Why Is Neo-Con Such An Epithet OR Some Unconnected, Disorganized and Hastily Put Together Thougths About Neo Conservatism

As someone who has lingering sympathy for the first generation of domestic policy neoconservatives like Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the gang at the Public Interest, I’m not too thrilled that neo-con is basically used as an all-purpose epithet.  Mostly because when people just throw out the term neo-con, it can obscure true ideological and political differences between those who supported the Iraq War.  For instance, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are old school imperialist hawks, not neoconservatives.

But the term is useful, and should be used as an epithet, for describing a particular vision of foreign policy that has undoubtedly been disastrous.  Considering that for every foreign policy neoconservative, the invasion of Iraq was the central objective, it makes sense that term has turned into a derisive epithet.  Considering neoconservatives during the run-up to Iraq defined themselves as the most pure supporters of the Iraq war, and called their opponents to the right heartless, amoral realists (and sometimes racists) and their opponents to the left pacifistic appeasers to evil, some opprobrium is in order.  But that opprobrium should be limited to foreign affairs.  The neoconservative revolution in domestic policy has already happened.  Welfare reform passed over a decade ago, despite a liberal resurgence, wide-eyed social engineering projects like school-busing is still frowned upon.

The empirical style of conservatism, in which conservative policies were justified using modern social science, is still very much in vogue. Just look at David Frum’s Comeback or the variety attempts by conservatives like Stanley Kurtz and Maggie Gallagher to make the secular case against gay marriage by claiming (wrongly, in my view) that gay marriage hurts marriage as an institution and that institution provides a variety of societal goods. I’d argue that despite ideological differences, the style and objectives of Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam, Ramesh Ponnuru, Daniel Casse, Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin are very reminiscent of the original neoconservatives.  This is a provincial interpretation.  But I think that neoconservatism could be defined outside of its cultural box of “jews in the early 1970s reacting against flawed liberal social policy” and instead could be described as a tendency to explain and generate conservative policies using, in a very basic sense, liberal values and intuitions.

What I mean is that neoconservatives are more likely to use the liberal moral senses, in the schema of Jonathan Haidt, of “harm” and “reciprocity” to justify conservative polices rather than just appealing to “honor” or “ingroup” or “purity.” But you will surely say, don’t many of the so-called neoconservatives you mentioned reject Haidt’s work, doesn’t Leon Kass, a neo-conservative if there ever was one, base most of his philosophical project on the “wisdom of repugnance?”  Well, yes, he does, and Ross Douthat isn’t about to abandon in-group preference and become some sort of cosmopolitan egalitarian.  But look at how conservatives justify their preference for purity and in group preference over more abstract claims like harm or reciprocity.  What was once just prejudice has turned into an argument grounded in evolutionary science and social science showing that people’s bonds are more readily forged with those in their in-group and that these bonds are the making of a decent society.  This is just Burke rewritten for the 20th and 21st centuries.

But the problem is that these arguments from neo-conservatives aren’t exactly floating to the top in the Republican party or the conservative movement in general.  Except in foreign policy.  That’s where neo-conservative were actually able to gain a foothold in a party whose domestic policy is dominated on one hand by Norquistian tax cutters and by the other reactionary evangelicals.  And so, neo-conservatism has become associated with Iraq, as it should be.  That’s because most people aren’t like me and can read Peter Berkowitz’s articles in Policy Review of Yuval Levin in Commentary and pleasanty nod along, thinking what they right is interesting if wrong headed.  Instead, the neoconservatives got their chance to really shape policy in Iraq…and look what happened.

And it’s certainly unfortunate that such an intellectually stimulating and historically important tradition had to debase itself on such a misguided, disastrous war.  But debase themselves - and this country - they did.  And so neoconservative will be used as an epithet to describe war supporters.  And no, Russel Berman, it’s not because liberals see neo-conservative as especially mendacious traitors (most liberals probably couldn’t give you the Spark Notes history of neoconservatism, it’s because we think the Iraq War is a total fucking mess.  It’s fitting that the faction of ideas is now hanging for its one big idea.  It may not be entirely just, but it’s certainly appropriate.

But Aren’t Their Hearts Dirty Enough?

As you all know, I’m an avid bloggingheads.tv watcher.  One of the more entertaining aspects of the format is seeing what types of mundane actions the participants engage in and the ignorance of their fellow bloggingheads.  We have had Eric Alterman drink a beer in a diavlog, and infamously, Julian Sanchez sucking down about six cigarettes in 35 minutes.  But there’s something of a trend emerging, jewish, hawkish national security reporters who suck down cancer sticks like it’s their job.  First it was Eli Lake, and now we have Michael Goldfarb slowly killing himself on screen.   I’ll let y’all in the comments speculate why hawks are poisoning themselves.

David Frum Does Not Follow His Own Schema

I’ll have more to say about David Frum and his new book later (preliminary indication, Frum has catapulted himself into the Salam-Douthat-Ponnuru sphere of conservative thinkers who I both respect and fear), but Eli Lake highlights one line from Comeback in his review that just demands to be noted:

“Democrats, by contrast, have historically tended to attract those who felt themselves in some way marginal to the American experience: slaveholders, indebted farmers, immigrants, intellectuals, Catholics, Jews, blacks, feminists, gays — people who identify with the ‘pluribus’ in the nation’s motto, ‘e pluribus unum.’ As the nation weakens, Democrats grow stronger,” he writes.

I imagine that David is quite aware that he definitely falls into two of those categories and arguably three.  What that means for his little one-line description of the Democratic party is his call.  I, for one, am proud of identifying with the party of Jews, immigrants and intellectuals (slaveholders not so much).

PS - Don’t worry, I still think that much of what Frum thinks on foreign policy, especially in An End to Evil, is greatly misguided.  It’s his ideas on domestic policy, environment and the future of the GOP that are very stimulating and thoughtful. Yes, one could call this a “strange new respect.”

Who’s Taking a Holiday From History?

John Podhoretz’s post, claiming that Bhutto’s assassination is the turning point from venal campaign riff raff to serious talk about foreign policy, seems to have captured the emerging CW. While I agree that candidates using Bhutto’s assassination as a chance to talk about their foreign policy is a good thing, J-Pod is wrong in saying that up until now, the campaign has just been about silly stuff.

On the Democratic side, foreign policy has been constantly discussed. Obama’s judgment on the Iraq war is why many Democrats are supporting him. They realize how serious a foreign policy disaster Iraq was, and they want a candidate who won’t make the same mistake. When Clinton harped on Obama for promising to meet with foreign leaders or pledging not to use nukes against terrorists or saying he would bomb Pakistan, that was a serious foreign policy debate. When Obama and Edwards go after Clinton for voting yes on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, it’s because they think that giving Bush any war-making authority with Iran would be a huge error for America’s security and foreign policy.

It’s on the Republican side, however, that we’re seeing the “holiday from history.” With the exception of Paul and Huckabee, the Republican candidates are in lockstep with Bush on Iraq and on foreign policy more generally. When Mitt Romney talks about “doubling Gitmo” or when Rudy says that the problem with out foreign policy is that State Department officials don’t advocate for America enough, that’s taking a holiday from history. I could go on and on with the un-serious, inane or just batshit insane ideas Republican candidates have about foreign policy, but I think you get the point.

But we all know that when Podhoretz talks about moving “foreign policy, the war on terror, and the threat of Islamofascism back into the center of the 2008 campaign” he clearly means that the campaign should become a contest to see who will invade the most Muslim countries and crack down on civil liberties the hardest. Which makes us wonder, why is he disappointed with the GOP race so far?

Wondering Why Iran Is Worried

The lack of self awareness Contentions’ Abe Greenwald displays in his latest post about Iran is almost surprising.  He complains that Russia is selling an anti-aircraft system to the Iranians and claims that there’s just no way Iran is buying because they want to defend themselves.  Instead, Greenwald points out that the S-300 system, when deployed in China, could reach into Taiwanese airspace.  The relevance of this factoid has to Iran buying the s-300 system is totally illusory.  If Greenwald is so confused as to why Iran is buying these missiles from Russia, maybe he should read some of his own magazine.  Read Contentions for a few days and you won’t be confused as to why Iran thinks it needs some better Surface to Air missiles.

Podhoretz on the NIE

While most neocons and Iran hawks are interpreting the NIE as a vindication and further justification for their stance, only (to my knowledge) has Norman Podhoretz gone so far to say that the estimate is a fake put out by intelligence community with the goal of protecting Iran from air strikes:

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”

While it would usually be easy to dismiss such paranoid rambling as inconsequential, Norman Podhoretz just so happens to to be a senior foreign policy adviser to Rudy Giuliani.  I hope that some enterprising reporter asks Rudy a these questions.  1) Do you think the NIE reflects the honest assessment of the intelligence agencies that prepared it.  2) Do you agree with your adviser Norman Podhoretz’s opinion that the estimate is in fact a lie put out by the intelligence agencies to undermine the President? If so, why so, if not, why not? 3) As president, would Mr. Podhoretz advise you on what action to take and what level of consideration to give intelligence reports?

In related news, Mike Huckabee, who has taken a significantly less crazy line on Iran than Rudy, is approaching Giuliani in national polling.  While I’d like to think the GOP primary electorate is rewarding Huckabee for his stance on Iran,  I have a sinking feeling that is not the case.

Herf’s Poor Timing

Jeffrey Herf has written yet another one of those tiresome “Ahmadinejad is a Nazi, so why isn’t the Left more active in opposing him” pieces, entitled “Where Are the Anti-Fascists?” for TNR.  He goes through all the usual motions — Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad hates Jews and wants to wipe Israel off the map and that Iran can’t be deterred through normal means.  While he does acknowledge the NIE briefly, he seems to ignore why its important.  He complains that Germany isn’t doing enough to oppose Iran and their nuclear weapons, but that all assumes that Iran is in fact pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity.

He also blithely ignores very real arguments that Ahmadinejad isn’t the main source of power in Iran and that most of his blustery anti-Israel rhetoric and is for domestic consumption.  He doesn’t even attempt to refute these arguments, and instead just asserts that “While I have heard such arguments from political scientists in the United States, many of whom tend to dismiss the causal significance of ideological fanaticism in international affairs, such reassuring tones sound particularly peculiar when voiced in this country. To put it mildly, German politics and intellectual life is not famous for sunny optimism.”  This just makes no sense  If we accept as true that 1) Iran isn’t pursuing nuclear weapons 2)Ahmadinejad isn’t serious about this threats 3) Ahmadinejad isn’t the most powerful figure in Iran and 4) Iran can be deterred like a normal country then it really doesn’t matter if Germany, or the European left in general, isn’t reacting to Iran as Jeffrey Herf wishes they were.  The NIE itself says that Iran can be deterred, and there is really no evidence to suggest that it is controlled by “mad mullahs.”

What’s even more bizarre about the piece is the cherry picked nature of the evidence Herf cites.  His evidence seems to be that there aren’t enough media expose about German companies assisting Iran’s nuclear program.  But, as he points out, a Brandenburg prosecutor “has been conducting an ongoing investigation into the role of German firms in the building of the Iranian nuclear plant at Bushehr.”  And that “Angela Merkel has denounced his threat with great analytical and moral clarity. She has called for U.N. economic sanctions against Iran.”  So it turns out that the German political system is responding to Iran as Herf would like them to.

Herf seems to think that Germany has a special historical obligation to take the (incorrect) neoconservative on Ahmadinejad, because it’s possible that Ahmadinejad really is as bad as Herf says he is and that Germany should err on the side of thinking that every two-bit dictator is the next Hitler.  And while I’m sympathetic to the argument that Germans should be more sensitive to anti-Semitism and genocide than most countries, if Herf’s analysis of Iran and Ahmadinejad is largely incorrect, than it’s hard for me to care that Germany hasn’t adopted Herf’s views.  Can we really blame Germans — or anyone for that mattter — for not being taken in by yet another “Middle Eastern Dictator = Hitler” routine?

PS - One has to wonder about the timing of this piece.  It was originally published on Dec 2 in Germany, and the NIE came out on the  3rd, making it much of the piece obsolete.  While I imagine Herf had previously arranged with TNR to publish the piece, putting it online with the NIE so fresh in everyone’s mind is just going to encourage snarky bloggers to savage it way more so than they would have otherwise. Suspicious…

Talk is Cheap: China and the EU

Before 9/11, William Kristol and much of the militaristic right was talking about the emerging threat of China in military, political and economic realms. As Francis Fukuyama remembered, “There was actually a deliberate search for an enemy because they felt that the Republican Party didn’t do as well.” Gordon Chang is back at it, fulminating against China for no reason:

Mandelson’s address and Sarkozy’s criticism come on the eve of the 10th China-European Union summit. Despite the fact that Beijing just placed large orders with Airbus and France’s Areva, observers say that the discussions this week in the Chinese capital will be tense. “For Europe, the ‘China honeymoon’ is over,” writes David Shambaugh of George Washington University.

We may think that Europeans are effete and spineless, but when was the last time someone from the Bush administration publicly told the Chinese off in their own capital? American officials like to speak about working cooperatively with China to solve “concerns,” while the Europeans are venting frustrations after years of useless dialogue. The welcomed departures of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder mark a change of mood in the heart of the EU. Perhaps President Bush should now take his cue from the new version of Old Europe.

Chang is celebrating Sarkozy, who went into Beijing and talked some smack to Hu Jintao about intellectual property, the currency and human rights. What’s weird is that Sarkozy, and also Mendelson complaining about product safety, haven’t actually pursued any policy changes. For Chang, it is worth celebrating whenever leaders simply talk tough to the Chinese.

Chang’s post is schizophrenic, he mentions yet ignores the fact that the EU is still pursuing high-level commercial ties with China, specifically the deal with Airbus. Isn’t it weird that a magazine who devotes much of its pages to decrying the utility of negotiating with Iran is so desperate to seek out confrontation with China that they’ll go head over heals when European leaders get blustery for domestic consumption. I wonder what Commentary thought about Gerhard Schroeder anti-American pose he put on for the German public. The parallels are obvious.

The Original Sin of the Iraq War

I was scanning through Josh Muravchik’s long defense of neoconservatism in Commentary, and while needless to say I object to just about all of it, there’s one matter of the historical record that really ought to be cleaned up. Muravchik makes the assertion that war was inevitable because the weapons inspectors could never prove that Iraq didn’t have WMD:

At the outset, liberal critics—initially there were more of them abroad than at home—argued that UN inspectors should have been given more time to find Saddam’s hidden weapons of mass destruction, and that the U.S. should not have gone to war without the approval of the Security Council.

But the inspectors had been at their mission for twelve years, and there was no reason to believe they would ever accomplish it. As we later discovered, the Iraqi regime had apparently destroyed its stocks of biological and chemical agents and concealed or destroyed the evidence it had done so, or failed to make a record in the first place. Why Saddam would have deliberately invited the suspicion that he still possessed such materials remains the war’s great mystery—probably he did not want his enemies or his friends to know the actual state of affairs—but whatever the final truth may be, the inspectors were unlikely to have discovered it.

This is surely a nice way to remember the immediate pre-war period. For so long Hans Blix was a figure of derision on the prowar right, and now that it’s been conclusively shown that he was basically right about everything, we don’t hear much from him anymore. But on the record of history, it is simply false to say that the inspectors didn’t establish the lack of WMD in Iraq. In the March 2003 report of the inspectors to the Security Council, Mohamed ElBaradei firmly reported that there was no nuclear program in Iraq:

Mr. ElBaradei, reported that, after three months of intrusive inspections, the Agency had found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq. There was also no indication that Iraq had attempted to import uranium since 1990 or that it had attempted to import aluminium tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment…MOHAMED ELBARADEI said that during the past four years, at the majority of Iraqi sites, industrial capacity had deteriorated substantially, due to the departure of the foreign support that was often present in the late 1980s, the departure of large numbers of skilled Iraqi personnel in the past decade, and the lack of consistent maintenance by Iraq of sophisticated equipment. At only a few inspected sites involved in industrial research, development and manufacturing had the facilities been improved and new personnel been taken on. That overall deterioration in industrial capacity was of relevance to Iraq’s capability for resuming a nuclear weapons programme…was no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites. Also, there was no indication that Iraq had attempted to import uranium since 1990. Further, there was no indication that Iraq had attempted to import aluminium tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminium tubes in question.

Or we can listen to Hans Blix, who until the end was pushing for more inspections to prove the logically impossible: that there weren’t any WMD in Iraq:

“There were about 700 inspections, and in no case did we find weapons of mass destruction,” said Hans Blix, the Swedish diplomat called out of retirement to serve as the United Nations’ chief weapons inspector from 2000 to 2003; from 1981 to 1997 he headed the International Atomic Energy Agency. “We went to sites [in Iraq] given to us by intelligence, and only in three cases did we find something” — a stash of nuclear documents, some Vulcan boosters, and several empty warheads for chemical weapons.

There’s also the myth that Saddam was uncooperative with the inspections. While his cooperation may not have been perfect, the inspectors were still able to interview scientists and travel basically unimpeded through Iraq. Most importantly, the inspections were working. They debunked the existence of a revived nuclear program and, despite being fed bad intelligence by the US, were systematically on their way to proving that Iraq possessed no meaningful WMD capability. The inspections regime had the chance of being one of the great successes of multilateral diplomacy. And because of the inspectors great work which was tragically cut short, war supporters will never forgive them.

Georgia Cracks Down

As we all know, today is official Bash Contentions Day.  There hasn’t been a lot of movement as far as Contentions bashing goes, but the day is still young.  A few days ago, Max Boot wrote this gushing post about how awesome the Mikheil Saakashvili administration is, and more broadly, why Georgia is a shining hill of democracy compared to that stinking hole of authoritarianism to the north:

Saakashvili didn’t call out an army of riot police to bust up the protests. The police presence was limited to a few lightly armed officers who, for the most part, got along well with the crowds. Contrast that with Russia, where far smaller anti-government rallies have been broken up by club-wielding riot police who have assaulted some protesters and arrested others, including the former chess champ Garry Kasparov.

This is clearly a tale of two former Soviet republics going in different directions: Georgia toward liberal democracy, Russia toward autocracy. Whatever his mistakes, Saakashvili deserves credit for his efforts to create greater freedom, including the freedom to protest against the government.

The New York Times reports today, “Riot police officers used tear gas and a water cannon today to clear thousands of demonstrators from the streets of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, employing extensive force in the face of protests against the country’s pro-Western government.”   So maybe just because the leader of a country with can speak english and went to Columbia, that doesn’t necssarily make him the Savior of the Caucuses.

Cultural Relativism OR How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Support Torture When Other People Do It

Max Boot says that as long as our local allies in counterinsurgency campaigns do the torturing, we should just turn a blind eye:

West notes that when he was an adviser in South Vietnam in 1966 he saw a village police chief named Thanh using “what is now called waterboarding, rubbing lye soap into a wet cloth and placing it across the face of the prisoner. I never saw a prisoner die or not be able to walk out of that room. But they talked. I reported it and our orders were to keep the Marines in our Combined Action Platoon out of that room.”

Our advisers in Iraq don’t have the same option of turning a blind eye. As West notes: “Today, 40 years later, the order would be for the American adviser to physically stop Thanh and to bring him up on charges.” As West notes, that is a misguided attempt to impose our cultural norms elsewhere—you might even call it “cultural imperialism.”

“Neither our advisers nor our military units are involved in waterboarding or other such techniques, be they labeled ‘torture’, or ‘harsh interrogation’ or whatever the vernacular,” he notes. But we should be more tolerant if our allies, who are fighting for their lives and that of their families, practice a harsher brand of counterinsurgency than we’re comfortable with.

The most obvious objection is that if an American soldier isn’t allowed to torture because it’s immoral and goes against the ethics and norms of American, Military and International Law, than those local soldiers he’s working with damn well shouldn’t be able to do so under American supervision.  I thought one of the hallmarks of neoconservatism was a staunch stand against moral relativism, but I guess when it comes to one of the strongest taboos in the West, neocons think that “cultural imperialism” is bad.

But, in all fairness, Boot isn’t likely to convinced by those type of arguments.  The most important reason for why we shouldn’t turn a blind eye to torture is that when the US is perceived as being enablers of torture — even when done by locals — it makes a counter-insurgency campaign pretty difficult.   It’s worth noting that  the South Vietnamese and the United States lost the Vietnam war in large part because of actions of those like Thahn and a general disrespect for the humanity of the Vietnamese people (not that the NVA were saints or anything).  Remember, we managed to win WWII without any torture, and we lost in Vietnam.

Welcome to Glick World

Caroline Glick has one of the strangest foreign policy articles I’ve read in quite some time.  In it, she says that the foreign policy figures most deserving of our disdain are Condoleeza Rice, Christopher Hill, Joseph Cirincione , Brent Scowcroft, James Baker and Zbigniew Brzezinski. For the former three, she doesn’t bring up a single policy stance they’ve taken since 1992.

Glick manages to mention Iraq in one paragraph, but only discusses George HW Bush’s mangled support for a Shia rebellion following the first Gulf War. She contrasts Rice, Hill, Scowcroft etc with Richard Pearle and John Bolton, who are apparently her model for prudent foreign policy operatives.  This bashing of the foreign policy establishment, and more specifically the State Department, was very popular in 2002-2003.  One would think that in light of the Iraq war, people like Glick would be at least a little humbled, but if you obstinately ignore the war in Iraq and a whole host of other neocon foreign policy failures, then maybe you can still pretend that the State Department is the biggest obstacle to an intelligent foreign policy.

What Should We Do, Robert Kagan?

Robert Kagan eulogizes the belief that economic growth makes liberal transition inevitable(sidenote - Kagan is clearly referencing Fukuyama’s book, and even puts the word “recognition” in quotes — recognition, of course, being a key part of Fukuyama’s Hegel-by-way-of Kojeve synthesis — but can’t actually say the words “End of History” or “Fukuyama”…weird) by pointing out that autocracies in China, Russia and Venezuela are increasingly stable.

This analysis is specious for a few reasons. The first is that the “backslide” in Russia and Venezuela (neither of which were ever outposts of liberalism and democracy) can mostly be explained by two factors, both of which aren’t in any way structural: high oil prices and charismatic, savvy leaders. Neither of these can explain why the general thesis of Fukuyama — that as countries get richer and develop a prosperous middle class, they will eventually transition to a more liberal democratic system — is wrong.

The second problem is that he refuses to lay out any solid policy proposal in keeping with his thesis that democracy must precede development and institution building (it’s also worth pointing out that he criticizes Fareed Zakaria’s notion that “liberal autocrats” are a stepping stone to liberal democracy, but refuses to actually say his name). He makes vague allusions to policies that entail we “confront autocracies and demand that they hold free and fair elections.” But what does that mean, in practice? Does Kagan suggest we refuse to trade with China until they democratize? He seems to imply that we should fault the Chinese for not both lifting hundreds of millions of people out of desperate poverty AND democratizing all at the same time. What about Russia, how do we “confront” them while at the same time extract cooperation over Iran? Kagan can’t tell us. The only policies we know that he favors to “confront” autocracy are the misguided Concert of Democracies and invading Iraq. So maybe he shouldn’t elaborate any policy options, considering how bad his track record is.

Nepotism is Not the Issue Here, Dude

Glenn Greenwald points out that many prominent neocons had *gasp* parents that were also prominent movement conservatives:

Just as the NR Editors could not be any further away from their alleged “political principles” with what they actually advocate, so, too, are our neoconservative tough guys the very opposite of those virtues they claim to embody. Their whole movement is based on endless sermons about warrior virtues, self-reliance, toughness, courage and the like — and yet a huge bulk of them, and virtually all of the most influential ones, never leave the safe and protective sides of their moms and dads.

They faithfully follow in their footprints without wavering — not only having their careers built for them by their parents and their parents’ friends but also never deviating even slightly from the extremist political views that their parents raised them to spout. They are coddled, protected, sheltered recipients of endless nepotistic, parental largesse who never tire of sermonizing to the world about the necessities of self-sufficiency and meritocracies and whose entire world-view is driven by the insatiable quest to send other people off to one war after the next — all while they insist to the world how their war advocacy shows how tough, resolute, and willful they are, self-glorifying announcements they make from positions arranged for them by their moms and dads.

This is silly; what makes John Podhoretz, William Kristol, the brothers Kagan and Jonah Goldberg bad isn’t that their parents were also conservative journalists and academics, it’s that they promote horrible, destructive polices. Greenwald’s thesis that there is an almost causal relationship between having prominent conservative parents and having neoconservative views is either entirely banal (duh, kids tend to be close to their parents politically) while at the same time totally useless. How does pointing out that well connected conservative journalists have kids that are also well connected conservative journalists explain the warmongering views and the general conservative ideology that Greenwald objects to explain Rich Lowry, Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Michael Rubin, Mario Loyola and every other neoconservative that isn’t the scion of some prominent conservative family? Lowry, by all accounts, got to the editorship of National Review by traditional meritocratic means - he was the editor of the UVA newspaper and got a job with NR out of college and rose to the rank of editor. And yet, despite his obtaining his position based on merit, he still promotes a disastrous foreign policy and political program. What’s wrong with neoconservative foreign policy is that it’s bad policy, and it has nothing to do with who’s someone’s parents are.

While it’s fun to speculate about various personal failings and shortcomings of our political and ideological opponents, it’s an ultimately fruitless task. William Kristol’s parents could be Women’s Studies professors at Evergreen State, and that would still be totally nongermane to the fact that invading Iran and staying in Iraq are bad ideas. We’d all be much better off if we assumed, despite how hard it is to do sometimes, that an opponent’s argument is not borne out of some demented personal psychology, and that they are instead advocating what they believe to be the best policy option for the US.

It’s genuinely sad for someone of Greenwald’s considerable talents and intelligence (his posts on civil liberty issues are amazing) to waste so much time speculating on the psycho-familial or psycho-sexual roots of conservative ideology and policy. Maybe once we convince everyone that the policies themselves are bad, then we can get started on proving that the individuals that espouse them have issues of their own.

Why Trotsky?

Ian Williams review essay on Irving Howe’s biography of Trotsky is some really good stuff. Since I have relatives who were/are genuinely involved in the capital L left, the one that takes Marx as its lodestar, I have a special interest in these seemingly never ending debates among learned men over which blood thirsty ideologue they supported and why.

Among the big Three of the Soviet Communism — Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin — intellectuals have always found it acceptable to take Trotsky as one of their own, as a true idealist who was not corrupted by power and totalitarianism like Marx and Lenin. Of course, Trotsky, had he ever gotten in power, would have been plenty blood thirsty and repressive. But thankfully for his reputation, he was exiled from the USSR and could then pretend to be a critic of its “excesses.”

But that doesn’t fully answer our question, why are humane and democratic men like Howe still somewhat enthralled by Trotsky? Why in the 50s did you so many brilliant Jewish intellectuals fall under the spell of the Old Man? The question, I think, can be answered in two ways. First is Trotsky’s name and his glasses. His real name is Lev Davidovich Bronstein and he wore glasses. These traits signify one essential quality of Trotsky: the Jewish intellectual.

Real Jewish intellectuals could pretend that Trotsky was one of their own, more of Marx the great thinker than Lenin or Stalin the great murderers. But for bookish intellectuals who profess a love of revolution, their hero can not merely be one of them - another great mind who they meet for lunch at CCNY to discuss Sorel and Feuerbach. He instead needs to be heroic. As Williams explains, American Jewish intellectual life in the 30s and 40s was caught up in the power of ideas – the notion that these ideas of bookish men were worth fighting for and killing for:

Heroes were in demand both when Howe was growing up and when he wrote his biography. The intellectually voracious radical Jewish culture of the 1930s and 40s thought that ideas mattered and that they could change the world. Is it too far a stretch to remember that this was the milieu that gave birth to Superman and other comic-book superheroes? Lev Davidovich Bronstein, the Russian Jewish intellectual, may never have stepped into a phone booth like Clark Kent, but he did transform himself into a Colossus, bestriding the globe

But why Trotsky? Why not the legions of Marxist intellectuals who were just Marxist intellectuals and not aspiring mass murderers? Because the corollary of this fanatical love of ideas is a willingness, or even a desire, for those ideas to be implemented at the point of a gun. And if that gun can be held by someone named Bronstein who wears glasses, then all the better. Trotsky was not just the famous Soviet dissident or the theorist of Permanent Revolution; he rode his train around Russia during the Civil War, leading the Proletariat against the capitalist and imperialist forces, actually killing people in the name and defense of his vaunted ideas. The Marxist Jewish intellectual was too sophisticated to worship a bureaucratic savage like Stalin, but too insecure in his own bookishness to be enchanted by a Luxemberg. Trotsky was the perfect compromise.

But why are the anxieties of the Jewish intellectuals of the 30s, 40s and 50s of any concern to us today? Well, because as Williams notes, the only place where Trotskyites have found a foothold in American political life is as neoconservatives. The original neoconservatives — Kristol and Podhoretz — were in fact ex socialists that came from the very milieu that bred such admiration for Trotsky. Some of their ideological descendants, like Joshua Muravchick, Elliot Abrams and Stephen Schwartz, were at one point or another avowed followers of Trotsky or Max Shactman, the erstwhile America socialist. Christopher Hitchens, of course, was once a Trotskyite, and still carries with him that revolutionary zeal in defense of intellectual notions that so shamed an entire generation of American intellectuals. Thus when Norman Podhoretz says that “this war of ideas is no less bloody than the one being fought by our troops in the Middle East,” we can hear that old yearning of the Marxist intellectual who just wants blood to be spilled in pursuit of his grand ideological notions. Williams conclusion, while a little overstated, gets to the core of why we are still talking about this long dead totalitarian:

After all, once the socialism was stripped out, which was quite easily done in the face of popular indifference, what was left of Trotskyism but the failed predictions, the ability to hold a deep belief, with quasi-religious fervor, in a secular idea in the face of all advice and empirical evidence to the contrary? Having infiltrated the conservative movement, Trotsky’s heirs, still an antithesis looking for a thesis to batter, have substituted Islam, or Islamic fascism, to fill the gap in their universe left by the disappearing Soviet Union.

They have a mission to remake the world, but instead of Trotsky’s Red Army swooping to bring socialism to ungrateful Poles and Central Asians, it is now the U.S. military bringing democracy and free markets to lesser breeds hitherto without the law. And with the ruthless romanticism of the revolutionary, they think the price in blood is well worth paying, that history will absolve them.

 

Why Podhoretz and Ledeen Matter

James Poulos (Congrats dude), in discussing Beinart’s review of Podhoretz and Ledeen new books, points the blame for their prominence in an odd place.

Even more importantly, no one should be fooled by Beinart’s ludicrous insinuation that Podhoretz and Ledeen exhaust the policy positions available to, and indeed articulated by, “prominent conservatives:”…

That day has already come, of course, and is with us still. How ironic that the ‘prominence’ of wonks like Podhoretz and Ledeen is in no small part the result of the constant attention paid to their output by outraged wonks like Beinart.

While it’s almost pro forma at this point to say that neoconservative foreign policy is hardly the only “conservative” foreign policy position, it is certainly the most prominent. Now, James himself, is an eloquent expounder of another conservative foreign policy view – anti interventionism, as far as I can tell (James, god bless him, tends to use big words) — and surely that view, especially these days, deserves a fair shake. But Poulos, unlike Michael Ledeen, was never faxing foreign policy advice to Karl Rove and unlike Norman Podhoretz, isn’t a senior foreign policy adviser for the Giuliani campaign. It’s not like over the past six years there’s been some huge debate playing out at the highest levels of conservative movement over foreign policy. So until N-Pod and Ledeen are totally marginalized from the foreign policy debate and recognized as the crackpots they are, pure criticism of them will (and must) do.

PS - Read Marc Edmundson’s piece on Freud and Religion in the NYTM as well as James’ post on Freud and politics.

Ian Buruma Gets it Right

Ian Buruma  reviews Norman Podhoretz’s screed, “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism” in this month’s NYRB. The first part of the essay is very satisfying, he ruthlessly catalogs the errors, deceptions and manifest extremism at the heart of Poedhortz’s world view — here’s an example.

Podhoretz is convinced that the savage murders and daily atrocities in Iraq are actually “a tribute to the enormous strides that had been made in democratizing and unifying the country under a workable federal system.” He wonders why men in the “so-called ‘insurgency’” would be shedding so much blood if they didn’t think the US mission in Iraq was working. Might it be that in a broken-down state, where power is up for grabs, violence and mayhem are the inevitable results? Only a man suffering from severe ideological blindness could be so obtuse as to not even consider this.

But doing that is easy, what makes Buruma’s essay exceptional is that he shifts his focus away from the thuggish and easily mockable N-Pod and moves instead to those soi disant liberals and leftists who have made common cause with the likes of Podhoretz.  This would, of course, be the “anti-totalitarian” left.  Buruma shows how their obsession with “courage”, the desire to be wannabe Orwells has poisoned their liberalism and, like Podhoretz worships American power, they similarly worship stark, binary, “courageous” decisions and judgments — at the expense of any sort of nuance or pragmatism. Buruma sums it up thusly:

Norman Podhoretz is not [a liberal]. Ever since he turned against the left, he has detested liberals. His support of Bush’s war is of a piece with his obsession with US power and the enemies without and within who seek to undermine it. His judgments are those of a right-wing ideologue. The fact that neoleftists share his judgments is, in my view, foolish. The fact that some of them do so in the name of liberalism betrays the very principles they claim to be defending.

Sad, yet true.

Peter, It’s Good To Have You Back On The Light Side

Everyone should read Peter Beinart’s review of Norman Podhoretz and Michael Ledeen’s new books about “Islamofascism” and Iran, respectively.  He totally eviscerates them — here’s one deliciously snarky bit:

Podhoretz declares, “this war of ideas is no less bloody than the one being fought by our troops in the Middle East.”

No less bloody? That’s good to know. Next time I talk to my sister-in-law, an emergency medicine doctor serving at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, I’ll tell her we have it just as rough here at home. Norman Podhoretz is practically dodging I.E.D.’s on his way to Zabar’s…

Since Ledeen attempted to write a more “serious” book about Iran, Beinart can’t deliver any juicy one-line responses, but he throughly destroys Ledeen’s argument for an “aggressive but nonviolent American campaign for regime change.”  Surely some will wonder how just a few years ago, Beinart was a fellow traveler with these people.  Some might even say that it’s a wee bit hypocritical for him to turn on his former allies — and not even mention this in his review.  But Beinart is just so smart, so well informed and such a good writer — I’m happy to have him back on our side, no matter what happened in the past.

Rick Santorum: Back and Crazier Than Ever!

Michael Brendan Dougherty, the most dapper conservative out there, exposes Rick Santorum’s conversion from social conservative looniness to foreign policy craziness.  The article is pretty scary, so I’ll just sum it up quickly - it makes you wish that Santorum would just go back to talking about man on dog.  If you want to know more, check it out below the fold, and hide the kids.  MBD presents Santorum’s insanity is such a stark way, I’ve been drawn to use some rather coarse language, you’ve been forewarned.

Ledeen’s Lame Labor

There’s a little glitch in right wing publications, they will openly advocate for any left wing cause - increased education spending, humanitarian aid, women’s rights and freedom are just a few examples - if it can be used to advocate for war or greater military confrontation.

We see this dishonest bait and switch all the time - whether it’s war supporters who laud isolated instances of educational and humanitarian aid being effectively delivered in Iraq or the Weekly Standard’s discovery of feminism, when it dishonestly accused American feminists and women’s organizations of ignoring the sorry plight of women in many parts of the Islamic world.  Of course, the situation for women in Iraq has gotten substantively worse as Saddam’s secular government was replaced by theocratic thugs in the South, but of course, women’s subjugation only matters if it can be used as a bludgeon against American political opponents, or to support a war.

Michael Ledeen has added to this long line of two-faced appropriations of left wing causes in the service of militaristic ends, complaining that American labor unions are in a shameful, cowed silence over the Iranians governments suppression of labor unions:

 If the West had the courage of its past convictions, every leader would denounce the terror in Iran, and every trade unionist would be shouting in front of Iranian embassies.

Instead, we have near-total silence. And the hell of it is that this meek acquiescence to the evils practiced by the mullahs, instead of supporting the Iranian people who are feistier than ever in their challenges to the regime, makes it increasingly likely that there will soon be full-fledged war. Or does the West intend to acquiesce when Iran proclaims it possesses nuclear weapons, which it intends to use against us and our friends?

The journalists who run the political debates might ask such questions of the candidates.

Of course, if Michael Ledeen actually cared about labor unions, he’d be writing columns about card-check, the murder of labor leaders in Colombia, putting labor standards in free trade agreements along with a whole host of other labor issues.  Too bad that Ledeen’s think tank - AEI and his magazine - National Review, have been sworn enemies of the labor movement since their respective inceptions.  Nowhere else in their publications will you see support for labor unions unless it’s in the context of a hawkish military stance.   You see, if warmongers actually cared about whatever liberal cause they decide to support in service of beating their war drums, they’d write about them without mentioning “Iraq” or “Iran” or propose policies to advance these causes besides starting a war in the Middle East.