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I have read Pat's piece in the The American Conservative and in my opinion it is unecessarily inflammatory and in some cases inaccurate. Pat has always been a rhetorical flamethrower and this article follows his pattern but it really pushes the edge of the envelope in a couple of places.

The dual loyalty charge is implicit in Pat's article and to my mind this charge is just as bad as when the implied charge of anti-semitism is used against Pat when he criticizes the State of Israel. Both tactics are dirty pool as far as I am concerned. Criticize policies but don't impugn motives should be the operating principal for conservative debate.

Pat's description of the neo-conservative "cabal" around President Bush is somewhat innaccurate. President Bush did not come into the presidency surrounded by neo-conservatives. In fact his entire foreign policy and defense entourage was composed entirely of George Bush Senior re-treads. As many may recall neo-con outlets were very hostile to George Bush senior because of the leftward drift of his policies toward the end of his Presidency.

The adoption of many neo-con foreign policy goals only came about after 9/11. Neo-con foreign policy and defense experts had been somewhat prophetic in predicting an event like 9/11. They also had a coherent set of policy recommendations to put into place that promised to address the terrorist challenge and the Middle East question forcefully. It is no wonder that the Bush administration embraced their ideas after 9/11; the neo-cons are the only group that seemed to have a grasp on strategic realities after the attack. The multi-lateral oriented foreign policy establishment was in complete disarray after 9/11. They had nothing new to offer.

Having criticized PJB let me also throw a brickbat at David Frum. I am David Frum's age and I am disappointed that he has not acknowledged PJB's and Bob Novak's huge journalistic and political contributions to the fight against collectivism which culminated in the victory in the Cold War. While I feel PJB has staked out some fairly strange positions on trade on some foreign polciy issues in recent years his continuing contribution to the fight against the left on cultural issues should not be ignored by neo-conservatives.

I would also bring to everyone's attention that PJB was accused of anti-semitism during the 1992 election. It was William F. Buckley's National Review that exonerated PJB of this charge at that time.

'exonerated?'

Prince Buckley was wheeled out to damn him with faint praise, and Buckley then went on to trash his former protoge, Joe Sobran, which reveals something about Buckley the man.

From Murray Rothbard's (New York Urban Jew who lived around the block from the Trotskyite Kristol family in the 40s) classic '92 Strategy for the Right:

"Merely to try to summarize Buckley's essay is to give it far too much credit for clarity. But, taking that risk, here's the best I can do:

1. His long-time disciple and NR editor Joe Sobran is (a) certainly not an anti-Semite, but (b) is "obsessed with" and "cuckoo about" Israel, and (c) is therefore "contextually anti-Semitic," whatever that may mean, and yet, worst of all, (d) he remains "unrepentant";

2. Pat Buchanan is not an anti-Semite, but he has said unacceptably anti-Semitic things, "probably" from an "iconoclastic temperament," yet, curiously, Buchanan too remains unrepentant;

3. Gore Vidal is an anti-Semite, and the Nation, by presuming to publish Vidal's article (by the way, a hilarious one) critical of Norman Podhoretz has revealed the left's increasing proclivity for anti-Semitism;

4. Buckley's bully-boy disciples at Dartmouth Review are not anti-Semitic at all, but wonderful kids put upon by vicious leftists; and

5. Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol are wonderful, brilliant people, and it is "unclear" why anyone should ever want to criticize them, except possibly for reasons of anti-Semitism."