I’m going to try and keep up with these scattering, now the lights have come on, cockroaches before they skuttle completely under the kitchen counter.
Let’s start with Richard Pearle arguing that neocons don’t, and never did, exist.
Listening to neoconservative mastermind Richard Perle at the Nixon Center yesterday, there was a sense of falling down the rabbit hole.
In real life, Perle was the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack. But at yesterday’s forum of foreign policy intellectuals, he created a fantastic world in which:
Perle is not a neoconservative.
Neoconservatives do not exist.
Even if neoconservatives did exist, they certainly couldn’t be blamed for the disasters of the past eight years.
But documents did not deter denials. “I’ve never advocated attacking Iran,” he said, to a few chuckles. “Regime change does not imply military force, at least not when I use the term,” he said, to raised eyebrows. Accusations that neoconservatives manipulated intelligence on Iraq? “There’s no truth to it.” At one point, he argued that the word “neoconservative” has been used as an anti-Semitic slur, just moments after complaining that prominent figures such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – Christians both – had been grouped in with the neoconservatives.
Regime change does not imply military force! See, this is why I don’t believe in God: because Richard Pearle can say that and not be struck instantly by lightning.
At one point, he argued that the word “neoconservative” has been used as an anti-Semitic slur
That’s funny. In college, my housemates and I kept receiving Foreign Policy magazine from one of the former tenants and there was an article about myths on neoconservatives. One of the myths was that they were all Jews, which seemed kind of absurd.
After that, we started joking around and calling each other neocon Jews whenever we were debating about something for the house.
Later, one of them used the chalkboard on the back of a box of Fruit Loops to show Toucan Sam saying, “Rise up, proletariat!” Good times back then.
It doesn’t! They could have just mailed Saddam a letter, politely suggesting that they hold an election for a new leader. That’s obviously what he meant to imply–evil haters have just twisted his words.
This is a conscious act. It’s how discredited bastards like Rumsfeld and Cheney can come back into power years later, and the neocon movement I’m betting fully intends to return.
That, and at a certain level I just don’t think it’s possible for Perle to believe he has ever been wrong.
I expect and pray that when they do re-emerge, under whatever new name they are called, they will be a small minority with little real influence, relegated to the same corner that radical voices on both sides sit in. Hopefully by then the Republicans will have reorganized with some new leaders.
Of course, it will also depend on how the Democrats do. The worse they do, the more the door will be open to neocon types getting more of a voice. Ironically, the biggest chances for a new, strong, and credible Republican party will be success of the Democrats.
The last real news from Wolfowitz came in May, 2007 when he was chased off as the head of the World Bank.
WASHINGTON, May 17 — Paul D. Wolfowitz, ending a furor over favoritism that blew up into a global fight over American leadership, announced his resignation as president of the World Bank Thursday evening after the bank’s board accepted his claim that his mistakes at the bank were made in good faith.
The decision came four days after a special investigative committee of the bank concluded that he had violated his contract by breaking ethical and governing rules in arranging the generous pay and promotion package for Shaha Ali Riza, his companion, in 2005.
Dougie Feith, who served under Wolfowitz and ran the controversial OSP at the Pentagon, wrote a book. I think the working title was “It’s Everyone Else’s Fault: The Genius of Rumsfeld.”
Some would say that the reason there is a conflation of Neoconservatism and Judaism is that Leo Strauss used to rub himself off while reading Moses Maimonedes. In addition to that, some parts of Leo’s worldview were shaped by what had happened to him because he was a Jew, and what he had seen happen to others for the same reason. But I would argue that his philosophy is a resuscitation of the darker parts of Plato, and Neoconservatism is a euphemism for Fascism. What happened to Leo Strauss is incidental, and the religious background of his students is inconsequential, except to the extent that an abused child will grow up to mimic their abuser.
As for what a neoconservative really is, clearly, a neoconservative is where grim determination meets frolicking idiocy.
It wasn’t a very good performance. On his own show, Stewart always tries to be courteous & give his guests every benefit of the doubt. Even so, Feith spewed so much bullshit that Stewart actually got angry & called him on it. One of the few times I’ve seen open animosity (rather than subdued & simmering animosity) between Stewart & a guest.
