The Big Con of the Neocons

They’re called neocons, as in New Conservatives, and seven or eight of them are basically running (ruining) the country’s foreign policy. It’s an insidious outgrowth, and its rise into actual power has brought the world to the edge of chaotic discohesion.

One of its basic tenets was laid out in a long position paper in 1993 by Paul Wolfowitz (a key advisor, Undersecretary of Defense and now head of the World Bank), the main thrust of which was that the central aim of American foreign policy had to be to maintain American hegemony (outright dominance) over the world, to act as curtailers and impeders of the U.N. and all other nations who would dare to contend with us, including a United Europe.

Not only has this theoretical assertion failed in the world of reality – as our various rivals, from the European Union, the U.N. and the Muslim world to (the very under-reported alliance of) China and Russia have all taken forward steps while we have declined in many ways. Our arrogant attitude toward other nations and our distorted foreign policy, headlined by a preemptive war in the heart of the oil-rich Muslim world, has made us the pariah of the planet.

The neocon unifying theme of American imperialistic fervor, thinly veiled as American hegemony, had become, until resurrected by this group, a rare political thread since the Vietnam debacle. It’s informative to note that these guys were uniformly supporters of the Nixon administration’s Vietnam foibles, obnoxious hawks in their Young Republicans clubs. (Some of you are old enough to remember these assholes, secure in their deferments and covering their lack of personal courage with the false machismo of the stupidly militant.)

But who are these neocons (primarily Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Scooter Libby, William Kristol, Douglas Feith and John Bolton) and how did they suddenly rise to power?

The short answer is that they’re a very small group of extremely militaristic, ultra-pro-Israel foreign policy intellectuals who inhabited the far right wing of the Republican party, whose views were not shared by the majority of the party, nor the foreign policy establishment, nor the academics. While out of power during the Clinton years they worked for the pernicious Weekly Standard and various conservative "think tanks" and outfits like Project for a New American Century, funded mainly by tycoon money.

They came to inhabit positions of near-total influence in the Bush White House not because Bush chose them but because Cheney did. (Libby became his chief of staff.) Their viewpoints and pronouncements, especially the need to attack and occupy Iraq -- which they advocated repeatedly during the 90's -- somehow coalesced with Cheney’s Halliburton mindset, the sugar-plum dreams dancing in his head being that of a major Iraq invasion, with Halliburton receiving all the no-bid rebuilding contracts it could handle. (Not to leave out the other major player, Donald Rumsfeld, as number one lapdog of the military-industrial complex, anything that sizably increased the defense budget was a go with him.)

The fact that, if successful, the occupation of Iraq would signal increased security for Israel and ensure our oil supplies from the region was merely icing on those sugar plums. (The icing for Bush was in getting Saddam Hussein, who had tried to kill his father.) All the talk of WMD and 9/11 was a cover to do what they wanted to do from the beginning, and when that proved untrue, they sprouted the whole "democracy and freedom" rationale.

The root of the problem with the neocons may be that none of them have military or intelligence experience, or, for that matter, elected office where you have to have contact with the citizenry. They’re WASP theoreticians (plus a few wannabe-WASP Jews) whose aims are primarily "nationalistic" -- USA runs the world -- and elitist -- the rich need to get richer, and big corporations need to get bigger. They further adhere to the credo that America is exclusively a Christian nation, and that Israel is always right, even when they’re wrong. They’re cut off from the pluralism of America and their ascendancy was and is a hammer blow to domestic progressivism and world peace.

Bob Baer, the former CIA man (21 years) on whose book the movie Syriana was based, says that he’s been in meetings with these neocons, and "they don’t have a clue about the real world." An important example of this is how they (led by Wolfowitz) dismissed claims by intelligence analysts and military leaders that the occupation of Iraq, a country of extreme sectarianism, religious fervor and anti-Americanism, would be a long, bloody, messy affair requiring upwards of 250,000 troops. They convinced Rumsfeld to do the invasion with half that amount, which was the first folly in a long series, many of which could have been prevented with the requisite number of troops.

One is left to assume that Rumsfeld allowed himself to be convinced to go in with the paltry number because for all the imperialistic bluster of this neocon crew (who also want us to kick butt in Syria and Iran) American armed forces are spread too thin around the world as is. That's why close to half the combatants we've sent to Iraq are National Guardsman and reservists, and why the government has forced many of them into extended stays.

The only real solution to this quandary is to institute a military draft but the Bushies don't have the political guts to do that. This leaves America as a toothless tiger, roaring in the jungle but unable to actually attack anyone else, unable even to control the situation in the place we unwisely occupied. This fact is no secret to North Korea, Iran, Syria, radical Islamists and others and they have become increasingly emboldened, even dangerously so. I fear that we are now entering a period of extreme multi-headed crises, such that we will look back on 2005 as "the peaceful time," all because these wrong-headed, arrogant neocons somehow insinuated themselves into the highest reaches of U.S. foreign policy.