Weissman writes: "Rethinking the neo-cons and liberal interventionists will
help us sharpen our opposition to both."
George W. Bush Awarding Irving Kristol the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
(photo: Getty)
Rethinking the Neo-Con Threat
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
04 November 15
As Barack Obama deepens US intervention in both Syria and Iraq, the idiocy
that George W. Bush began continues to destabilize the Middle East. Many
observers, myself included, have blamed neo-cons for the disaster. Why? Ask
the neo-con David Brooks, now a columnist at The New York Times. Con is
short for conservative, he famously wrote. And neo is short for
Jewish.
Some critics, Brooks thought, blamed the neo-cons to lay an unpopular war in
the lap of the Jews. Why not? Libeling Jews or Zionists is old hat, and
surprisingly popular among many would-be progressives. Just browse the
comments here at Reader Supported News.
Being Jewish and of the 1960s New Left, I carried a different kind of
baggage. I had begun battling the godfather of neo-conservatism, the late
Irving Kristol, when he was still lionized as one of Americas leading
liberals. A number of us at Berkeley knew his history. An ex-Trotskyist from
City College of New York (CCNY), he had seen World War II as little more
than a conflict between competing imperialisms, showed little concern over
Hitlers war on Jews, and had little time for Israel. Then, in the early
1950s, he and poet Stephen Spender co-founded and co-edited the highly
influential British-based magazine Encounter, which promoted the Cold War in
the most sophisticated way.
Our battle with Kristol and his politics became up-close and personal.
During the Free Speech Movement, we continually tripped over his ideological
soul mates, sociologists Nathan Glazer and Seymour Martin Lipset, who
red-baited us and actively worked with university president Clark Kerr to
try to split our ranks. When a very disgruntled Lipset left for Harvard, I
very publicly and most unkindly hailed his departure as one of FSMs
major contributions.
Kristol himself remained an even more enticing target. My comrades and I
struggled against his acolytes in SDS. We slammed his increasingly
conservative writing in Commentary. We read and rebuffed his new magazine,
The Public Interest, which he co-founded with Daniel Bell, author of The
End of Ideology, a paean to precisely the technocratic thinking we had
fought against at Berkeley. We then felt vindicated when Ramparts revealed
that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had founded, funded, and run the
Congress for Cultural Freedom, including Encounter, its flagship propaganda
sheet. Irving Kristol had made his peace with the empire early on, and had
gotten a paycheck for doing it.
We fought him, but we never won. Kristol became one of the countrys most
influential public intellectuals and a favorite of Ronald Reagan. As the
neo-con journalist Irwin Stelzer tells it, Reagan joked at a dinner that
anyone wanting a job in his new administration should call the White House
and say: Irving sent me. No further vetting would be required. It seemed
to work, as Irvings friends helped create Iran-Contra and swallowed hard as
Reagan worked to bring détente with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union.
Irvings greatest victory was still to come in the charmed political career
of his son, William Kristol. Boasting little more than a Ph.D. in government
from Harvard and a well-placed daddy, young Kristol served as chief of staff
to Reagans highly ideological education secretary William Bennett and to
Vice President Dan Quayle, whose missing brain he became. Once the Democrats
returned to power, William Kristol led conservatives in killing Clintons
health care proposal. He created the leading neo-con newsmagazine, The
Weekly Standard, getting funding from Rupert Murdoch. Then in 1997, he
joined with historian Robert Kagan to create the Project for the New
American Century (PNAC), Washingtons most vocal promoter of going to war
against Iraqs Saddam Hussein and those non-existent weapons of mass
destruction.
For me, as for most progressives, this was clearly the dragon we needed to
slay. But having fought these guys too long, I failed to give sufficient
attention to four elements of the story that could now prove crucial.
First, I misunderstood the role of the neo-cons, as did many other writers.
While ten of the 25 people who signed PNACs founding statement went on to
serve under George W. Bush, only two of them had real power, Vice-President
Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Corporate CEOs in oil
services, pharmaceuticals, and defense, they were consummate Washington
insiders and old-fashioned right-wing nationalists. Along with Bush, they
were the imperial potentates, the deciders who set policy on Iraq and other
possible targets of regime change. None of the three were neo-cons.
The other eight PNAC signers, neo-cons like Cheneys man Scooter Libby and
Rumsfelds deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, were underlings,
subordinates, and advisors. They were the handmaidens of empire, the B-list.
Second, while most neo-cons were Jewish and Zionist, Kristol and Kagan were
far more committed to American than to Israeli power. Their goal was to
promote American global leadership, and a benevolent global hegemony, as
they called it in a 1996 article in Foreign Affairs. We should never excuse
Israel and its lobbies all over the world for constantly beating the drums
of war. But just because the cock crows before sunrise, it does not mean
that he causes the sun to rise.
Third, Kristol and Kagans message had its roots the Cold War liberalism of
Truman and Kennedy, and was far more activist and interventionist than the
historic Republican stance, with its lingering pockets of isolationism.
Despite Kristol and Kagans effort to package their world view as a
Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy, they were far closer to what we now hear
from Hillary Clinton.
Fourth, and most important, Kristol and Kagan provided American weapons
makers with a perfect substitute for the old Soviet threat. What better
marketing strategy for the military-industrial complex than an endless war
against Islamic terrorists, Iran, and ultimately China? PNAC laid much of
this out in Rebuilding Americas Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources
for a New Century, a report written primarily by the groups deputy
executive director, Thomas Donnelly, who went on to work for the defense
giant Lockheed Martin. PNAC also worked closely with and received major
funding from the Bradley Foundation, a strong backer of the defense
industry.
Rethinking the neo-cons and liberal interventionists in these ways will help
us sharpen our opposition to both. This becomes crucial as Kristol and
Kagans new flagship, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and The Weekly Standard
have spent the last two years trying to talk Americans out of being weary
with war. I wont be surprised to hear Hillary Clinton join in soon,
rallying us to show new spirit in defending American values.
________________________________________
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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George W. Bush Awarding Irving Kristol the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
(photo: Getty)
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/keystone-xl-pipeline-del
ay/413938/http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/keystone-xl-pi
peline-delay/413938/
Rethinking the Neo-Con Threat
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
04 November 15
s Barack Obama deepens US intervention in both Syria and Iraq, the idiocy
that George W. Bush began continues to destabilize the Middle East. Many
observers, myself included, have blamed neo-cons for the disaster. Why? Ask
the neo-con David Brooks, now a columnist at The New York Times. Con is
short for conservative, he famously wrote. And neo is short for
Jewish.
Some critics, Brooks thought, blamed the neo-cons to lay an unpopular war in
the lap of the Jews. Why not? Libeling Jews or Zionists is old hat, and
surprisingly popular among many would-be progressives. Just browse the
comments here at Reader Supported News.
Being Jewish and of the 1960s New Left, I carried a different kind of
baggage. I had begun battling the godfather of neo-conservatism, the late
Irving Kristol, when he was still lionized as one of Americas leading
liberals. A number of us at Berkeley knew his history. An ex-Trotskyist from
City College of New York (CCNY), he had seen World War II as little more
than a conflict between competing imperialisms, showed little concern over
Hitlers war on Jews, and had little time for Israel. Then, in the early
1950s, he and poet Stephen Spender co-founded and co-edited the highly
influential British-based magazine Encounter, which promoted the Cold War in
the most sophisticated way.
Our battle with Kristol and his politics became up-close and personal.
During the Free Speech Movement, we continually tripped over his ideological
soul mates, sociologists Nathan Glazer and Seymour Martin Lipset, who
red-baited us and actively worked with university president Clark Kerr to
try to split our ranks. When a very disgruntled Lipset left for Harvard, I
very publicly and most unkindly hailed his departure as one of FSMs
major contributions.
Kristol himself remained an even more enticing target. My comrades and I
struggled against his acolytes in SDS. We slammed his increasingly
conservative writing in Commentary. We read and rebuffed his new magazine,
The Public Interest, which he co-founded with Daniel Bell, author of The
End of Ideology, a paean to precisely the technocratic thinking we had
fought against at Berkeley. We then felt vindicated when Ramparts revealed
that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had founded, funded, and run the
Congress for Cultural Freedom, including Encounter, its flagship propaganda
sheet. Irving Kristol had made his peace with the empire early on, and had
gotten a paycheck for doing it.
We fought him, but we never won. Kristol became one of the countrys most
influential public intellectuals and a favorite of Ronald Reagan. As the
neo-con journalist Irwin Stelzer tells it, Reagan joked at a dinner that
anyone wanting a job in his new administration should call the White House
and say: Irving sent me. No further vetting would be required. It seemed
to work, as Irvings friends helped create Iran-Contra and swallowed hard as
Reagan worked to bring détente with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union.
Irvings greatest victory was still to come in the charmed political career
of his son, William Kristol. Boasting little more than a Ph.D. in government
from Harvard and a well-placed daddy, young Kristol served as chief of staff
to Reagans highly ideological education secretary William Bennett and to
Vice President Dan Quayle, whose missing brain he became. Once the Democrats
returned to power, William Kristol led conservatives in killing Clintons
health care proposal. He created the leading neo-con newsmagazine, The
Weekly Standard, getting funding from Rupert Murdoch. Then in 1997, he
joined with historian Robert Kagan to create the Project for the New
American Century (PNAC), Washingtons most vocal promoter of going to war
against Iraqs Saddam Hussein and those non-existent weapons of mass
destruction.
For me, as for most progressives, this was clearly the dragon we needed to
slay. But having fought these guys too long, I failed to give sufficient
attention to four elements of the story that could now prove crucial.
First, I misunderstood the role of the neo-cons, as did many other writers.
While ten of the 25 people who signed PNACs founding statement went on to
serve under George W. Bush, only two of them had real power, Vice-President
Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Corporate CEOs in oil
services, pharmaceuticals, and defense, they were consummate Washington
insiders and old-fashioned right-wing nationalists. Along with Bush, they
were the imperial potentates, the deciders who set policy on Iraq and other
possible targets of regime change. None of the three were neo-cons.
The other eight PNAC signers, neo-cons like Cheneys man Scooter Libby and
Rumsfelds deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, were underlings,
subordinates, and advisors. They were the handmaidens of empire, the B-list.
Second, while most neo-cons were Jewish and Zionist, Kristol and Kagan were
far more committed to American than to Israeli power. Their goal was to
promote American global leadership, and a benevolent global hegemony, as
they called it in a 1996 article in Foreign Affairs. We should never excuse
Israel and its lobbies all over the world for constantly beating the drums
of war. But just because the cock crows before sunrise, it does not mean
that he causes the sun to rise.
Third, Kristol and Kagans message had its roots the Cold War liberalism of
Truman and Kennedy, and was far more activist and interventionist than the
historic Republican stance, with its lingering pockets of isolationism.
Despite Kristol and Kagans effort to package their world view as a
Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy, they were far closer to what we now hear
from Hillary Clinton.
Fourth, and most important, Kristol and Kagan provided American weapons
makers with a perfect substitute for the old Soviet threat. What better
marketing strategy for the military-industrial complex than an endless war
against Islamic terrorists, Iran, and ultimately China? PNAC laid much of
this out in Rebuilding Americas Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources
for a New Century, a report written primarily by the groups deputy
executive director, Thomas Donnelly, who went on to work for the defense
giant Lockheed Martin. PNAC also worked closely with and received major
funding from the Bradley Foundation, a strong backer of the defense
industry.
Rethinking the neo-cons and liberal interventionists in these ways will help
us sharpen our opposition to both. This becomes crucial as Kristol and
Kagans new flagship, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and The Weekly Standard
have spent the last two years trying to talk Americans out of being weary
with war. I wont be surprised to hear Hillary Clinton join in soon,
rallying us to show new spirit in defending American values.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
