Neocons March Left

American Conservative Union Foundation ^ | 29 Sep 04 | Timothy P. Carney

[Ed Current]

David Frum tells us that "[w]ar is a great clarifier" because it "forces people to choose sides." It certainly does. For example, it forced us to team up with Joe Stalin in 1941. War forced the U.S. to side with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and the Saudi royal family in the 1990s. Let's not forget that great clarifying moment when the Cold War forced us to fund Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

In the same way, our war against Iraq created political alliances domestically that may have been unnatural, and which now may be falling apart. Specifically, some moderate-to-liberal hawks temporarily rose to the forefront of the American right and started calling the shots--in some cases declaring who was and who wasn't fit to be part of the conservative movement.

But it is only in these post-war days (although many object to the claim that the war is over) that the real clarifying happens.

Many of these hawks, called neocons, spent the aftermath of 9/11 and the run-up to the Iraq war denouncing the conservatives who voiced opposition to Bush's planned wars. But now, after the war, with some of the dust settled, their differences with the right are becoming clearer, and their continued alliance with conservatives comes into question.

While neocons have reputations as esoteric Straussians, they have been straightforward in recent months in clarifying their worldview.

Frum: "I Am not Pro-Life"

In his April 7, 2003 cover story for National Review, Frum declared it unimaginable that Bob Novak (my boss), Pat Buchanan, Scott McConnell and other anti-war writers "would call themselves 'conservatives.'"

These "unpatriotic conservatives" were engaged in "a war against America." Frum accused Novak of "terror denial" for saying al-Qaeda is more dangerous than Hezbollah. Novak was guilty of "espousing defeatism" for writing, "The CIA, in its present state, is viewed by its Capitol Hill overseers as incapable of targeting bin Laden."

First, how is saying one Islamic terrorist organization is a bigger threat than another "denying" anything? On the second charge, Novak is called unpatriotic for quoting sources who judge that the CIA is in bad shape and will have trouble catching bin Laden (both judgments are evidently true and now universally embraced in the Republican Party).

But Frum went on and declared that these "paleocons" "are thinking about defeat and wishing for it, and they will take pleasure in it if it should happen."

"They began by hating the neoconservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country."

These declarations amounted to an attempted purge. David Frum was setting the bounds of permissible dissent and declaring this odd grouping, which included free-traders, protectionists, left-coast anarchists and Latin-Mass Catholics, to be a faction beyond the pale.

It was an interesting role for Frum to assume, considering that the Canadian-born writer is not what one would call a typical conservative. As one clear example of his distance from the American right, he began a November 6, 2003 post in his Diary blog on NRO by declaring: "Now let me say right off: I am not pro-life."

Frum ended his paragraph with "I have thought about this issue just as hard as you have, and I'm not going to change my mind."

The Frum situation is thick with irony on two counts: first is the odd spectacle of a devout pro-choicer saying who is not a conservative; and, second, his charges against the paleos last year could be judged today to ring at least as true against the neos.

Kristol: "Common Cause"

A year after the Iraq war and after Frum's attempted purge, the New York Times went to William Kristol to ask him his thoughts on Iraq now that things weren't moving as smoothly as he had hoped.

Kristol told the Times that John Kerry had the real answer to the problems there: we need to send more troops. Kristol explained that this agreement between the neocons and the Democrats should surprise no one:

I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan or any of the lesser Buchananites on the right. If you read the last few issues of The Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives. Kristol continued, "If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me, too."

Making "common cause" with the antiwar left was the first charge in Frum's indictment that Buchanan and Novak had gone "far, far beyond" the bounds of permissible dissent.

Lest the White House not understand the implicit threat, Kristol added more; summed up in the Times' closing paragraph:

Recalling a famous saying of his father, the neoconservative pioneer Irving Kristol, that a neoconservative was "a liberal who has been mugged by reality," the younger Mr. Kristol joked that now they might end up as neoliberals--defined as "neoconservatives who had been mugged by reality in Iraq."

In short, Kristol was saying to the GOP, "if you don't continue your Wilsonian march, we will find a party (maybe Wilson's) that will."

Again, no one should have been surprised. Kristol's close ally, columnist Charles Krauthammer, never hid his admiration for Wilson, FDR and Truman, who he recently called "three giants of the twentieth century." Neocon publisher Lord Conrad Black wrote a paean to FDR. Kristol has given LBJ the A-Okay.

The neocons--and they admit this--are hawks first, and Republicans or conservatives second.

Boot: "Virtually Inevitable Defeat"

Another unpardonable sin of Frum's targets was "espous[ing] a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism." This charge is an odd one coming from a neocon, considering their success as a group is tied to their pragmatism. Neocons, it is said, are just conservatives who understand how the real world works.

So, it is certainly odd for neocons to tell the rest of the right to be more idealistic.

Their standard operating procedure is to criticize cultural conservatives for tilting at windmills in a dream world and trying to repeal modernity.

As a case in point, take Max Boot's Los Angeles Times article on homosexual marriage headlined: "The Right Can't Win This Fight." Boot contends that while we are not "in cultural decline," our society has irrevocably embraced the entire sexual revolution and more. The legitimacy of homosexual marriage is the inevitable next step and we are fools if we try to fight it.

Boot advises conservatives to surrender:

Faced with virtually inevitable defeat, Republicans would be wise not to expend too much political capital pushing for a gay marriage amendment to the Constitution.
What happened to Frum's demand that conservatism must now be "an optimistic conservatism"? For the neocons, this marching order is for foreign policy, not for culture wars.

Krauthammer: "Human Rights and Social Justice"

After we failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz explained to Vanity Fair that that didn't mean the war was fought for no good reason. There were many other reasons to overthrow Hussein, he explained, but the war cabinet settled on WMD because it was the one everyone could agree on.

Into this void came Krauthammer, perhaps the most eloquent and prolific pro-war writer on the right. In a May 16, 2003 article headlined, "Iraq: A Moral Reckoning," Krauthammer listed the virtues of the war.

His three bullet points were "Human rights," "Economic equity and social justice," and "The environment." We were also reminded at this time that the war had been authorized--indeed compelled--by UN resolution 1441.

So a war most conservatives had backed as a preemptive and unapologetic defense of our homeland and our allies from killer weapons was being explained to us after the fact as a humanitarian mission and an enforcement of UN resolutions.

In other words, the war had become a liberal war. Liberal not just as a social justice or UN mission, but liberal as part of an ambitious plan to use the state to remake society.

Many neocons after Baghdad fell immediately called for going onto Syria. Today it is Iran. The Palestinians and the Saudis, we are told, should also be on our list.

Just reading the Krauthammer headlines and the Kristol covers, we begin to see the bigger picture that is the neocons' vision. Iraq was just one piece in the puzzle of reshaping the entire Middle East and spreading Democracy to every corner of the world--an undertaking many conservatives (not just the paleos) would judge more fitting for the left's utopianists than the right's conservatives.

After Hussein has fallen, the neocons, tireless soldiers, march on. They tell us to abandon the culture wars at home and instead to find more overseas battles. And they let us know that if we balk as the battle moves to fronts we never imagined, they will have no trouble finding a new movement, and even a new president, to march beneath their flag.

Tim Carney is a reporter for the Evans-Novak Political Report.

[Ed Current]

"Now let me say right off: I am not pro-life."

Frum ended his paragraph with "I have thought about this issue just as hard as you have, and I'm not going to change my mind."

Mark Harrington, "Terror in the Womb: The Forgotten Victims," The Radio Activist, 11 Sept 2003. "Interestingly, more Americans were killed by abortionists on September 11 (about 4,300) than were killed by Islamic terrorists (about 3,000). Assuming 3,000 deaths among the 50,000 people who worked at the World Trade Center, about one in seventeen was killed. One in three unborn babies is killed by abortion every day. On September 11, it would have been six times safer to be a worker in the Twin Towers than it was to be a baby in her mother's womb." http://www.markharringtonlive.com/main/index.php?option=articles&task=viewarticle&artid=7&Itemid=3

"State Homicide Laws That Recognize Unborn Victims (Fetal Homicide)," National Right to Life Committee, February 20, 2004 http://www.nrlc.org/Unborn_Victims/Statehomicidelaws092302.html

The testimony of American Holocaust survivor, Gianna Jessen, on 20 July 2000 before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution concerning the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2000," says it all to those who still have a conscience:

"My name is Gianna Jessen. I would like to say thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I count it no small thing to speak the truth. I depend solely on the grace of God to do this. I am 23 years old. I was aborted and I did not die. My biological mother was 7 months pregnant when she went to Planned Parenthood in southern California and they advised her to have a late-term saline abortion.

A saline abortion is a solution of salt saline that is injected into the mothers womb. The baby then gulps the solution, it burns the baby inside and out and then the mother is to deliver a dead baby within 24 hours.

This happened to me! I remained in the solution for approximately 18 hours and was delivered ALIVE on April 6, 1977 at 6:00 am in a California abortion clinic. There were young women in the room who had already been given their injections and were waiting to deliver dead babies. When they saw me they experienced the horror of murder. A nurse called an ambulance, while the abortionist was not yet on duty, and had me transferred to the hospital. I weighed a mere two pounds. I was saved by the sheer power of Jesus Christ.

Ladies and gentleman I should be blind, burned.....I should be dead! And yet, I live! Due to a lack of oxygen supply during the abortion I live with cerebral palsy. [...] Adolph Hitler once said: '"The receptive ability of the great masses is only very limited, their understanding is small; on the other hand their forgetfulness is great. This being so, all effective propaganda should be limited to a very few points which in turn, should be used as slogans until the very last man is able to imagine what is meant by such words.'" Today's slogans are: "'a woman's right to choose"' and "freedom of choice," etcetera." http://www.house.gov/judiciary/jess0720.htm

 

 

[Bogey78O]

Let's not forget that great clarifying moment when the Cold War forced us to fund Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Nice line. Too bad it's not true.

[Gustafm1000]

All I know is I hate Bill Kristol. He was for McCain in '00 to the point of ripping on Bush constantly, has been a lukewarm supporter in Bush's first term and would jump ship in a second if it would benefit him and his worldview. I've said it before, other than Fred Barnes the Weekly Standard can eat a d***. I'll take most of the National Review writers any day of the week.

[Ed Current]

Bill Kristol. He was for INSANE McCain in '00

The same McCain that the demoncrats wanted to run with Kerry.

That about sums it up.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Now let me say right off: I am not pro-life."

The statement of a true dork. No genuine conservative need listen to this type of smarmy crap.

[etradervic]

This isolationist element is not representative of conservatives.

Also, the neoconservative movement started in the '60s not after 911.

[Shermy]

Not true indeed.

This writer is a character. He thinks picks out four guys and cherry picks opinions they have different than his own. One isn't pro-life? What if the others are, doesn't that ruin the basis of his argument?

Krauthammer makes arguments appealing to liberal mindsets and that makes him a traitor? This writer suffers from a sense of purity.

[swilhelm73]

Wow, the author can't even get past the first paragraph without lying...

Hussein was a Soviet ally in the 80s, not an American one.

And America never funded Osama.

Though I see the author manages to list off leftist talking point after leftist talking point.

[ImpBill]

" This writer suffers from a sense of purity."

He would fit right in, here on FR.

The Devil made me say that.

/;-)

[pissant]

the writer is a complete idiot. Just like Bill Kristol.

[ex-snook]

"The neocons--and they admit this--are hawks first, and Republicans or conservatives second. "

"Upon futher review" are hawks chickenhawks first.

And that's why I'm Conservative first.

[tame]

the 'con' in "neocon" is an abbreviation for 'con-artist', and NOT 'conservative'.

[swilhelm73]

Neocon
noun

1) Leftspeak for a Jewish conservative

2) Leftspeak for a conservative

3) Leftspeak for a conservative who isn't a useful idiot

[hlmencken3]

Could someone point me to an explanation of why "neocons" believe essentially that America is exempt from history? That Islam has somehow changed its collective mind about its repeated attempts to conquer all non-Muslims?

The USA being the leading non-Muslim country, it seems natural that jihadis would target America.

Some of these neocons seem smart. They must have answered these questions. Anyone know where?

[Remember_Salamis]

I think the PaleoCons and Buchananites dislike jews, I mean "NeoCons", as much as they dislike liberals. The fact is that there are multiple factions withing the GOP, and we have disagreements (unlike the Democratic Party). Shoot, PaleoCons are protectionists, and I don't see that completely jiving with the rest of the party. We have overlapping issue in common.

---

Religious right - or some argue interchangeably, the Christian right, is an important GOP faction consisting of conservatives united on social issues, embracing traditional Judeo-Christian moral values. They are against abortion and gay marriage and favor school prayer, and interpret the establishment clause of the First Amendment as prohibiting only the official establishment of a state church, as opposed to the more secularist view that the clause requires a strict separation of church and state. (Since the 1960s, the latter interpretation has generally been favored by the Supreme Court.) Some of this faction argue that the American colonies and the United States were founded to be Christian societies, although also tolerant of other Abrahamic religions. Some estimate religious conservatives represent the largest faction of the GOP in numbers. Prominent social conservatives include Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Senator Rick Santorum.

Paleoconservatives - This group has a blue-collar, populist tinge with a strong distrust of a centralized federal government, and has heavy appeal among rural Republicans. They are conservative on social issues (e.g. support for gun deregulation) and oppose multiculturalism, but favor a protectionist economic policy and isolationist foreign policy. Many are also active against illegal immigration, or, in more extreme cases, all immigration. Prominent paleoconservatives, such as Pat Buchanan, have spoken against NAFTA and what they see as a neoconservative take-over of the party. Some with similar views are in the Democratic Party.

Neoconservatives - The term may be disputable since many alleged neoconservatives have denied the existence of such a category. Nevertheless, neoconservatives are generally regarded as the most militaristic branch of the party, in favor of an aggressive pre-emptive foreign policy. Many were once active members of the American Left, now "disillusioned" with the perceived extreme relativism and "anti-Americanism" of the 1960s protest generation. They favor unilateralism over reliance on international organizations and treaties, believing such commitments are often against America's interests. They began rising to significant influence during the Reagan administration. Those considered among the neoconservative circles include Jeane Kirkpatrick and Paul Wolfowitz.

Moderates - Moderates within the GOP are a minority within the party, most popular in the Northeast and Pacific regions of the U.S. They tend to be fiscally conservative (e.g. balanced budgets) and more progressive on social issues (e.g. supporting domestic partnerships, affirmative action, abortion rights, some gun control measures, etc.). On foreign policy, they are less militaristic than conservatives and neo-conservatives, opting for bilateral negoations and peace talks as a solution to global discord before direct military intervention. Moderate Republicans today include U.S. Senators Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter. Members of some of the other factions sometimes characterize moderates as "Republican In Name Only".

Fiscal Conservatives - This faction overlaps with most other factions of the GOP. They are pro-business free-traders, receiving fervent support among corporations and the nation's economic elite. They favor large tax cuts, reduced domestic spending, privatization of Social Security, equal taxation, and decreased regulation of business and the environment. Prominent fiscal conservatives include the late Senator Barry Goldwater, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[Ed Current]

Could someone point me to an explanation of why "neocons" believe essentially that America is exempt from history? That Islam has somehow changed its collective mind about its repeated attempts to conquer all non-Muslims?
WorldNetDaily: Is Islam a religion of peace? What does President Bush think of this bashing of Islam by his Christian friends? He rejects it. "Islam is a religion of peace."

[wdkeller]

Oh yes indeed my friend, it is true. The U.S. funded Osama Bin Laden and other Afghans to run the Sovied Union out of Afghanistan.

[A. Pole]

I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan or any of the lesser Buchananites on the right.

Getting ready to jump the ship if Kerry wins?

[swilhelm73]

False as we both know.

[Agrarian]

Anyone who thinks that Kristol, Krauthammer, Bennett, and their ilk wouldn't turn with ferocity on Bush in a heartbeat were he to take a more traditional conservative Republican line vis a vis foreign wars is dreaming.

Anyone who thinks that these guys will support a real conservative in 2008 is dreaming even more. Novak's strain of conservatism is more rooted in the Republican base than is Kristol's. That doesn't mean we shouldn't work together -- we should. But enough with the attempts by neoconservatives to do Stalinist purges of those they don't agree with.