The Axis of Deceit – a nickname I coined to describe the neo-conservatives both within and outside the Bush Administration who are hell-bent on turning the United States into a modern-day version of the Roman Empire, and who lie to achieve this goal – are still spewing out their line of political red herrings, half-truths, and outright lies. While they have been quiet for a while since the initial U.S. military victory over the Iraqi military and Saddam Hussein, they seem to be gearing up to convince George Bush to launch another Middle East adventure and to smear their opponents in advance.
This time, the Axis of Deceit lead appears to be coming from the folks at the National Review (NR), and they have aimed their sites at both boobus Americanus and at their principled paleo-libertarian and paleo-conservative opponents. While David Frum has recently been spending a portion of his rambling observations in the shameless promotion of his wife's recent book (maybe he's burned out from carrying the neo-con banner in the one battle he lost with LRC), Michael Ledeen (a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute) continues to spout war-like imperial nostrums from his column at NR, and Jonah Goldberg has apparently picked up the fallen standard from the Frumster.
Ledeen's Line
With the U.S. occupation of Iraq going poorly – the U.S. is on its second post-war viceroy and the start of the Iraqi rebuilding and recovery is taking longer than it took to defeat the Iraqi Army, Ledeen figured it was time to resurrect the Iranian threat to the U.S. attempt to build democracy in Iraq. Ledeen pointed out that Iranian groups want true democracy in their country and that the mullahs were and are working overtime to drive the U.S. out of Iraq.
Frankly, the detail he used in his article makes it appear that he received an off-the-record briefing from the Pentagon or, much less likely, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In any case, Ledeen picked up where Newt Gingrich left off in his recent tirade against the State Department. Ledeen blew the neo-con horn in stating that George Bush supported Iranian aspirations towards freedom, in contradiction of what Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said several weeks earlier, about Iran being a democracy. While cautioning the U.S. not to take sides in trying to hand-pick a new Iranian leader, Ledeen suggested that Iran will soon acquire nuclear weapons – probably from North Korea – and that the U.S. has "… a compelling interest in the democratization of Iran." Presumably, a nuclear weapon-free Iran!
Apparently, now that he thinks the U.S. government is committed to nation-building in Iraq, it will be easy to con George Bush into conducting some covert operation to bring true democracy to Iran.
Jonah's Lament – Neo-conservatism was just an invention, but it has ended!!!
Trying in vain to re-spin David Frum's original failing screed against paleo-libertarians and paleo-conservatives, Jonah Goldberg wrote a three-part series on neo-conservatism, claiming that neo-conservatism was really never a tightly defined concept (part two), but that, anyway, 90% of Republicans are neo-conservatives (part three). The series is so full of red herrings, misstatements, half-truths and outright lies that it would take at least twenty pages, if not more, to answer them all.
To get an idea of how bad the series was, look at what Goldberg characterizes as the four myths, or misapplications, of the neo-con term. He says: "These myths are: (1) the idea that neoconservative means "pro-war"; (2) the idea that neoconservative means "foreign-policy hawk"; (3) the idea that neoconservative means Jewish; and, (4) the idea that neoconservative refers to ex-liberals. Some of these used to be true, none of them are reliably so anymore."
Well, Jonah may choose a different set of arguments, but the kid is wrong on all counts.
First, he claims that 90% of the Republican Party is for democracy and for war; therefore, there was no neo-con conspiracy or cabal to get the U.S. into wars to create new democracies. Talk about a red herring. George Bush and company did not take a poll with the Republican Party faithful, whoever they are, and then decide that they supported his neo-con–inspired war on Iraq and the neo-con notions of imposing democracy on Middle Eastern countries. Bush was persuaded to undertake this war to spread democracy by his neo-con advisers – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Abrams, et. al. – and the outsider neo-cons who give advice and who spread their poison in the mainstream media – William Kristol, Richard Perle, Newt Gingrich, R. James Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Ken Adelman, et. al. And many, if not most of these neo-cons, were part of William Kristol's Project for a New American Century, a group that pushed for an aggressive U.S. defense and foreign policy around the planet. In other words, it pushed for an aggressive expansion of the American Empire around the world. Thus, the neo-cons are the war party or the pro-war cabal that were able to get George Bush to carry out their desires.
Goldberg's second myth claims that neo-cons are wrongly labeled foreign policy hawks. In this, he is also flat out wrong. All he had to do is name several prominent neo-cons who opposed the use of war to spread democracy to other countries. Again, he named no neo-cons who opposed the war on Iraq. He could also have named prominent neo-cons who opposed the first Gulf War. Again, he named none. In fact, he named no prominent or even lesser-known neo-cons who opposed Clinton's wars to democratize various parts of the former Yugoslavia. Finally, Goldberg could have mentioned prominent or even lesser-known neo-cons who opposed the President's strategy of pre-emptive strikes on other countries by the U.S. He did not. Goldberg thus gives no evidence to refute the notion that the neo-cons are a bunch of foreign policy hawks.
Myth number three that Goldberg throws out is that paleo-libertarians and paleo-conservatives unfairly state that the neo-conservative movement is primarily run by Jewish people and that the non-Jewish neo-conservatives are only recent additions to the group. Again, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, neo-cons have exerted considerable power over American foreign policy, pushing Presidents and the Congress in unconstitutional directions – namely entangling foreign alliances with numerous countries and undeclared wars that have nothing to do with true defense of the United States. Whether the continuing and useless protection of the expanding NATO alliance, the U.S. alliance with – really protection of – Israel, and the U.S. protection of Japan and South Korea, the bottom line is the same – it's really just the unconstitutional expansion of the U.S. empire.
Goldberg's myth number four is another falsehood, another red herring and another lie, namely that being a liberal in the past somehow disqualifies one as being conservative. That is so blatantly untrue one wonders how any NR reader would believe it. The paleo-conservative and paleo-libertarian critique of these phony conservatives, these neo-cons, is that they are still liberal! They are social democrats. They invariably support the spending programs of the socialist welfare-warfare state, and when they do trumpet some so-called conservative plan, rest assured that they make sure that no other significant government program is ever abolished. Their power rests in the growth of the welfare and warfare budgets and the concentration of power in Washington, DC.
True conservatives, of the paleo-conservative and paleo-libertarian variety, support the dismantling of the welfare-warfare state, the end to American Empire and entangling alliances abroad, and the establishment of peaceful relations, based upon free trade, with all countries. In other words, they support a return to government – at all levels – that is so small it is either not needed and hence could be abolished, or that if it does exist, no one notices it. This was the plan of the founders of this nation, a plan that they knew was the only way to secure individual rights to life, liberty and property.
Neither Jonah Goldberg, David Frum, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, George Will, William Kristol, Richard Perle, nor any other neo-cons subscribe to this idea. They are pro-state, pro-empire, and anti-individual rights to life, liberty and property. They are not conservatives. While they claim that their policies and actions will preserve individual rights, they are lying. That is why they are the Axis of Deceit.
May 23, 2003
Jim Grichar (aka Exx-Gman) [send him mail], formerly an economist with the federal government, writes to “un-spin” the federal government’s attempt to con the public.
