Posted on 10/11/2004 4:39:49 PM PDT by 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.
Bush is pro-life and, for the most part, against the gay-angenda. (He's not dismantled the ridiculous "don't ask, don't tell policy for the military enacted under Clinton - why not?) These two items alone would disqualify him from being a bona-fide neocon.
Good analysis. I think you pretty much nailed it.
Hey Troll, how's DU treating you?
Sorry I couldn't get back to your flaming leftwing self, but I was busy arguing with a pro-abortion friend of yours on FR, trolling much like you, and prepping my local Rep candidate for her debate. I have to make sure we have fewer leftists like yourself in office after all, troll.
Anyway, looks like your hero Moore is getting slammed of late between the likes of Fellowship 911 and Team America. Feeling sad?
Either Bush is being controlled by a devious Jewish, err, neocon, conspiracy, as the left and paleo- so called "conservatives" (PSCCs) claim, or he is the head neocon.
He is also a moderate conservative (not a MSM "moderate", aka leftist, like Chafee).
So, as I've said before, neocon = conservative
Sad sad day that I'm asked to dispute leftwing conspiracy theories on FR, but what the hell;
http://uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Board=freespace&Number=34746
We worked with the ISI and the Saudis..Osama worked with the ISI and the Saudis..therefore we worked with Osama is the convoluted path....
See who sold what weapons to Iraq pre 1991 and we are a blip on a screen..Google and one would think we totally armed Saddam by reading the articles..I know they twist the real facts..
Again, read the link I posted.
Everyone involved, both AQ and American CIA staff, has stated they had no ties.
There is no *evidence* of a connection outside of Mike Moore's imagination.
And it should be noted, in a comparable situation, our aide to both Iran and Iraq are well documented.
I am agreeing..just showing how hard they try to connect the dots.
I am grateful for the link..It would have added welcome refutation to the conversation that has gone before.
Ah, ok. One of the problems with online discussion, intent can sometimes be difficult to judge.
I tell you though, I've been seriously thinking of investing in whoever makes Reynolds Wrap. As bad as it is now, I would imagine after the coming Bush landslide the Left is really going to go bonkers. ;)
Since we posted all this Kristol must have received an avalanche of mail as Sunday morning he was Bush supporter no 1!..LOL...He gets pouty because he isn't in the inner circle. No one is sitting at his feet.
Tin foil hat out of storage now.
99 posted on 10/12/2004 8:18:07 AM CDT by MEG33 (John Kerry has been AWOL on issues of national security for two decades)
I had to get it on for this thread..LOL!..Did you see that diatribe posted by an Ed Crissom,IIRC posted today..It was deleted pretty early but it accused Bush of everything but the plague...supposedly by a "conservative"
Wow, and I thought you'd gone back and read your stupid posts and realized what an ass you've made of yourself.
You are very much like Michael Moore, in that you make up history to suit your taste, and lash out against patriots. Go take your hissy fit out against someone else, I'm a conservative and you are an ignorant punk.
Ass? The only ass around here is the Democrat party logo you keep on your computer.
Look troll, following Mike Moore as you do is no sign of a conservative. If you were a better troll you wouldn't have made such an obvious screw up...but you aren't.
Perhaps giving up and going home to DU isn't until the 300 level classes at the Democrat trolling seminar you are attending, but face it, you've been schooled.
Wow a link!!! AMAZING, a first time for everything. Much more eloquent than your earlier personal attacks.
Freeper 1: Excuse me, here's some evidence that the CIA funded the organization that later became Al Queda (MAK).
Swillhelm73: Troll! Liberal! Moore-lover!
Freeper 2: Excuse me, but he's right, go see for yourself (link)
Swillhelm73: Troll! Liberal! Moore-lover!
Freeper 3: But seriously, he is right, go see for yourself
(link)
Swillhelm73: Troll! Liberal! Moore-lover!
You would be presenting yourself as less of a loser if you had started off answering back with links.
But as far as links go, this was weak. So Bin Laden says he had no payment from the CIA? Whee, we can trust all he says. Did you believe your terrorist friend when he said he had nothing to do with 9/11 too?
In any case, if you ever get out of your cantankerous stupor long enough to listen and research, please consider whether it makes ANY difference whether the CIA paid the billions of $ to the ISI, who in turn paid this money to Hekmaytar, the MAK, and others, who were working with bin Laden at the time, or whether there is a check "to Osama, Love CIA" sitting around somewhere. Who cares? We flowed tons of money into the Afghanistan resistance, which became the Taliban and Al Queda. And we (on Clinton's watch) failed to recognize the threats that we'd helped create.
I don't think the initial support was some sort of sin. It worked fine with respect to the Soviets, you can't underestimate the importance of winning the Cold War. The deadly errors came later, when bin Laden split off from the MAK, and our intelligence and preoccupied "leader" (busy "not having sexual relations" in the oval office) failed to realize how dangerous he had become.
Moore contorts facts, but some facts are undeniable, and you are just like Moore to try to re-write history to suit your agenda.
http://www.spongobongo.com/her9989.htm
"1987 CIA and ISI back Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to begin cross border raids of Soviet Union, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Hekmatyar was the Mujaheddin leader controlled by ISI and very close to Bin Laden and the CIA."
http://goasia.about.com/library/weekly/blwhoswhoafgh.htm
"Osama Bin Laden - A Saudi Arabian and ethnic Yemeni, Bin Laden came to Afghanistan in 1979 to fight the Soviets. The Cold War was still on, and Bin Laden had the support of America, as well as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The CIA itself provided security training for him."
Again, it really makes no difference whether we paid bin Laden himself, or the groups he was with. The fact is we supported his cause when he was fighting our enemy, the Soviet Union. (Do you think there's something wrong with this or it didn't happen???)
Did you bother to read the links in that post on the site I linked?..Are we talking about semantics, degree ,direct, indirect?..Whatever..This name calling has gone on too long...
Hey troll, I didn't bother discussing anything with leftist scum like *you*.
When you come to FR and start parroting Mike Moore's bullshit, and ADMIT TO IT, you've shown your true colors.
I know you are lying. You know you are lying. Your trolling attempt failed, and badly, because conservatives in general, and FReepers in particular, won't put up with your America hating crap.
And frankly, one of the few things more pathetic then a leftist troll like yourself is a failed leftist troll like, well, yourself.
Read something not penned by your overweight hero and you might learn something, presuming you can take time off from your Kedwards rallies. Do they pay trolls in crack also?
You've shown yourself not only to be a liar and a hardcore leftist, but a bigot to boot. And with every post you show yourself more obviously to be a fool. Mark Twain certainly had you in mind.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.