Lew, the Catholic neocons you describe gaily turned Just War theory upside down to gratify their hero, Bush, and to perpetuate his errant, illegal, and profoundly immoral wars. Some of them were once my friends. But do we hear from them now — about the millions of displaced, even murdered, Christians in Iraq? The trillions down the drain? Are they proud of their legacy of a generation of permanently disabled veterans, or the hundreds of thousands of innocent dead? Are they sorry they handed the country to Obama on a silver platter? Do they intersperse their fundraising cruises and well-paid speaking appearances with visits to the rehab wards? I pray that they do.
Will they ever admit that they were wrong — or that they might actually have lied? I doubt it. Will they ever apologize? Never. Alcoholics who kick the habit have to admit that they’re alcoholics, apologize to those they have harmed, and try to make restitution, if they want to recover. But not the neocons. They never apologize, they just cash their checks and the wars go on and on.
It was especially noxious to watch their manipulation of the views of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI in their attempts to exculpate themselves. Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz took direct aim at that despicable outrage when he spoke at the Beatification of Pope John Paul II in May. I confronted one of them about it last month. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped, angrily, turning on his heel. That’s intellectual integrity, neocon style.
Beneath all this lies a more subtle agenda, equally pernicious and manipulative: they want to use the pro-life cause as a Trojan Horse. That movement has been repeatedly betrayed by the War Party the past forty years. To put it as bluntly as Cardinal Dziwisz did, the Hot Tubbers can’t stand the pro-lifers. They couldn’t care less about the unborn. Nonetheless, next year they will trot out their support of war and more war in tandem with their faux support of the pro-family types, because the grass roots voters are indispensable for the political survival of the profligate Hot Tubbers. As the campaign heats up, will they sing the praises of Dr. Ron Paul, who has delivered 4,000 more babies than the rest of them put together? Or will they attack him on the basis of their real — in fact, their only — goal: more Pentagon spending, bigger government, and, always, more war. “By their fruits you shall know them”: whatever their motives, their efforts have wrought nothing but foul and fetid failure — and, of course, a colossal constellation of funerals.
3:24 pm on August 8, 2011
