Posted on 01/13/2004 3:59:40 PM PST by Stone Mountain
Neo-Conservatism, Hard Core
Analysis - By Jim Lobe
If hard-core neo-conservatives Richard Perle and David Frum had their way, the Bush administration would be issuing ultimatums on virtually a daily basis.
WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (IPS) - In their new book, 'An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror', Perle, the well-connected former chairman of the Defence Policy Board (DPB), and Frum, a former White House speechwriter, call for the administration to, among many other things:
- Actively promote, presumably through direct action, the secession of the oil-rich eastern province of Saudi Arabia, unless the Saudi government provides its ''utmost cooperation in the war on terror'';
- Cut off the flow of oil (from Iraq) and arms supplies to Syria, and pursue suspected ''terrorists'' into its territory, unless Damascus implements a thoroughgoing ''western reorientation'' of its policies, economy and political system;
- Prepare to launch pre-emptive strikes against North Korea's nuclear facilities (although ”we do not know where all these facilities are”), unless Pyongyang immediately surrenders all of its nuclear material, closes its missile bases and agrees to the permanent presence of international inspectors'';
- Explicitly reject the jurisdiction of the United Nations Charter, unless it is amended to accommodate Washington's new strategic doctrine of ''pre-emption'';
- Help ”dissidents” overthrow the government of Iran -- ''the regime must go''.
In what they call a ''manual for victory'', the two authors, both resident fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), describe an extremely dangerous world in which the greatest current evil, ''militant Islam'', can be found everywhere -- from ''Indonesia to Indiana'' (not to mention ''in some remoter areas of Venezuela'', Paraguay, Brazil and northern Nigeria).. The stakes could not be higher.
Militant Islam ”seeks to overthrow our civilisation and remake the nations of the West into Islamic societies imposing on the whole world its religion and law'', write the authors.
Nor do such ambitions represent only a tiny minority of Muslims, as U.S. President George W. Bush himself has contended.
The militants' goals command wide support among Muslims worldwide, including in the United States where the ”loyalty” of U.S. Muslims requires special scrutiny by law enforcement and their fellow-citizens, according to Perle and Frum. ”The roots of Muslim rage are to be found in Islam itself”, they write.
''There is no middle way for Americans'', they warn. ''It is victory or holocaust''.
If all this sounds a little terrifying, it is because Perle and Frum are deeply concerned that the administration's determination -- and that of the country as a whole -- to wage the war on terror to its bitter end is flagging. ''We can feel the will to win ebbing in Washington; we sense the reversion to the bad old habits of complacency and denial''.
This book, then, is designed to re-energise the effort, and must be taken seriously because it no doubt echoes arguments that are currently being made at the highest levels of the Bush administration.
While Frum, who allegedly coined the phrase ''axis of evil'', linking Iraq to Iran and North Korea in Bush's 2002 State of the Union address, is known more for his rhetoric than his foreign-policy expertise, Perle has been a fixture of the national-security policy scene for more than 30 years.
Known as the ''Prince of Darkness'' for his opposition to arms control agreements with the Soviet Union as a senior Pentagon official under former president Ronald Reagan, he has been one of Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's best friends since 1969, as well as the mentor of Douglas Feith, the ultra-Zionist undersecretary of defence whose office oversaw preparations for the Iraq invasion and the post-war occupation.
A long-time ally of both Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, Perle was described by the 'Washington Post' last year as the ''intellectual guru of the hard-line neo-conservative movement in foreign policy'', who enjoys ''profound influence over Bush policies''. It is thus safe to say that Perle's views count, and the fact that he believed already in October -- when the book (published by Random House) went to print -- that the administration was losing its zeal is significant.
Perle and Frum naturally blame the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), retired military officers and senior officials from the administration of the current president's father -- in other words, all the foreign policy specialists and ''realists'' who initially raised questions about going to war in Iraq -- for resisting their calls for expanding the war to Syria, Iran, North Korea and even Saudi Arabia.
And they categorically reject, albeit often defensively, any notion that the loss in momentum might be due more to over-optimistic predictions by themselves and their friends in the offices of Cheney and Rumsfeld about the ease with which U.S. forces could occupy Iraq without significant international support.
More than once, they insist that if only the White House had installed their hero, Iraqi National Congress (INC) chief Ahmad Chalabi, as president of a provisional government before the invasion, all would be well today.
”Seldom has the foreign policy bureaucracy inflicted such shameful damage on American interests than in its opposition to working with Saddam's Iraqi opponents”, they write.
But the authors fail to note that since he was virtually carried to Baghdad on the shoulders of the invading U.S. forces, Chalabi's main power base does not appear to have expanded much beyond his U.S.-trained militia and his friends back in the Pentagon.
Indeed, a persistent theme in the book is that if Washington really prevails in the war on terror, it will be no thanks to the bureaucrats who run the State Department and the CIA, whose apparatchiks are ”blinded à by the squeamishness that many liberal-minded people feel about noticing the dark side of third-world cultures”.
Hence, CIA Director George Tenet ”has failed. He should go”, while ”we should increase sharply the number of political appointees in the State Department and expand their role”.
Such measures should ease adoption of the neo-conservatives' agenda, which includes not only ultimatums but also simple directives, such as:
- Work fastidiously to isolate France from the rest of Europe while doing ''our utmost to preserve our British ally's strategic independence FROM (emphasis added) Europe'', in part by offering U.K. arms manufacturers preferential treatment, and promoting a Anglo-American defence condominium that would also include Australia and Canada.
- Forge a defence partnership ”with Japan, Australia, and other willing Asian democracies as intimate and enduring as the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) alliance. China should know that any attempt to bully any of its democratic neighbours will be resisted by all of them -- no ifs, buts or exceptions”.
- ”Cease criticising Israel for taking actions against Hamas and Hezbollah (or similar groups) analogous to those the United States is taking against al-Qaeda à The distinction between Islamic terrorism against Israel, on the one hand, and Islamic terrorism against the United States and Europe, on the other, cannot be sustained.”
- Avoid turning Iraq into a ”ward of the United Nations or the 'international community',” because ”once the international bureaucrats get their hands on society, they never let go”.
This last point is illustrated by a curious list of countries, including Cambodia and Somalia, where the authors apparently believe -- mistakenly -- that the United Nations remains in charge.
That is one of a striking number of factual errors, illustrating either the haste with which the book, which even lacks an index, was put together or simple ignorance on the part of the authors.
They contend, for example, that ”Saudi-inspired extremists” launched wars against Christian communities on Indonesia's Sulawesi and Maluku islands, when they are apparently referring to Laskar Jihad, a militia that most experts believe was not only inspired, but armed, by elements in the country's military.
Frum and Pearle make similar assumptions about the indigenous insurgency in Indonesia's Aceh province and what are predominantly ethnic, rather than religious, clashes in northern Nigeria.
Indeed, much as they invariably attributed Soviet aggression to various nationalist, ethnic and reformist movements during the Cold War, Perle and Frum now seem determined to find a ”militant Muslim” and/or Saudi-Wahabi hand in conflicts or terrorism from Mindanao to Lake Maracaibo.
And just as in the Cold War, they appear to prefer authoritarian to democratic regimes if the latter risks empowering Islamic radicals, as they make clear in yet another directive: ”in the Middle East, democratisation does not mean calling immediate elections and then living with whatever happens next”, they write.
”That was tried in Algeria in 1995 (sic), and it would have brought the Islamic extremists to power as the only available alternative to the corrupt status quo. Democratisation means opening political spaces in which Middle Eastern people can express concrete grievances in ways that bring action to improve their lives.”
While the authors stress that democratisation also requires protecting minorities and women, the message that comes through is that democracy is not their highest priority, the neo-conservatives' frequent protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
It is clear from recent events -- particularly Bush's criticism of Taiwan, his tentative feelers towards Iran, and his warm words for Libya (”an implacably hostile regime”, according to the authors), as well as the acceleration of the transition timetable in Iraq -- that the neo-cons' influence has waned further in the months since the book was sent to print.
No surprise, really: after watching Bush's poll numbers plummet as U.S. casualties rose beginning last summer, the president's political adviser Karl Rove reportedly issued a directive of his own several months ago: ”No war in '04”, an election year.
The neo-cons might be down but they are most certainly not out. They and their administration allies, notably Cheney, have shown they retain sufficient influence for now to prevent any major softening in the hard lines on North Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
If Bush wins a second term with Cheney at his side, neo-conservatives like Perle might well find themselves back on top. If so, you may be able to buy this book on remainder and use it as a scorecard.
This and Rove is the crux of the problem with the Bush (far from conservative) administration.
Jim Lobe - NO!!!!!!!!!!!
Lobe seems disturbed by this because he makes the mistake people often make where democracy is concerned. Democracy is not liberty, those two are quite distinct concepts of course. Democracy in the absense of the rule of law, in the absense of a cultural respect for individual rights, leads straight to dictatorship. One man, one vote, one time, as the joke goes.
In the case of Algeria, the leading opposition movement was Islamist. In their war of rebellion since the elections were canceled they have killed a quarter of million Algerians, mostly civilians. They are famous for cordoning off a beach and killing all of the beach goers, or throwing up a roadblock and killing every motorist that drives by, or entering a village during the night and cutting the throats of every villager, and taking all night to do it.
This only proves that the government was right not to turn the government over to these people. You never enter a democratic contest with people that are determined to rule you, you never enter an electoral contest with people who will kill you if you disagree with them.
You have to recognize that these people are at war with you, and your best hope is to admit it and wage war with them. Never submit to them, not even in the name of democracy, because it may be the last mistake you ever make.
Wrong - trade agreements where we end up importing more than exporting. [China is a most favored trading partner]
and Why - American jobs and factories are exported.
Frum is not a former liberal (one meaning of neo-con) but has always been conservative.
Another meaning of neo-con is a conservative who accepts the permanence of the welfare state. Frum doesn't. He is a libertarian in economics whose first book, Dead Right, argued that Reagan-era conservatism had essentially failed domestically because it hadn't succeeded in dismantling the welfare state.
Neo-cons are also sometimes contrasted with social conservatives. This is odd, because a lot of the ex-liberals who got that name in the 80's were pushed over the line from liberalism in large measure by abortion and the decline of the family. But it is a perception some people have. But Frum is a social conservative and always has been.
He's only a "neo" in foreign policy if the old "America Firsters" define American conservatism. But the conservative movement that was born after WWII was never isolationist. If Frum is a neo-con in foreign policy then so was Ronald Reagan.
This review is the same kind of whining that the Left used to do about Reagan putting missiles in Europe, working for missile defence, taking out or undermining the Communists in Grenada, Nicaragua etc. Just sending out ultimatums all over the place, how rude, how dangerous!
Frum and Perle want us actually to end global terrorism, not find a way to live with it, just as Reagan (and Perle) wanted to end Soviet Communism. By contrast, the whine-Left wants us to hide behind the UN and send out US Marshalls with warrants to arrest the naughty litterbugs so we can get them social workers; the whine-Right wants us to hide behind walls and fences and slowly curdle into bitter mediocrity.
I don't say I agree with every proposal Frum and Perle make, but they're the sort we ought to be taking seriously and making substantive arguments with -- if we don't want our grandchildren's lives to be lived within limits imposed from Tehran or Damascus or the Pakistani hills.
Until this happens they need to be dealt with in the most harsh way possible. Much harsher than we have been.
The other problem is they're following a false prophet, which brings with it all kinds of problems. This needs to change as well.
and the neo-con's( I do not mean conservative Jews ) prescription to avoid bitter mediocrity is what? To engage in unending military conflict, a constant nation-destroying, building program? Perpetual aggression and coersion aimed everywhere. All for national security and national greatness? The neocon's recipe will result in exactly the opposite of what they hope to achieve.
Who only managed to kill three thousand people, bring down the World Trade Center, do major damage to the Pentagon, and come within a hairsbreadth of obliterating the White House. A mere pinprick. Seems to me what 9-11 proved was that less than twenty people with box cutters could kill Americans within our borders in numbers that world class armies failed to do in two world wars.
My post said nothing about Napoleonic conquest by crack Arab troops. I have no fear that Syria could conquer the US, nor do Frum and Perle. The point is that the festering swamp of the Arab world breeds organized groups of terrorists whose goal is not to conquer the United States, but to corrode our national self confidence and erode our social peace until we implode, fall in upon ourselves in fear.
I don't see any reason that their effort could not succeed. No society's fabric of order is so strong that it could not descend into Liberian chaos within two or three generations. If the terrorists persist, and we try to "manage" the problem rather than put an end to it, there is every reason at least to fear that the day will come sooner or later when the government cannot control it.
The swamp breeds the terrorists, and the terrorists could not operate without the manifold connivance of the dismal corrupt states which maintain the swamp. It is surely at least reasonable to suggest that the only way to end the threat is to drain the swamp.
You pays your money and you takes your choice I suppose. You lot have nightmares of Mexifornia; I have nightmares of Monrovia USA, one big Belfast from sea to shining sea. You think people like me are alarmists; I think people like you are blind as bats. I don't know how to get past that, and I don't want to get into a shouting match about it.
While I respect Perle's intellect and experience, I certainly don't regard Frum as a serious National - defense conservative. He's merely the chief polemicist of the bunch. What's his experience in defense?
What is delusional is "victory or holocaust". Delusional and dangerous.
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