Neoconservatism: The Return
A new incarnation, a new name and the same old warmongering
by
Justin Raimondo
by Justin Raimondo
 It
was a neocon moment: there they were, the organizers of the Foreign
Policy Initiative, the new neoconservative think-tank Bill
Kristol, Dan
Senor, and Robert
Kagan, with Clifford
May, Randy
Scheunemann, and junior neocon James
Kirchick in tow. It was the occasion of FPI's first public event
their Washington coming-out party, so to speak and who should
show
up but I.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby. A more fitting symbol of the
neoconservative tendency in American politics its history, its
methods, and its essential criminality could hardly be conceived.
While John
McCain was ostensibly the main attraction, the real focus of
the conference was a celebration of the man who defeated him. As
David Weigel put it, the FPI conference turned into a "Neocons
for Obama" festival, as super-hawkish foreign policy maven
Fred
Kagan hailed President Obama's Af-Pak offensive as the best
thing since the Iraqi "surge":
"He’s definitely saying no to pulling back. It was a
gutsy and correct decision." Yet all is not rosy: "Kagan
worried/predicted that Obama's base would bristle at the plan, so
'he will be counting on some significant amount of support from
his political opponents.'"
 Not
to worry. The brain-dead Obamaites are shamelessly eager to grant
their Glorious Leader a
pass, no matter what he does. So far, there is not a peep out
of Obama's liberal supporters, except a few voices raised at the
Nation, even as the president mounts a major
escalation of the
Long War. Not only that, but his supporters are rallying around
their commander in chief, now that we're fighting the "right"
war in the "right" way. And take a good look at some of
his supporters
FPI is the
latest in a long line of neocon front groups, all of them the
Committee
on the Present Danger, the Committee
for a Free World, the Project
for a New American Century [.pdf] aimed at whipping the country
into a militaristic frenzy. There is not only an ideological legacy
here, but a genealogical one, as the catalytic role of a member
of the Kristol family has always been instrumental in organizing
these groups Irving
back in the day, his son William more recently. The one and only
aim of this ideological Mafia is to conjure enemies and agitate
relentlessly for a more aggressive foreign policy. The neocons may
shift from
Left to Right and back
again when it comes to economic issues, but what they really
care about where their hottest
passions lie is in maintaining and expanding America's overseas
empire.
Read
the rest of the article
April
2, 2009
Justin
Raimondo [send him mail]
is editorial director of Antiwar.com
and is the author of An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
Copyright
© 2009 Antiwar.com
Justin
Raimondo Archives
|
