016.)
♦ On the strength of Adrian Vermeule's review last month (" Liturgy of Liberalism ," January 2017), I picked up Ryszard Legutko's The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies . Legutko sees many parallels between the communism that dominated the Poland of his youth and the political-social outlook now treated as obligatory by Eurocrats and dominant in America, which he calls "[neo]liberal democracy."
One parallel struck me as especially important: "Communism and [neo]liberal democracy are related by a similarly paradoxical approach to politics: both promised to reduce the role of politics in human life, yet induced politicization on a scale unknown in previous history." We're aware of the totalitarian dimension of communism. But liberalism? Isn't it supposed to be neutral with respect to substantive outlooks, endorsing only the constitutional and legal frameworks for free and fair political debate? Actually, no. Liberals always assert that liberalism is the view of politics, society, and morality "most adequate of and for modern times."
This gives [neo]liberalism a partisan spirit all the more powerful because it is denied.
Although such words as "dialogue" and "pluralism" appear among its favorite motifs, as do "tolerance" and other similarly hospitable notions, this overtly generous rhetorical orchestration covers up something entirely different. In its essence, liberalism is unabashedly aggressive because it is determined to hunt down all nonliberal agents and ideas, which it treats as a threat to itself and to humanity.[Neo]Liberalism, Legutko points out, is committed to dualism, not pluralism. He gives the example of Isaiah Berlin, who made a great deal out of the importance of the pluralism of the liberal spirit. Yet "Berlin himself, a superbly educated man, knew very well and admitted quite frankly that the most important and most valuable fruits of Western philosophy were monistic in nature." This means that liberalism, as Berlin defines it, must classify nearly the entire history of Western thought (and that of other cultures as well) as "nonliberal." Thus, "the effect of this supposed liberal pluralism" is not a welcoming, open society in which a wide range of substantive thought flourishes, but "a gigantic purge of Western philosophy, bringing an inevitable degradation of the human mind."
♦ The purge mentality has a political dimension. Since 1989, European politics has shifted away from a left vs. right framework toward "mainstream" vs. "extremist." This is a telling feature of [neo]liberal democracy as an ideology. "The tricky side of 'mainstream' politics is that it does not tolerate any political 'tributaries' and denies that they should have any legitimate existence. Those outside the mainstream are believed to be either mavericks and as such not deserving to be treated seriously, or fascists who should be politically eliminated."
♦ Karl Marx coined the term Lumpenproletariat . Lumpen means "rag" in German, and its colloquial meanings include someone who is down-and-out. According to Marx, this underclass has counter-revolutionary tendencies. These people can be riled up by demagogues and deployed in street gangs to stymie the efforts of the true proletariat to topple the dominant class.
Legutko speaks of "lumpenintellectuals." These are the professors and journalists who buttress the status quo by rehearsing ideological catechisms and exposing heretics. We certainly have a lumpenintelligentsia , left and right: tenured professors, columnists, think tank apparatchiks, and human resources directors.
♦ I regularly read two lumpenintellectuals in order to understand the orthodoxies of our political mainstream: Tom Friedman over at the New York Times and Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal . The former is a cheerleader for today's globalist orthodoxies, complete with ritual expressions of misgivings. The latter eagerly plays the role of Leninist enforcer of those orthodoxies.
♦ Bill Kristol recently stepped down as day-to-day editor at the Weekly Standard . .... As he put it with characteristic humor, "Here at The Weekly Standard , we've always been for regime change."...
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May 24, 2020 | original.antiwar.com
"A 'Neocon' is neither new or conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell." – Edward AbbeyBeing an unrepentant Neocon, such as William (Bill) Kristol, means never having to say you're sorry. To qualify, you need to be an ideologue, who also has paid no price for recklessly cheerleading 4,488 U.S. troops to their deaths in the illegal and immoral Iraq War, plus another 32,223 who were seriously wounded (2003-2011).
It also helps to have a significant media platform and not to give a good hoot about how many innocent Iraqis died via the U.S.-led invasion and/or the occupation of that country. (Try an estimated 655,000.)
By the way, false prophet, Kristol: Our troops found "No" Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.
Let me formally introduce – William Kristol, age 67, out of New York City, now Northern Virginia, warmonger extraordinaire, ultra-conservative, and currently editor at large of Bulwark magazine.
For years, we've heard Kristol on the TV/Cable/Network shows making outrageous statements, like this one: "The war in Iraq could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East." (09/18/2001).
The other day, May 20, 2020, Kristol was the subject of a puff piece profile in the Washington Post , by reporter KK Ottesen. The article made no mention of Kristol's disgusting role in promoting the Iraq War. Instead, he was given the opportunity to rip President Donald Trump on how he has been mismanaging the coronavirus crisis. (Well, heck, everybody knows that.)
There was also no mention by the reporter of the possible real reasons that Kristol was dumping on Trump. One could be that during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump had trashed Kristol's and the Neocons' support of the Iraq War.
And, also Trump has indicated he doesn't have any plans to reignite another of Kristol's favorites schemes – "a Cold War with Russia." These are just two of the reasons the "Neocons, like Kristol, can't stomach Trump," according to the commentator, JP Sottile, of Consortium News.
The idea that Kristol is some kind of genuine dissenter and is opposing Trump because he's concerned about the quality of his leadership is pure nonsense. The Washington Post allowed Kristol to use the paper for this dubious exercise and it has no one to blame but itself.
During last year's Democratic presidential primary, Kristol took a swipe at the candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and posted a tweet that said: "#Never Sanders." The popular antiwar candidate responded to Kristol: "Have you apologized to the nation for your foolish advocacy of the Iraq War? I make no apologies for opposing it." Sanders then added this zinger: "I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran."
The Neocon replied: "I will defend my views on Iraq as you defend yours." Sen. Sanders underscored how Kristol had called for regime change in Iraq as early at 1998; and that Kristol also predicted the conflict would last "only two months;" and that he had repeatedly argued for the Bush-Cheney Gang to send in more troops. As early at 2006, Kristol was urging the US to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, asking, "Why wait?"
Flashback: The first time I laid eyes on the cunning Neocon, Kristol was at a pro-Iraq War rally held on the National Mall, on April 12, 2003, in Washington, D.C., G. Gordon Liddy and the late, ex-U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) were there, along with some other Right Wing types.
What was really weird about the whole affair was the appearance of that so-called comedian, Ben Stein. He showed up on a huge video screen endorsing the war. It should have had "a warning label" on it!
I recall a lady in the modest crowd of about fifty at that event saying of Kristol: "Oh, look how small he is!" She was right. Kristol is, indeed, on the very short side. I'd say that he comes in at about 5 ft. 4 or 5 inches. It seems that, as a result of his tiny body frame, his head appears more massive than it really is. The rally was boring. I didn't stay long.
In a way, Kristol reminded me, in a physical sense, of the late actor Peter Lorre. Whether Kristol has a "Little Man (Napoleon) Complex," or not, I will leave to the experts in the field. All I know for sure is that he's a relentlessly angry, pusher of costly and unnecessary wars.
(During the Iraq War, there were countless protest actions mounted by ten of thousands of splendid antiwar activists across the country. Many of them were held on the National Mall, and other sites in our nation's capital.)
Here is another gem from Kristol: "The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably." (April 28, 2003) And, then there is this whopper from the slippery Neocon: "The Iraqi elections of Jan. 30, 2005 could be a key moment perhaps the key moment so far in vindicating the 'Bush/Cheney Doctrine' as the right response to 9/11." (March 7, 2005)
Of course, it wouldn't be fair to leave out this one from Kristol: "It is much more likely that the situation in Iraq will stay more or less the same, or improve, in either case, Republicans will benefit from being the party of victory." (Nov. 30, 2005)
As a result of an onslaught of Kristol's articles and media appearances in support of the Iraq invasion, the Washington Post 's Richard Cohen dubbed the conflict: "Kristol's War!" Right on, Mr. Cohen.
The estimated cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayers runs to a high of around $1.7 trillion!
If Kristol has any regrets with respect to his amoral advocacy for the Iraq War (which was launched by the Bush-Cheney Gang based on a pack of rotten lies) and/or about the staggering US casualties in Iraq, I have never heard him express them.
If Kristol has any empathy for the innocent Iraqi dead and wounded, the Iraqi women and children who have suffered and are continuing to suffer from that conflict, along with the tens of thousands of Iraqi homes that have been destroyed, and also for those 3.8 million Iraqis made into refugees, then he's kept those kinds of feelings to himself.
(The other amazing thing about Kristol is how he's repeatedly able to get his distorted views on our televisions and in our newspapers. It's like he has to only press a button and there he is. It is all so – Orwellian!)
In any event, when the name of William Kristol, the Neocon, is mentioned, I think callous indifference to human life and suffering.
The next time the Neocon Kristol visits the Arlington National Cemetery, over in Virginia, to honor our Iraqi War dead, will be his FIRST! Despite all of the above, he continues to argue for a U.S.-led attack on Iran. Kristol insists: "Invading Iran is not a bad idea!"
If warmongering isn't a Hate Crime and/or a Hate Speech, then maybe it should be. (Peace Movement, please copy.) That would give the heartless Kristol something to think about when he advocates for the launching of yet another monstrosity, like the Iraq War.
Bill Hughes is an attorney, author, actor and photographer. His latest book is Byline Baltimore . Contact the author. Reprinted from the Baltimore Post-Examiner with the author's permission.
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Jan 23, 2020 | newrepublic.com
There was a time not so long ago, before President Donald Trump's surprise decision early this year to liquidate the Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, when it appeared that America's neoconservatives were floundering. The president was itching to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan. He was staging exuberant photo-ops with a beaming Kim Jong Un. He was reportedly willing to hold talks with the president of Iran, while clearly preferring trade wars to hot ones.
Indeed, this past summer, Trump's anti-interventionist supporters in the conservative media were riding high. When he refrained from attacking Iran in June after it shot down an American drone, Fox News host Tucker Carlson declared , "Donald Trump was elected president precisely to keep us out of disaster like war with Iran." Carlson went on to condemn the hawks in Trump's Cabinet and their allies, who he claimed were egging the president on -- familiar names to anyone who has followed the decades-long neoconservative project of aggressively using military force to topple unfriendly regimes and project American power over the globe. "So how did we get so close to starting [a war]?" he asked. "One of [the hawks'] key allies is the national security adviser of the United States. John Bolton is an old friend of Bill Kristol's. Together they helped plan the Iraq War."
By the time Trump met with Kim in late June, becoming the first sitting president to set foot on North Korean soil, Bolton was on the outs. Carlson was on the president's North Korean junket, while Trump's national security adviser was in Mongolia. "John Bolton is absolutely a hawk," Trump told NBC in June. "If it was up to him, he'd take on the whole world at one time, OK?" In September, Bolton was fired.
The standard-bearer of the Republican Party had made clear his distaste for the neocons' belligerent approach to global affairs, much to the neocons' own entitled chagrin. As recently as December, Bolton, now outside the tent pissing in, was hammering Trump for "bluffing" through an announcement that the administration wanted North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. "The idea that we are somehow exerting maximum pressure on North Korea is just unfortunately not true," Bolton told Axios . Then Trump ordered the drone strike on Soleimani, drastically escalating a simmering conflict between Iran and the United States. All of a sudden the roles were reversed, with Bolton praising the president and asserting that Soleimani's death was " the first step to regime change in Tehran ." A chorus of neocons rushed to second his praise: Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer and prominent Never Trumper, lauded Trump's intestinal fortitude, while Representative Liz Cheney hailed Trump's "decisive action." It was Carlson who was left sputtering about the forever wars. "Washington has wanted war with Iran for decades," Carlson said . "They still want it now. Let's hope they haven't finally gotten it."
Neoconservatism as a foreign policy ideology has been badly discredited over the last two decades, thanks to the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the blinding flash of one drone strike, neoconservatism was easily able to reinsert itself in the national conversation. It now appears that Trump intends to make Soleimani's killing -- which has nearly drawn the U.S. into yet another conflict in the Middle East and, in typical neoconservative fashion, ended up backfiring and undercutting American goals in the region -- a central part of his 2020 reelection bid .
The anti-interventionist right is freaking out. Writing in American Greatness, Matthew Boose declared , "[T]he Trump movement, which was generated out of opposition to the foreign policy blob and its endless wars, was revealed this week to have been co-opted to a great extent by neoconservatives seeking regime change." James Antle, the editor of The American Conservative, a publication founded in 2002 to oppose the Iraq War, asked , "Did Trump betray the anti-war right?"
In the blinding flash of one drone strike, neoconservatism was easily able to reinsert itself in the national conversation.Their concerns are not unmerited. The neocons are starting to realize that Trump's presidency, at least when it comes to foreign policy, is no less vulnerable to hijacking than those of previous Republican presidents, including the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The leading hawks inside and outside the administration shaping its approach to Iran include Robert O'Brien, Bolton's disciple and successor as national security adviser; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook; Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; David Wurmser, a former adviser to Bolton; and Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton. Perhaps no one better exemplifies the neocon ethos better than Cotton, a Kristol protégé who soaked up the teachings of the political philosopher Leo Strauss while studying at Harvard. Others who have been baying for conflict with Iran include Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is now Trump's personal lawyer and partner in Ukrainian crime. In June 2018, Giuliani went to Paris to address the National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose parent organization is the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MeK. Giuliani, who has been on the payroll of the MeK for years, demanded -- what else? -- regime change.
The fresh charge into battle of what Sidney Blumenthal once aptly referred to as an ideological light brigade brings to mind Hobbes's observation in Leviathan : "All men that are ambitious of military command are inclined to continue the causes of war; and to stir up trouble and sedition; for there is no honor military but by war; nor any such hope to mend an ill game, as by causing a new shuffle." The neocons, it appears, have caused a new shuffle.
Donald Trump has not dragged us into war with Iran (yet). But the killing of Soleimani revealed that the neocon military-intellectual complex is very much still intact, with the ability to spring back to life from a state of suspended animation in an instant. Its hawkish tendencies remain widely prevalent not only in the Republican Party but also in the media, the think-tank universe, and in the liberal-hawk precincts of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the influence and reach of the anti-war right remains nascent; even if this contingent has popular support, it doesn't enjoy much backing in Washington beyond the mood swings of the mercurial occupant of the Oval Office.
But there was a time when the neoconservative coalition was not so entrenched -- and what has turned out to be its provisional state of exile lends some critical insight into how it managed to hang around respectable policymaking circles in recent years, and how it may continue to shape American foreign policy for the foreseeable future. When the neoconservatives came on the scene in the late 1960s, the Republican old guard viewed them as interlopers. The neocons, former Trotskyists turned liberals who broke with the Democratic Party over its perceived weakness on the Cold War, stormed the citadel of Republican ideology by emphasizing the relationship between ideas and political reality. Irving Kristol, one of the original neoconservatives, mused in 1985 that " what communists call the theoretical organs always end up through a filtering process influencing a lot of people who don't even know they're being influenced. In the end, ideas rule the world because even interests are defined by ideas."
At pivotal moments in modern American foreign policy, the neocons supplied the patina of intellectual legitimacy for policies that might once have seemed outré. Jeane Kirkpatrick's seminal 1979 essay in Commentary, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," essentially set forth the lineaments of the Reagan doctrine. She assailed Jimmy Carter for attacking friendly authoritarian leaders such as the shah of Iran and Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza. She contended that authoritarian regimes might molt into democracies, while totalitarian regimes would remain impregnable to outside influence, American or otherwise. Ronald Reagan read the essay and liked it. He named Kirkpatrick his ambassador to the United Nations, where she became the most influential neocon of the era for her denunciations of Arab regimes and defenses of Israel. Her tenure was also defined by the notion that it was perfectly acceptable for America to cozy up to noxious regimes, from apartheid South Africa to the shah's Iran, as part of the greater mission to oppose the red menace.
The neocons supplied the patina of intellectual legitimacy for policies that might once have seemed outré.There was always tension between Reagan's affinity for authoritarian regimes and his hard-line opposition to Communist ones. His sunny persona never quite gelled with Kirkpatrick's more gelid view that communism was an immutable force, and in 1982, in a major speech to the British Parliament at Westminster emphasizing the power of democracy and free speech, he declared his intent to end the Cold War on American terms. As Reagan's second term progressed and democracy and free speech actually took hold in the waning days of the Soviet Union, many hawks declared that it was all a sham. Indeed, not a few neocons were livid, claiming that Reagan was appeasing the Soviet Union. But after the USSR collapsed, they retroactively blessed him as the anti-Communist warrior par excellence and the model for the future. The right was now a font of happy talk about the dawn of a new age of liberty based on free-market economics and American firepower.
The fall of communism, in other words, set the stage for a new neoconservative paradigm. Francis Fukuyama's The End of History appeared a decade after Kirkpatrick's essay in Commentary and just before the Berlin Wall was breached on November 9, 1989. Here was a sharp break with the saturnine, realpolitik approach that Kirkpatrick had championed. Irving Kristol regarded it as hopelessly utopian -- "I don't believe a word of it," he wrote in a response to Fukuyama. But a younger generation of neocons, led by Irving's son, Bill Kristol, and Robert Kagan, embraced it. Fukuyama argued that Western, liberal democracy, far from being menaced, was now the destination point of the train of world history. With communism vanquished, the neocons, bearing the good word from Fukuyama, formulated a new goal: democracy promotion, by force if necessary, as a way to hasten history and secure the global order with the U.S. at its head. The first Gulf War in 1991, precipitated by Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, tested the neocons' resolve and led to a break in the GOP -- one that would presage the rise of Donald Trump. For decades, Patrick Buchanan had been regularly inveighing against what he came to call the neocon " amen corner" in and around the Washington centers of power, including A.M. Rosenthal and Charles Krauthammer, both of whom endorsed the '91 Gulf War. The neocons were frustrated by the measured approach taken by George H.W. Bush. He refused to crow about the fall of the Berlin Wall and kicked the Iraqis out of Kuwait but declined to invade Iraq and "finish the job," as his hawkish critics would later put it. Buchanan then ran for the presidency in 1992 on an America First platform, reviving a paleoconservative tradition that would partly inform Trump's dark horse run in 2016.
But it was the neoconservatives, not the paleocons, who amassed influence in the 1990s and took over the GOP's foreign policy wing. Veteran neocons like Michael Ledeen were joined by a younger generation of journalists and policymakers that included Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol (who founded The Weekly Standard in 1994), Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas J. Feith. The neocons consistently pushed for a hard line against Iraq and Iran. In his 1996 book, Freedom Betrayed, for example, Ledeen, an expert on Italian fascism, declared that the right, rather than the left, should adhere to the revolutionary tradition of toppling dictatorships. In his 2002 book, The War Against the Terror Masters, Ledeen stated , "Creative destruction is our middle name. We tear down the old order every day."
We all know the painful consequences of the neocons' obsession with creative destruction. In his second inaugural address, three and a half years after 9/11, George W. Bush cemented neoconservative ideology into presidential doctrine: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." The neocons' hubris had already turned into nemesis in Iraq, paving the way for an anti-war candidate in Barack Obama.
But it was Trump -- by virtue of running as a Republican -- who appeared to sound neoconservatism's death knell. He announced his Buchananesque policy of "America First" in a speech at Washington's Mayflower Hotel in 2016, signaling that he would not adhere to the long-standing Reaganite principles that had animated the party establishment.
The pooh-bahs of the GOP openly declared their disdain and revulsion for Trump, leading directly to the rise of the Never Trump movement, which was dominated by neocons. The Never Trumpers ended up functioning as an informal blacklist for Trump once he became president. Elliott Abrams, for example, who was being touted for deputy secretary of state in February 2017, was rejected when Steve Bannon alerted Trump to his earlier heresies (though he later reemerged, in January 2019, as Trump's special envoy to Venezuela, where he has pushed for regime change). Not a few other members of the Republican foreign policy establishment suffered similar fates.
Kristol's The Weekly Standard, which had held the neoconservative line through the Bush years and beyond , folded in 2018. Even the office building that used to house the American Enterprise Institute and the Standard, on the corner of 17th and M streets in Washington, has been torn down, leaving an empty, boarded-up site whose symbolism speaks for itself.
Still, a number of neocons, including David Frum, Max Boot, Anne Applebaum, Jennifer Rubin, and Kristol himself, have continued to condemn Trump vociferously for his thuggish instincts at home and abroad. They are not seeking high-profile government careers in the Trump administration and so have been able to reinvent themselves as domestic regime-change advocates, something they have done quite skillfully. In fact, their writings are more pungent now that they have been liberated from the costive confines of the movement.
It was Trump -- by virtue of running as a Republican -- who appeared to sound neoconservatism's death knell.But other neocons -- the ones who want to wield positions of influence and might -- have, more often than not, been able to hold their noses. Stephen Wertheim, writing in The New York Review of Books, has perceptively dubbed this faction the anti-globalist neocons. Led by John Bolton, they believe Trump performed a godsend by elevating the term globalism "from a marginal slur to the central foil of American foreign policy and Republican politics," Wertheim argued . The U.S. need not bother with pesky multilateral institutions or international agreements or the entire postwar order, for that matter -- it's now America's way or the highway.
And so, urged on by Mike Pompeo, a staunch evangelical Christian, and Iraq War–era figures like David Wurmser , Trump is apparently prepared to target Iran for destruction. In a tweet, he dismissed his national security adviser, the Bolton protégé Robert O'Brien, for declaring that the strike against Soleimani would force Iran to negotiate: "Actually, I couldn't care less if they negotiate," he said . "Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and 'don't kill your protesters.'" Neocons have been quick to recognize the new, more belligerent Trump -- and the potential maneuvering room he's now created for their movement. Jonathan S. Tobin, a former editor at Commentary and a contributor to National Review , rejoiced in Haaretz that "the neo-isolationist wing of the GOP, for which Carlson is a spokesperson, is losing the struggle for control of Trump's foreign policy." Tobin, however, added an important caveat: "When it comes to Iran, Trump needs no prodding from the likes of Bolton to act like a neoconservative. Just as important, the entire notion of anyone -- be it Carlson, former White House senior advisor Steve Bannon, or any cabinet official like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- being able to control Trump is a myth."
In other words, whether the neocons themselves are occupying top positions in the Trump administration is almost irrelevant. The ideology itself has reemerged to a degree that even Trump himself seems hard pressed to resist it -- if he even wants to.
How were the neocons able to influence another Republican presidency, one that was ostensibly dedicated to curbing their sway?
One reason is institutional. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Hudson Institute, and AEI have all been sounding the tocsin about Iran for decades. Once upon a time, the neocons were outliers. Now they're the new establishment, exerting a kind of gravitational pull on debate, pulling politicians and a variety of news organizations into their orbit. The Hudson Institute, for example, recently held an event with former Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who exhorted Iran's Revolutionary Guard to "peel away" from the mullahs and endorsed the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign. The event was hosted by Michael Doran, a former senior director on George W. Bush's National Security Council and a senior fellow at the institute, who wrote in The New York Times on January 3, "The United States has no choice, if it seeks to stay in the Middle East, but to check Iran's military power on the ground." Then there's Jamie M. Fly, a former staffer to Senator Marco Rubio who was appointed this past August to head Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; he previously co-authored an essay in Foreign Affairs contending that it isn't enough to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities: "If the United States seriously considers military action, it would be better to plan an operation that not only strikes the nuclear program but aims to destabilize the regime, potentially resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis once and for all."
Meanwhile, Wolfowitz, also writing in the Times , has popped up to warn Trump against trying to leave Syria: "To paraphrase Trotsky's aphorism about war, you may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle East is interested in you." With the "both-sides" ethos that prevails in the mainstream media, neocon ideas are just as good as any others for National Public Radio or The Washington Post, whose editorial page, incidentally, championed the Iraq War and has been imbued with a neocon, or at least liberal-hawk, tinge ever since Fred Hiatt took it over in 2000.
But there are plenty of institutions in Washington, and neoconservatism's seemingly inescapable influence cannot be chalked up to the swamp alone. Some etiolated form of what might be called Ledeenism lingered on before taking on new life at the outset of the Trump administration. Trump's overt animus toward Muslims, for example, meant that figures such as Frank Gaffney, who opposed arms-control treaties with Moscow as a member of the Reagan administration and resigned in protest of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, achieved a new prominence. During the Obama administration, Gaffney, the head of the Center for Security Policy, claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the White House and National Security Agency.
Above all, Trump hired Michael Flynn as his first national security adviser. Flynn was the co-author with Ledeen of a creepy tract called Field of Fight, in which they demanded a crusade against the Muslim world: "We're in a world war against a messianic mass movement of evil people." It was one of many signs that Trump was susceptible to ideas of a civilizational battle against "Islamo-fascism," which Norman Podhoretz and other neocons argued, in the wake of 9/11, would lead to World War III. In their millenarian ardor and inflexible support for Israel, the neocons find themselves in a position precisely cognate to evangelical Christians -- both groups of true believers trying to enact their vision through an apostate. But perhaps the neoconservatives' greatest strength lies in the realm of ideas that Irving Kristol identified more than three decades ago. The neocons remain the winners of that battle, not because their policies have made the world or the U.S. more secure, but by default -- because there are so few genuinely alternative ideas that are championed with equal zeal. The foreign policy discussion surrounding Soleimani's killing -- which accelerated Iran's nuclear weapons program, diminished America's influence in the Middle East, and entrenched Iran's theocratic regime -- has largely occurred on a spectrum of the neocons' making. It is a discussion that accepts premises of the beneficence of American military might and hegemony -- Hobbes's "ill game" -- and naturally bends the universe toward more war.
At a minimum, the traditional Republican hard-line foreign policy approach has now fused with neoconservatism so that the two are virtually indistinguishable. At a maximum, neoconservatism shapes the dominant foreign policy worldview in Washington, which is why Democrats were falling over themselves to assure voters that Soleimani -- a "bad guy" -- had it coming. Any objections that his killing might boomerang back on the U.S. are met with cries from the right that Democrats are siding with the enemy. This truly is a policy of "maximum pressure" at home and abroad.
As Trump takes an extreme hard line against Iran, the neoconservatives may ultimately get their long-held wish of a war with the ayatollahs. When it ends in a fresh disaster, they can always argue that it only failed because it wasn't prosecuted vigorously enough -- and the shuffle will begin again.
Jacob Heilbrunn is the editor of The National Interest and the author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons. @ JacobHeilbrunn
Read More Politics , The Soapbox , Donald Trump , Islamic Republic of Iran , Qassem Soleimani , Bill Kristol , Irving Kristol , David Frum , John Bolton , Norman Podhoretz , Doug Feith , Paul Wolfowitz , George W. Bush , George H.W. Bush , Ronald Reagan , Pat Buchanan , Mike Pompeo , Tom Cotton , Lindsey Graham , Rudy Giuliani , Gulf War , Iraq War , Cold War , Francis Fukuyama , Jeane Kirkpatrick
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Sep 13, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
"Carlson concluded by warning about the many other Boltons in the federal bureaucracy, saying that "war may be a disaster for America, but for John Bolton and his fellow neocons, it's always good business."
He went on to slam Trump's special representative for Iran and contender to replace Bolton, Brian Hook, as an "unapologetic neocon" who "has undisguised contempt for President Trump, and he particularly dislikes the president's nationalist foreign policy." Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif echoed Carlson hours later in a tweet, arguing that "Thirst for war – maximum pressure – should go with the warmonger-in-chief." Reuters and Haaretz
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Yes, people tend to forget that Bolton and all the other neocons are worshipers at the altar of a secular religion imported to the US by members of the Frankfurt School of Trotskyite German professors in the 1930s. These people had attempted get the Nazis to consider them allies in a quest for an ordered world. Alas for them they found that the Nazi scum would not accept them and in fact began preparations to hunt them down.
Thus the migration to America and in particular to the University of Chicago where they developed their credo of world revolution under that guidance of a few philosopher kings like Leo Strauss, the Wohlstetters and other academic "geniuses" They also began an enthusiastic campaign of recruitment of enthusiastic graduate students who carefully disguised themselves as whatever was most useful politically.
They are not conservative at all, not one bit. Carlson was absolutely right about that.
They despise nationalism. They despise the idea of countries. In that regard they are like all groups who aspire to globalist dominion for their particular ideas.
They should all be driven from government. pl
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Dec 12, 2017 | nytimes.com
From Donald Trump The Russian Poodle - The New York Times
In 1972, President Richard Nixon's White House dispatched burglars to bug Democratic Party offices. That Watergate burglary and related "dirty tricks," such as releasing mice at a Democratic press conference and paying a woman to strip naked and shout her love for a Democratic candidate, nauseated Americans - and impelled some of us kids at the time to pursue journalism.
Now in 2016 we have a political scandal that in some respects is even more staggering. Russian agents apparently broke into the Democrats' digital offices and tried to change the election outcome. President Obama on Friday suggested that this was probably directed by Russia's president, saying, "Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin."
In Watergate, the break-in didn't affect the outcome of the election. In 2016, we don't know for sure. There were other factors, but it's possible that Russia's theft and release of the emails provided the margin for Donald Trump's victory.
The CIA says it has "high confidence" that Russia was trying to get Trump elected, and, according to The Washington Post, the directors of the F.B.I. and national intelligence agree with that conclusion.
Both Nixon and Trump responded badly to the revelations, Nixon by ordering a cover-up and Trump by denouncing the CIA and, incredibly, defending Russia from the charges that it tried to subvert our election. I never thought I would see a dispute between America's intelligence community and a murderous foreign dictator in which an American leader sided with the dictator.
Let's be clear: This was an attack on America, less lethal than a missile but still profoundly damaging to our system. It's not that Trump and Putin were colluding to steal an election. But if the CIA is right, Russia apparently was trying to elect a president who would be not a puppet exactly but perhaps something of a lap dog - a Russian poodle.
In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair was widely (and unfairly) mocked as President George W. Bush's poodle, following him loyally into the Iraq war. The fear is that this time Putin may have interfered to acquire an ally who likewise will roll over for him.
Frankly, it's mystifying that Trump continues to defend Russia and Putin, even as he excoriates everyone else, from CIA officials to a local union leader in Indiana.
Now we come to the most reckless step of all: This Russian poodle is acting in character by giving important government posts to friends of Moscow, in effect rewarding it for its attack on the United States.
Rex Tillerson, Trump's nominee for secretary of state, is a smart and capable manager. Yet it's notable that he is particularly close to Putin, who had decorated Tillerson with Russia's "Order of Friendship."
Whatever our personal politics, how can we possibly want to respond to Russia's interference in our election by putting American foreign policy in the hands of a Putin friend?
Tillerson's closeness to Putin is especially troubling because of Trump's other Russia links. The incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, accepted Russian money to attend a dinner in Moscow and sat near Putin. A ledger shows $12.7 million in secret payments by a pro-Russia party in Ukraine to Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort. And the Trump family itself has business connections with Russia.
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Feb 17, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Bmc February 17, 2019 at 1:16 am
Why would Max Boot and Bill Kristol want to conquer the middle east in order to spread Americanism while at the same time having nothing but disdain for actual Americans themselves?Hmm (strokes beard)
Hmmmmm (strokes beard more rapidly)
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm (tears out beard furiously without abandon)
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Feb 17, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Anne Mendoza
February 15, 2019 at 2:10 amSo why are these professional war peddlers still around? For the same reason that members of the leadership class who failed and continue to fail in the Middle East are still around. There has not been an accounting at any level. There is just more talk of more war.jk , says: February 15, 2019 at 11:53 amJust like Eliot Abrams, John McCain, GWB, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld or any other neocon, there is no justice or punishment or even well deserved humiliation for these parasites. They are always misinformed, misguided, or "well intentioned."Stephen J. , says: February 15, 2019 at 1:43 pmThe US can interfere with sovereign governments and elections at will I guess and not be responsible for the the unintended consequences such as 500k+ killed in the Middle East since the Iraq and Afghan debacle.
There are sugar daddies from the MIC, the Natsec state (aka the Swamp), AIPAC, and even Jeff Bezos (benefactor of WaPo) that keep these guys employed.
You need to be more critical of Trump also as he is the one hiring these clowns. But other than that, keep up the good work Mr. Carlson!
The article states: " but by 2011 Boot had another war in mind. 'Qaddafi Must Go,' Boot declared in The Weekly Standard. In Boot's telling, the Libyan dictator had become a threat to the American homeland."
-- -- -
There is reported evidence that Libya was a war crime. And the perpetrators are Free. See info below:"They Speak "
"The destruction of Libya by NATO at the behest of the UK, the US and France was a crime, one dripping in the cant and hypocrisy of Western ideologues " John Wight, November 27, 2017.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/27/libya-chose-freedom-now-it-has-slavery/
They speak of "The Rule of Law" while breaking the law themselves
They are the dangerous hypocrites that bombed Libya, and created hell
Thousands upon thousands are dead in this unfortunate country
Many would still be alive, if our "leaders" had not been down and dirtyLibya is reportedly a war crime and the war criminals are free
Some of them are seen posturing on the world stage and others are on T.V.
Others have written books and others are retired from public office
And another exclaimed: "We came, we saw, he died" as murder was their accompliceThey even teamed up with terrorists to commit their bloody crimes
And this went unreported in the "media": was this by design?
There is a sickness and perversion loose in our society today
When war crimes can be committed and the "law" has nothing to sayAnother "leader" had a fly past to celebrate the bombing victory in this illegal war
Now Libya is in chaos, while bloody terrorists roam secure
And the NATO gang that caused all this horror and devastation
Are continuing their bloody bombings in other unfortunate nationsThe question must be asked: "Are some past and present leaders above the law?
Can they get away with bombing and killing, are they men of straw?
Whatever happened to law and order in the so- called "democracies"?
When those in power can get away with criminality: Is that not hypocrisy?There is no doubt that Libya was better off, before the "liberators" arrived
Now many of its unfortunate people are now struggling to exist and survive
The future of this war torn country now looks very sad and bleak
If only our "leaders" had left it alone; but instead hypocrisy: They Speak"The cause of the catastrophe in Libya in Libya was the seven month US-NATO blitzkrieg from March to October 2011 in which thousands of bombs and rockets rained down on that unfortunate land which was governed by President Muammar Ghaddafi whom the West was determined to overthrow by assisting a rebel movement." Brian Cloughley, 12.02.2019
[More info on all of this at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.com/2019/02/they-speak.html
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Feb 17, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Sid , February 15, 2019 at 7:27 pm
The goal of any "peddler" is to move product. When perpetual war is the product, then any rationale that leads to more sales will do. Enemies become interchangeable. The only thing to apologize for is the lack of sales.These two hucksters are not experts on the product itself, but rather experts at selling the product.
Pres. Eisenhower, a genuine "authority on armed conflict", warned us of such peddlers.
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Feb 17, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Renov8 February 16, 2019 at 8:01 am
Wouldn't surprise me one bit if Kristol and Boot work for the CIA and MI6. They tend to lead with placed stories, either before or after events, helping to persuade those who have yet to make up their minds or those looking to have someone else do their thinking for them.With the ongoing internet reformation we are experiencing, its a lot easier for the masses to see the bigger picture, the parties involved and the corrupt characters playing the puppet strings for the media.
Glad to see these shysters exposed for what they are propagandists.
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Feb 15, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
One thing that every late-stage ruling class has in common is a high tolerance for mediocrity. Standards decline, the edges fray, but nobody in charge seems to notice. They're happy in their sinecures and getting richer. In a culture like this, there's no penalty for being wrong. The talentless prosper, rising inexorably toward positions of greater power, and breaking things along the way. It happened to the Ottomans.
Max Boot is living proof that it's happening in America.
Boot is a professional foreign policy expert, a job category that doesn't exist outside of a select number of cities. Boot has degrees from Berkeley and Yale, and is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has written a number of books and countless newspaper columns on foreign affairs and military history. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, an influential British think tank, describes Boot as one of the "world's leading authorities on armed conflict."
None of this, it turns out, means anything. The professional requirements for being one ofthe world's Leading Authorities on Armed Conflict do not include relevant experience with armed conflict. Leading authorities on the subject don't need a track record of wise assessments or accurate predictions. All that's required are the circular recommendations of fellow credential holders. If other Leading Authorities on Armed Conflict induct you into their ranks, you're in. That's good news for Max Boot.
Boot first became famous in the weeks after 9/11 for outlining a response that the Bush administration seemed to read like a script, virtually word for word. While others were debating whether Kandahar or Kabul ought to get the first round of American bombs, Boot was thinking big. In October 2001, he published a piece in The Weekly Standard titled "The Case for American Empire."
"The September 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition," Boot wrote. "The solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation." In order to prevent more terror attacks in American cities, Boot called for a series of U.S.-led revolutions around the world, beginning in Afghanistan and moving swiftly to Iraq.
"Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul," Boot wrote. "To turn Iraq into a beacon of hope for the oppressed peoples of the Middle East: Now that would be a historic war aim. Is this an ambitious agenda? Without a doubt. Does America have the resources to carry it out? Also without a doubt."
In retrospect, Boot's words are painful to read, like love letters from a marriage that ended in divorce. Iraq remains a smoldering mess. The Afghan war is still in progress close to 20 years in. For perspective, Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of France, crowned himself emperor, defeated four European coalitions against him, invaded Russia, lost, was defeated and exiled, returned, and was defeated and exiled a second time, all in less time than the United States has spent trying to turn Afghanistan into a stable country.
Things haven't gone as planned. What's remarkable is that despite all the failure and waste and deflated expectations, defeats that have stirred self-doubt in the heartiest of men, Boot has remained utterly convinced of the virtue of his original predictions. Certainty is a prerequisite for Leading Authorities on Armed Conflict.
In the spring of 2003, with the war in Iraq under way, Boot began to consider new countries to invade. He quickly identified Syria and Iran as plausible targets, the latter because it was "less than two years" from building a nuclear bomb. North Korea made Boot's list as well. Then Boot became more ambitious. Saudi Arabia could use a democracy, he decided.
"If the U.S. armed forces made such short work of a hardened goon like Saddam Hussein, imagine what they could do to the soft and sybaritic Saudi royal family," Boot wrote.
Five years later, in a piece for The Wall Street Journal , Boot advocated for the military occupation of Pakistan and Somalia. The only potential problem, he predicted, was unreasonable public opposition to new wars.
"Ragtag guerrillas have proven dismayingly successful in driving out or neutering international peacekeeping forces," he wrote. "Think of American and French troops blown up in Beirut in 1983, or the 'Black Hawk Down' incident in Somalia in 1993. Too often, when outside states do agree to send troops, they are so fearful of casualties that they impose rules of engagement that preclude meaningful action."
In other words, the tragedy of foreign wars isn't that Americans die, but that too few Americans are willing to die. To solve this problem, Boot recommended recruiting foreign mercenaries. "The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times . When foreigners get killed fighting for America, he noted, there's less political backlash at home.
♦♦♦
American forces, documented or not, never occupied Pakistan, but by 2011 Boot had another war in mind. "Qaddafi Must Go," Boot declared in The Weekly Standard . In Boot's telling, the Libyan dictator had become a threat to the American homeland. "The only way this crisis will end -- the only way we and our allies can achieve our objectives in Libya -- is to remove Qaddafi from power. Containment won't suffice."
In the end, Gaddafi was removed from power, with ugly and long-lasting consequences. Boot was on to the next invasion. By late 2012, he was once again promoting attacks on Syria and Iran, as he had nine years before. In a piece for The New York Times , Boot laid out "Five Reasons to Intervene in Syria Now."
Overthrowing the Assad regime, Boot predicted, would "diminish Iran's influence" in the region, influence that had grown dramatically since the Bush administration took Boot's advice and overthrew Saddam Hussein, Iran's most powerful counterbalance. To doubters concerned about a complex new war, Boot promised the Syria intervention could be conducted "with little risk."
Days later, Boot wrote a separate piece for Commentary magazine calling for American bombing of Iran. It was a busy week, even by the standards of a Leading Authority on Armed Conflict. Boot conceded that "it remains a matter of speculation what Iran would do in the wake of such strikes." He didn't seem worried.
Listed in one place, Boot's many calls for U.S.-led war around the world come off as a parody of mindless warlike noises, something you might write if you got mad at a country while drunk. ("I'll invade you!!!") Republicans in Washington didn't find any of it amusing. They were impressed. Boot became a top foreign policy adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008, to Mitt Romney in 2012, and to Marco Rubio in 2016.
Everything changed when Trump won the Republican nomination. Trump had never heard of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He had no idea Max Boot was a Leading Authority on Armed Conflict. Trump was running against more armed conflicts. He had no interest in invading Pakistan. Boot hated him.
As Trump found himself accused of improper ties to Vladimir Putin, Boot agitated for more aggressive confrontation with Russia. Boot demanded larger weapons shipments to Ukraine. He called for effectively expelling Russia from the global financial system, a move that might be construed as an act of war against a nuclear-armed power. The stakes were high, but with signature aplomb Boot assured readers it was "hard to imagine" the Russian government would react badly to the provocation. Those who disagreed Boot dismissed as "cheerleaders" for Putin and the mullahs in Iran.
Boot's stock in the Washington foreign policy establishment rose. In 2018, he was hired by The Washington Post as a columnist. The paper's announcement cited Boot's "expertise on armed conflict."
It is possible to isolate the precise moment that Trump permanently alienated the Republican establishment in Washington: February 13, 2016. There was a GOP primary debate that night in Greenville, South Carolina, so every Republican in Washington was watching. Seemingly out of nowhere, Trump articulated something that no party leader had ever said out loud. "We should never have been in Iraq," Trump announced, his voice rising. "We have destabilized the Middle East."
Many in the crowd booed, but Trump kept going: "They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. And they knew there were none."
Pandemonium seemed to erupt in the hall, and on television. Shocked political analysts declared that the Trump presidential effort had just euthanized itself. Republican voters, they said with certainty, would never accept attacks on policies their party had espoused and carried out.
Republican voters had a different reaction. They understood that adults sometimes change their minds based on evidence. They themselves had come to understand that the Iraq war was a mistake. They appreciated hearing something verboten but true.
Rival Republicans denounced Trump as an apostate. Voters considered him brave. Trump won the South Carolina primary, and shortly after that, the Republican nomination.
Republicans in Washington never recovered. When Trump attacked the Iraq War and questioned the integrity of the people who planned and promoted it, he was attacking them. They hated him for that. Some of them became so angry, it distorted their judgment and character.
♦♦♦
Bill Kristol is probably the most influential Republican strategist of the post-Reagan era. Born in 1954, Kristol was the second child of the writer Irving Kristol, one of the founders of neoconservatism.
The neoconservatism of Irving Kristol and his friends was jarring to the ossified liberal establishment of the time, but in retrospect it was basically a centrist philosophy: pragmatic, tolerant of a limited welfare state, not rigidly ideological. By the time Bill Kristol got done with it 40 years later, neoconservatism was something else entirely.
Almost from the moment Operation Desert Storm concluded in 1991, Kristol began pushing for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In 1997, The Weekly Standard ran a cover story titled "Saddam Must Go." If the United States didn't launch a ground invasion of Iraq, the lead editorial warned, the world should "get ready for the day when Saddam has biological and chemical weapons at the tips of missiles aimed at Israel and at American forces in the Gulf."
After the September 11 attacks, Kristol found a new opening to start a war with Iraq. In November 2001, he and Robert Kagan wrote a piece in The Weekly Standard alleging that Saddam Hussein hosted a training camp for Al Qaeda fighters where terrorists had trained to hijack planes. They suggested that Mohammad Atta, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was actively collaborating with Saddam's intelligence services. On the basis of no evidence, they accused Iraq of fomenting the anthrax attacks on American politicians and news outlets.
Under ordinary circumstances, Bill Kristol would be famous for being wrong. Kristol still goes on television regularly, but it's not to apologize for the many demonstrably untrue things he's said about the Middle East, or even to talk about foreign policy. Instead, Kristol goes on TV to attack Donald Trump.
Trump's election seemed to undo Bill Kristol entirely. He lost his job at The Weekly Standard after more than 20 years, forced out by owners who were panicked about declining readership. He seemed to spend most of his time on Twitter ranting about Trump.
Before long he was ranting about the people who elected Trump. At an American Enterprise Institute panel event in February 2017, Kristol made the case for why immigrants are more impressive than native-born Americans. "Basically if you are in free society, a capitalist society, after two, three, four generations of hard work, everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled, whatever." Most Americans, Kristol said, "grew up as spoiled kids and so forth."
In February 2018, Kristol tweeted that he would "take in a heartbeat a group of newly naturalized American citizens over the spoiled native-born know-nothings" who supported Trump.
By the spring of 2018, Kristol was considering a run for president himself. He was still making the case for the invasion of Iraq, as well as pushing for a new war, this time in Syria, and maybe in Lebanon and Iran, too. Like most people in Washington, he'd learned nothing at all.
Tucker Carlson is the host of Fox News 's Tucker Carlson Tonight and author of Ship of Fools: How A Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution (Simon & Schuster). This excerpt is taken from that book.
Patrick Constantine February 14, 2019 at 10:50 pm
Trump isn't the only one hated by useless establishment Republicans – with essays like this so will Tucker. Thanks for this takedown of these two warmongering know-nothings. I wish Trump all the time was like he was at that debate in S Carolina where he said what every American knows: the Iraq invasion was stupid and we should not have done it!Anne Mendoza , says: February 15, 2019 at 2:10 amSo why are these professional war peddlers still around? For the same reason that members of the leadership class who failed and continue to fail in the Middle East are still around. There has not been an accounting at any level. There is just more talk of more war.polistra , says: February 15, 2019 at 3:54 amWell, the headline pretty much answers its own question if you know the purpose of Experts. In any subject matter from science to economics to politics, Experts are paid to be wrong. Nobody has to be paid to observe reality accurately with his own senses and rational mind. Every living creature does that all the time. It's the basic requirement of survival.snake charmer , says: February 15, 2019 at 6:49 amCreating complex and convincing false narratives to support demonic purposes is HARD WORK, and requires big pay.
""The September 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition," Boot wrote. "The solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation.""Mike , says: February 15, 2019 at 6:55 amIn other words, if we had only squandered even more blood and treasure, why, everything would have been fine.
Why do so many true believers end up with some variation on the true believer's wheeze: "Communism didn't fail ! It was never tried!" Then again one can't be sure that Boot is a true believer. He might be a treacherous snake trying to use American power to advance a foreign agenda.
This is an Exocet missile of an article. Both hulls compromised, taking water. Nice.John S , says: February 15, 2019 at 7:11 amThis is beautiful, Boot has been rewarded for every horrible failure...Tom Gorman , says: February 15, 2019 at 8:36 amMr. Carlson,Dawg , says: February 15, 2019 at 9:29 amMax Boot has indeed been an advocate of overseas intervention, but you fail to point out that he has recanted his support of the Iraq War. In his 2018 book "The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I left the American Right," he states:
". . . I can finally acknowledge the obvious: it (The Iraq War) was all a big mistake. Saddam Hussein was heinous, but Iraq was better off under his tyrannical rule than the chaos that followed. I regret advocating the invasion and feel guilty about all the lives lost. It was a chastening lesson in the limits of American power."
I'm glad to see that Boot, along with yourself and other Republicans, realize that American use of force must have a clear objective with reasonable chance of success. I suggest you send this article to John Bolton. I'm not sure he agrees with you.
Great article, Mr. Tucker. I hope folks also read Mearsheimer & Walt on the Iraq War. From chapter 8 of their book: http://mailstar.net/iraq-war.htmlDavid LeRoy Newland , says: February 15, 2019 at 9:34 amExcellent article. It's a shame that the Bush era GOP took Boot and Kristol seriously. That poor judgment led Bush to make the kinds of mistakes that gave Democrats the opening they needed to gain power, which in turn led them to make even more harmful mistakes.Collin , says: February 15, 2019 at 9:55 amBeing against the Iraq 2 I find this populist arguing very 'eye-rolling' as you were pimping this war to death back in the day. (In fact I remember Jon Stewart being one of the few 'pundits' that questioned the war in 2003 & 2004.) And has dovish as Trump as been, his administration is still filled with Hawks and if you are concerned about wars then maybe use your TV show for instead of whining for past mistakes:John In Michigan , says: February 15, 2019 at 9:59 am1) The administration action in Iran is aggressive and counter-productive to long term peace. The nuclear deal was an effective way of ensuring Iran controlling behavior for 15 years as the other parties, Europe and China, wanted to trade with Iran. (Additionally it makes our nation depend more on the Saudia relationship in which Washington should be slowly moving away from.)
2) Like it or not, Venezuela is starting down the steps of mission creep for the Trump Administration. Recommend the administration stay away from peace keeping troops and suggest this is China's problem. (Venezuela in debt to their eyeballs with China.)
3) Applaud the administration with peace talks with NK but warn them not to overstate their accomplishments. It is ridiculous that the administration signed big nuclear deals with NK that don't exist.
I find it amazing that Boot is considered one of the "world's leading authorities on armed conflict,"yet never appears to have served in any branch of the armed forces, nor even heard a shot fired in anger. He is proof that academic credentials do not automatically confer "expertise."Packard Day , says: February 15, 2019 at 10:26 amAny war, anytime, any place, and cause just so long as American boys and girls can be in the middle of it.Joshua Xanadu , says: February 15, 2019 at 10:46 amWelcome to the American NeoCon movement, recently joined by Republican Never Trumpers, elected Democrats, and a host of far too many underemployed Beltway Generals & Admirals.
From a reformed Leftist, thank you Tucker for calling out the stank from the Republicans. The detailed compilation of lowlights from Max Boot and Bill Kristol (don't forget Robert Kagan!) should be etched in the minds of the now pro-war Democratic Party establishment.Taras 77 , says: February 15, 2019 at 10:57 amBeing a neocon war monger means that you will never have to say you are sorry. The press will give them a pass every single time.Paul Reidinger , says: February 15, 2019 at 11:07 amIt is all about Israel-being wrong 100% of the time means it is all good because it was in the service of Israel.
Yet another reason not to read the Washington Post.Anja Mast , says: February 15, 2019 at 11:13 amTucker!!! When did you start writing for TAC?!?!Joe , says: February 15, 2019 at 11:14 amI laughed out loud while reading this, and continued laughing through to the end, until I saw who had the audacity to tell the truth about these utter incompetent failures (who have failed upwards for more than a decade now) who call themselves "foreign policy experts." Yeah -- "experts" at being so moronically wrong that you really start wondering if perhaps the benjamins from another middle eastern nation, that can't be named, has something to do with their worthless opinions, which always seem to do made for the benifit of the nameless nation.
So hurrah for you!!! Let the truth set us all free! Praise the Lord & Sing Songs of Praise to his Name!!!! Literally that's how great it is to hear the pure & unvarnished TRUTH spoken out loud in this publication!
I hope you get such awesome feedback that you are asked to continue to bless us with more truths! Thank you! You totally made my day!
And thank you for your service to this country, where it used to be considered patriotic to speak the truth honestly & plainly!
Why Are These Professional War Peddlers Still Around? Simple, leaders like Trump keep them around, e.g. Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams.David Biddington , says: February 15, 2019 at 11:22 amJohn Bolton and Eliot Abrams on Team Trump, gearing up with Bibi to attack Iran is of no concern to sir?George Crosley , says: February 15, 2019 at 11:22 am"Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul," Boot wrote.Frank Goodpasture III , says: February 15, 2019 at 11:29 amTo which the reader might reasonably reply, "What do you mean we , Paleface?"
When I see Max Boot or Bill Kristol in uniform, carrying a rifle, and trudging with their platoon along the dusty roads of the Middle East, I'll begin to pay attention to their bleats and jeremiads.
Until that day, I'll continue to view them as a pair of droning, dull-as-ditchwater members of the 45th Word-processing Brigade. (Company motto: "Let's you and him fight!")
It is my understanding that HRC led the charge to overthrow and hang Gaddafi in spite of a reluctant Obama administration. Did Boot, in fact, influence her?marku52 , says: February 15, 2019 at 11:29 am"Most Americans, Kristol said, "grew up as spoiled kids and so forth."" Unintentional irony, one must presume. Still it is astonishing that it took someone as addled as DJT to point out the obvious–Invading Iraq was a massive mistake.Jimmy Lewis , says: February 15, 2019 at 11:41 amWhere were the rest of the "adults"
Boot, Kristal, Cheney, and Rumsfeld should all be in jail for war crimes.jk , says: February 15, 2019 at 11:53 amJust like Eliot Abrams, John McCain, GWB, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld or any other neocon, there is no justice or punishment or even well deserved humiliation for these parasites. They are always misinformed, misguided, or "well intentioned."Allen , says: February 15, 2019 at 12:09 pmThe US can interfere with sovereign governments and elections at will I guess and not be responsible for the the unintended consequences such as 500k+ killed in the Middle East since the Iraq and Afghan debacle.
There are sugar daddies from the MIC, the Natsec state (aka the Swamp), AIPAC, and even Jeff Bezos (benefactor of WaPo) that keep these guys employed.
You need to be more critical of Trump also as he is the one hiring these clowns. But other than that, keep up the good work Mr. Carlson!
These Chairborne Rangers in Washington know nothing about war. They are the flip side of the radical Dems. "Hey, we lost in 2016. Let's do MORE of what made us lose in the first place!"D , says: February 15, 2019 at 12:53 pmWould've been nice if you wrote this about Bolton, Adams, Pompeo, Pence, or any of the other sundry neocon lunatics in the Trump administration.J Thomsen , says: February 15, 2019 at 1:07 pmNonetheless, always good to see a takedown of Boot and Kristol.
The GOP is as much an enemy to the Trump revolution as the left. The Bush/Clinton/Obama coalition runs DC – controls the federal workforce, and colludes to run the Federal government for themselves and their pet constituents.Joe from Pa , says: February 15, 2019 at 1:10 pmTrump should have stuck it out on the shutdown until those federal workers left. I think it was called RIF wherein after 30 days, he could dump the lot of em.
THE GOP IS NOT THE PARTY OF LESS GOVERNMENT. That's there motto for busy conservatives who don't have the time or inclination to monitor both sides of the swamp.
THEY ALL HAVE GILLS . we need to starve em out.
Lots of spilled ink here that's pretty meaningless without an answer to the following: Why does Trump employ John Bolton and Elliot Abrams? Explain Trump and Pence and Pompeo's Iran obsession and how it's any better than Kristol/Boot?sanford sklansky , says: February 15, 2019 at 1:18 pmWhat's going on in Yemen?
Funny how when liberals said it was wrong to be in Iraq they were vilified. Yes some conservatives changed their minds. Trump however is all over the map when it comes to wars. http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176527/
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Jan 20, 2019 | www.unz.com
The Roman poet Ovid's masterful epic The Metamorphoses includes the memorable opening line regarding the poem's central theme of transformation. He wrote In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora , which has been translated as "Of shapes transformed to bodies strange, I purpose to entreat "
Ovid framed his narrative around gods, heroes and quasi-historical events but if he were around today, he would no doubt be fascinated by the many transformations of the group that has defined itself as neoconservative.The movement began in a cafeteria in City College of New York in the 1930s, where a group of radical Jewish students would meet to discuss politics and developments in Europe. Many of the founders were from the far left, communists of the Trotskyite persuasion, which meant that they believed in permanent global revolution led by a vanguard party. The transformation into conservatives of a neo-persuasion took place when they were reportedly "mugged by reality" into accepting that the standard leftist formulae were not working to transform the world rapidly enough. As liberal hawks, they then hitched their wagon to the power of the United States to bring about transformation by force if necessary and began to infiltrate institutions like the Pentagon to give themselves the tools to achieve their objectives, which included promotion of regime change wars, full spectrum global dominance and unconditional support for Israel.
The neocons initially found a home with Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, but they moved on in the 1970s and 1980s to prosper under Ronald Reagan as well as under Democrat Bill Clinton. Their ability to shape policy peaked under George W. Bush, when they virtually ran the Pentagon and were heavily represented in both the national security apparatus and in the White House. They became adept at selling their mantra of "strong national defense" to whomever was buying, including to President Obama, even while simultaneously complaining about his administration's "weakness."
The neoconservatives lined up behind Hillary Clinton in 2016, appalled by Donald Trump's condemnation of their centerpiece war in Iraq and even more so by his pledge to end the wars in Asia and nation-building projects while also improving relations with the Russians. They worked actively against the Republican candidate both before he was nominated and elected and did everything they could to stop him, including libeling him as a Russian agent.
When Trump was elected, it, therefore, seemed that the reign of the neocons had ended, but chameleonlike, they have changed shape and are now ensconced both in some conservative as well as in an increasing number of progressive circles in Washington and in the media. Against all odds, they have even captured key posts in the White House itself with the naming of John Bolton as National Security Adviser and Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. Bolton's Chief of Staff is Fred Fleitz , a leading neocon and Islamophobe while last week Trump added Iran hawk Richard Goldberg to the National Security Council as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction. Goldberg is an alumnus of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is the leading neocon think tank calling incessantly for war with Iran.
Meanwhile, the neocon metamorphosis is nearly complete as many of the neocons, who started out as Democrats, have returned home, where they are being welcomed for their hardline foreign policy viewpoint. Glenn Greenwald reports that , based on polling of party supporters, the Democrats have gone full-Hillary and are now by far more hawkish than the Republicans, unwilling to leave either Syria or Afghanistan.
The neocon survival and rejuvenation is particularly astonishing in that they have been wrong about virtually everything, most notably the catastrophic Iraq War. They have never been held accountable for anything, though one should note that accountability is not a prominent American trait, at least since Vietnam. What is important is that neocon views have been perceived by the media and punditry as being part of the Establishment consensus, which provides them with access to programming all across the political spectrum. That is why neocon standard-bearers like Bill Kristol and Max Boot have been able to move effortlessly from Fox News to MSNBC where they are fêted by the likes of Rachel Maddow. They applauded the Iraq War when the Establishment was firmly behind it and are now trying to destroy Donald Trump's presidency because America's elite is behind that effort.
Indeed, the largely successful swing by the neocons from right to left has in some ways become more surreal, as an increasing number of progressive spokesmen and institutions have lined up behind their perpetual warfare banner. The ease with which the transformation took place reveals, interestingly, that the neocons have no real political constituency apart from voters who feel threatened and respond by supporting perpetual war, but they do share many common interests with the so-called liberal interventionists. Neocons see a global crisis for the United States defined in terms of power while the liberals see the struggle as a moral imperative, but the end result is the same: intervention by the United States. This fusion is clearly visible in Washington, where the Clintons' Center for American Progress (CAP) is now working on position papers with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
One of the most active groups attacking President Trump is "Republicans for the Rule of Law," founded by Bill Kristol in January 2018, as a component of Defending Democracy Together (DDT), a 501(c)4 lobbying group that also incorporates projects called The Russia Tweets and Republicans Against Putin. Republicans Against Putin promotes the view that President Trump is not "stand[ing] up to [Vladimir] Putin" and calls for more aggressive investigation of the Russian role in the 2016 election .
DDT is a prime example of how the neoconservatives and traditional liberal interventionists have come together as it is in part funded by Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire co-founder of eBay who has provided DDT with $600,000 in two grants through his Democracy Fund Voice , also a 501(c)4.
Omidyar is a political liberal who has given millions of dollars to progressive organizations and individuals since 1999. Indeed, he is regarded as a top funder of liberal causes in the United States and even globally together with Michael Bloomberg and George Soros. His Democracy Fund awarded $9 million in grants in 2015 alone.
Last week, the Omidyar-Kristol connection may have deepened with an announcement regarding the launch of the launch of a new webzine The Bulwark , which would clearly be at least somewhat intended to take the place of the recently deceased Weekly Standard. It is promoting itself as the center of the "Never Trump Resistance" and it is being assumed that at least some of the Omidyar money is behind it .
Iranian-born Omidyar's relationship with Kristol is clearly based on the hatred that the two share regarding Donald Trump.
Omidyar has stated that Trump is a "dangerous authoritarian demagogue endorsing Donald Trump immediately disqualifies you from any position of public trust."
He has tweeted that Trump suffers from "failing mental capacity" and is both "corrupt and incapacitated."
Omidyar is what he is – a hardcore social justice warrior who supports traditional big government and globalist liberal causes, most of which are antithetical to genuine conservatives.
But what is interesting about the relationship with Kristol is that it also reveals what the neoconservatives are all about. Kristol and company have never been actual conservatives on social issues, a topic that they studiously avoid, and their foreign policy is based on two principles: creating a state of perpetual war based on fearmongering about foreign enemies while also providing unlimited support for Israel. Kristol hates Trump because he threatens the war agenda while Omidyar despises the president for traditional progressive reasons.
That hatred is the tie that binds and it is why Bill Kristol, a man possessing no character and values whatsoever, is willing to take Pierre Omidyar's money while Pierre is quite happy to provide it to destroy a common enemy, the President of the United States of America.
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