Met betrekking tot het verzet tegen het kapitalistisch geweld beschrijft Rosa Luxemburg in haar analyse The Accumulation of Capital (1913) hoe door de:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/ch27.htm
Tot aan de dag van vandaag geldt dat ‘in order to gain possession of their means of production and labour power and to convert them into commodity buyers’ het kapitalisme, ook in zijn neoliberale vorm, geen enkele drempel kan accepteren, geen enkel obstakel, geen enkele grens, zowel letterlijk als figuurlijk. Daarom moet het beschikken over de meest geavanceerde strijdkrachten. Het verklaart tevens waarom Rusland en China als het ware de natuurlijke vijanden van het Westen zijn. Zij weigeren zich te laten domineren door Washington en Wall Street. En dat moet bestraft worden, zo drong de Britse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, Liz Truss, erop aan:
to send more ‘heavy weapons, tanks’ and airplanes to Ukraine, and said China would face the same treatment as Russia, if it doesn’t ‘play by the rules.’
De westerse commerciële media verspreiden het beeld, meer is het niet, dat Rusland en China, in de woorden van mainstream-opiniemaker Ian Buruma, ‘mafia societies’ zijn, net als ‘Sicily.’ Hoe anders moeten de woordvoerders van de westerse elite rechtvaardigen dat sinds 2020 tenminste 60 procent van de Amerikaanse marinevloot in de nabijheid van China is gestationeerd, of dat de NAVO 17 keer meer aan het militair-industrieel complex spendeert dan Rusland. Op die manier is de VS in staat de razendsnel opkomende wereldmacht te chanteren, ondermeer door te dreigen alle zeeroutes naar en van het land af te sluiten. Dit demonstreert opnieuw dat het kapitalisme met zijn neoliberale ‘democratie’ niet zonder het dreigen met, of daadwerkelijk inzetten van massaal geweld kan functioneren.
De westerse zogeheten globalisering is de afgelopen vijf eeuwen grenzeloos geweest, op elk gebied, sociaal, politiek, economisch, militair, en cultureel. Bovendien zijn de westerse interventies altijd immoreel geweest. De rest is de dagelijkse propaganda van opportunisten in de politiek en de pers, die het eeuwenlange westerse geweld verzwijgen. Maar doordat de ontwikkeling van geavanceerde wapens zo snel gaat, kunnen zelfs verzetsbewegingen het zwaarst bewapende land ter wereld op de knieën krijgen, zoals Vietnam en Afghanistan hebben bewezen. De tijd dat boerenzonen in mariniersuniform gekoloniseerde volkeren moeiteloos konden afslachten, waardoor ze weer een generatie gedwee de bevelen van de kolonisator opvolgden, is definitief voorbij. Bovendien is als gevolg van het feit dat de meerderheid van de wereldbevolking nu in stedelijke agglomeraties leeft, het steeds moeilijker voor reguliere legers om de vijand te verslaan.
gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth, used especially as a propaganda technique. The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone ‘could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.’
Die ‘grote leugen’ manifesteert zich in een technocratische massamaatschappij op elk niveau. Een voorbeeld: het kostte de polderpers precies 70 jaar voordat Manon van den Brekel, een onderzoeksjournaliste van het regionale Eindhovens Dagblad, in 2017 een gedocumenteerd boek publiceerde met als titel Massa-Executies Op Sulawesi, het vroegere Celebes. Zij beschrijft daarin ‘Hoe Nederland wegkwam met moord in Indonesië.’ 175 pagina’s lang toont zij aan hoe drie:
Nederlandse militairen begin 1947 vier weken lang met hun manschappen al moordend over het Indonesische eiland Sulawesi [trokken]. Ze doodden ongeveer 1.550 onbewapende burgers, vernietigden voedselvoorraden een brandden complete dorpen plat. Zeventig jaar na dato vertellen overlevenden van de moordpartijen hun indrukwekkend verhaal. Uit hun relaas blijkt dat de3 militairen nog wreder te werk gingen dan al gebleken is uit eerder historisch onderzoek. Bovendien voltrokken de Nederlanders op meer plekken executies dan tot nu toe bekend was en vielen er meer slachtoffers.
De oude vrouw Saniasah moest als kind toekijken terwijl de mannen uit haar dorp eerst werden mishandeld en daarna één voor één werden doodgeschoten. Weduwe Tari ging zelf in een berg bebloede lijken op zoek naar het lichaam van haar vermoorde man. Ook in de nasleep van het geweld stierven er mensen. Zo verloor Abdul Majid zijn eenjarig zusje aan de hongerdood nadat de militairen alle voedselvoorraden in zijn dorp verbrandden.
Typerend voor de Nederlandse onverschilligheid is dat de eerste en enige druk van Massa-Executies op Sulawesi momenteel bij boekhandel DeSlegte in de ramsj ligt voor €11,95. Het gebrek aan empathie met de slachtoffers maakt de huidige grote verontwaardiging over ongecheckte ‘Russische oorlogsmisdaden’ niet alleen zo hypocriet, maar demonstreert tegelijkertijd het wijd verspreide onderhuids racisme in Nederland. De joodse auteur en concentratiekamp-overlevende Elie Wiesel had gelijk toen hij onverschilligheid als volgt definieerde:
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
De Nederlandse onverschilligheid is even weerzinwekkend als de gekweekte hysterische haat alhier tegen het Russische volk. De Britse minister Liz Truss sprak op 27 april 2022 tijdens een banquet voor Britse hoogwaardigheidsbekleders van ‘appalling barbarism and war crimes’ die de Russische strijdkrachten in Oekraïne zouden begaan en:
also urged the US-led bloc to send more ‘heavy weapons, tanks’ and airplanes to Ukraine, and said China would face the same treatment as Russia if it doesn’t ‘play by the rules.’
Die ‘regels’ zijn al eeuwenlang bekend, zoals de Amerikaanse neoconservatieve politicoloog Samuel Huntington in 1996 nog eens benadrukte in zijn bestseller The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order toen hij erop wees dat:
The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.
Victoria Nuland, Amerikaanse staatssecretaris Buitenlandse van Zaken, verklaarde op 6 februari 2014: ‘Fuck the European Union.’ Mevrouw Nuland werd door president Obama benoemd tot 'Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State,' en is degene die achter de schermen de 'regime change' in de Oekraïne orchestreerde.
Nuland is married to historian Robert Kagan, with whom she has two children.
Het is algemeen bekend dat mevrouw Nuland tot de kongsi behoort van de joods-Amerikaanse neoconservatieven die de ideologische pleitbezorgers waren achter de illegale Amerikaanse inval in Irak. Haar echtgenoot is één van de oprichters geweest van de beruchte PNAC. Om een beeld te krijgen met wat voor soort megalomane ideologen we te maken hebben, citeer ik allereerst deze, voor iedereen beschikbare, informatie van Wikipedia:
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. established in 1997 as a non-profit educational organization founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The PNAC's stated goal is 'to promote American global leadership.' Fundamental to the PNAC were the view that 'American leadership is both good for America and good for the world' and support for 'a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.' With its members in numerous key administrative positions, the PNAC exerted influence on high-level U.S. government officials in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and affected the Bush Administration's development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security and the Iraq War… PNAC's first public act was releasing a 'Statement of Principles' on June 3, 1997, which was signed by both its members and a variety of other notable conservative politicians and journalists (see Signatories to Statement of Principles). The statement began by framing a series of questions, which the rest of the document proposes to answer:
'As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world's pre-eminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?’
In response to these questions, the PNAC states its aim to 'remind America' of 'lessons' learned from American history, drawing the following 'four consequences' for America in 1997:
• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad; [and]
• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
While 'Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today,' the 'Statement of Principles' concludes, 'it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.'
The goal of regime change in Iraq remained the consistent position of PNAC throughout the Iraq disarmament crisis.
Richard Perle, who later became a core member of PNAC, was involved in similar activities to those pursued by PNAC after its formal organization. For instance, in 1996 Perle composed a report that proposed regime changes in order to restructure power in the Middle East. The report was titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm and called for removing Saddam Hussein from power, as well as other ideas to bring change to the region. The report was delivered to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Two years later, in 1998, Perle and other core members of the PNAC—Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Elliot Abrams, and John Bolton—'were among the signatories of a letter to President Clinton calling for the removal of Hussein.' Clinton did seek regime change in Iraq, and this position was sanctioned by the United Nations. These UN sanctions were considered ineffective by the neoconservative forces driving the PNAC.
The PNAC core members followed up these early efforts with a letter to Republican members of the U.S. Congress Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott,[10] urging Congress to act. The PNAC also supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which President Clinton had signed into law.
On January 16, 1998, following perceived Iraqi unwillingness to co-operate with UN weapons inspections, members of the PNAC, including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Robert Zoellick drafted an open letter to President Bill Clinton, posted on its website, urging President Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein from power using U.S. diplomatic, political, and military power. The signers argue that Saddam would pose a threat to the United States, its Middle East allies, and oil resources in the region, if he succeeded in maintaining what they asserted was a stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction. They also state: 'we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections' and 'American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.' They argue that an Iraq war would be justified by Hussein's defiance of UN 'containment' policy and his persistent threat to U.S. interests…
On September 20, 2001 (nine days after the September 11, 2001 attacks), the PNAC sent a letter to President George W. Bush, advocating 'a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq,' or regime change:
'even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.' […]
According to critics, including Paul Reynolds, the neoconservative PNAC aimed to promote American "hegemony" and "full-spectrum" dominance in its publications.
Ebrahim Afsah, in 'Creed, Cabal, or Conspiracy – The Origins of the Current Neo-Conservative Revolution in US Strategic Thinking,' published in the German Law Journal, cited Jochen Bölsche's view that the goal of the PNAC was world dominance or global hegemony by the United States. According to Bölsche, Rebuilding America's Defenses 'was developed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Libby, and is devoted to matters of ''maintaining US pre-eminence, thwarting rival powers and shaping the global security system according to US interests.”'
George Monbiot, a political activist from the United Kingdom, stated: 'to pretend that this battle begins and ends in Iraq requires a willful denial of the context in which it occurs. That context is a blunt attempt by the superpower to reshape the world to suit itself.' […] Former US Congressman Lionel Van Deerlin and UK Labour MP and Father of the House of Commons, Tam Dalyell, criticized PNAC members for promoting policies which support an idealized version of war, even though only a handful of PNAC members have served in the military or, if they served, had never seen combat.
As quoted in Paul Reynolds' BBC News report, David Rothkopf stated:
'Their [The Project for the New American Century's] signal enterprise was the invasion of Iraq and their failure to produce results is clear. Precisely the opposite has happened. The US use of force has been seen as doing wrong and as inflaming a region that has been less than susceptible to democracy. Their plan has fallen on hard times. There were flaws in the conception and horrendously bad execution. The neo-cons have been undone by their own ideas and the incompetence of the Bush administration.’
In discussing the PNAC report Rebuilding America's Defenses (2000), Neil MacKay, investigations editor for the Scottish Sunday Herald, quoted Tam Dalyell: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war. These are the thought processes of fanatic Americans who want to control the world.' […]
Commentators from divergent parts of the political spectrum –– such as Democracy Now! and American Free Press, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams and former Republican Congressmen Pete McCloskey and Paul Findley –– voiced their concerns about the influence of the PNAC on the decision by President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. Some have regarded the PNAC's January 16, 1998 letter to President Clinton, which urged him to embrace a plan for 'the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power,' and the large number of members of PNAC appointed to the Bush administration as evidence that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a foregone conclusion.
Media commentators have found it significant that signatories to the PNAC's January 16, 1998 letter to President Clinton (and some of its other position papers, letters, and reports) included such later Bush administration officials as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Richard Armitage, and Elliott Abrams.
Future biological weapons that can ‘target’ specific genotypes.
Main article: Ethnic bioweapon
Critics of the Project for the New American Century, including Austin American-Statesmen book reviewer Kip Keller, highlighted the following quote from PNAC's report 'Rebuilding America's Defenses’:
'And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.’
In a review of a book on the history of eugenics in the United States, Keller cited the quote as an example of modern-day thinking that continues the tradition of eugenics, saying that the quote proposed ''a sort of 'gene bomb'" and accusing the authors of supporting 'the targeted extermination of a specific ethnic group -- i.e., genocide, the ultimate eugenic practice.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
September 2000 publiceerde de neoconservatieve denktank 'Project voor de Nieuwe Amerikaanse Eeuw' een toen nog geheim rapport getiteld: 'De Wederopbouw van Amerika's Verdediging: Strategieën, Strijdkrachten en Hulpbronnen voor een Nieuwe Eeuw.' In dit beleidsstuk staat onder meer:
De Verenigde Staten heeft decennialang getracht een meer permanente rol te spelen in de regionale veiligheid van de Golf. Hoewel het onopgeloste conflict met Irak een onmiddellijke rechtvaardiging verschaft, overstijgt de noodzaak van een aanzienlijke Amerikaanse militaire aanwezigheid in de Golf het vraagstuk van het regime van Saddam Hoessein.
Deze 'Amerikaanse toonaangevende strategie' moet 'tot zover mogelijk in de toekomst' worden voortgezet. Het roept de Verenigde Staten op om te 'vechten en om gelijktijdig in verschillende belangrijke oorlogsgebieden een absolute overwinning te behalen,' wat een 'essentiële missie' wordt genoemd. Het rapport was bedoeld als:
blauwdruk voor het behoud van de Amerikaanse wereldwijde superioriteit, om de opkomst van een grote machtsrivaal uit te sluiten, en om de internationale veiligheidsorde te laten sporen met Amerikaanse principes en belangen.
De Amerikaanse strijdkrachten in het buitenland worden beschreven als 'de cavalerie van het nieuwe Amerikaanse grensgebied.' Het rapport ondersteund een eerder document waarin gesteld werd dat de Verenigde Staten 'moderne industriële naties moet ontmoedigen om onze leiderschap op de proef te stellen of om zelfs ook maar te streven naar een grotere regionale of wereldwijde rol.' Daarnaast wordt verwezen naar 'nieuwe aanvalsmethoden — elektronisch… biologisch — zullen steeds meer beschikbaar zijn — de strijd zal zich naar alle waarschijnlijkheid in een nieuwe dimensie plaatsvinden, in de ruimte, cyberspace, en misschien in de wereld van de microben… geavanceerde vormen van biologische oorlogsvoering.' Het rapport was geschreven voor Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz en Lewis Libby, die drie maanden later sleutelposities in de nieuwe Amerikaanse regering bekleedden. Cheney werd vice-president, Rumsfeld minister van Defensie, Wolfowitz plaatsvervangend minister van Defensie en Libby de chef-staf van Cheney. Om deze wereldwijde militaire strategie bij het grote publiek acceptabel te maken zou 'een of andere catastrofale en als katalysator werkende gebeurtenis - zoals een nieuwe Pearl Harbor' nodig zijn, aldus de opstellers van Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century, exact een jaar voor de aanslagen van 11 september 2001. Na als het ware op hun wenken te zijn bediend en terwijl de Twin Towers nog nabrandden vroeg, volgens de New Yorker van april 2002, Condoleezza Rice, de Nationale Veiligheids Adviseur van president Bush, tijdens een spoedvergadering van de Nationale Veiligheids Raad aan de aanwezigen om na te denken over 'hoe men deze mogelijkheden kan uitbuiten,' daarbij verwijzend naar de situatie van '1945 tot 1947,' het begin van de koude oorlog. Intussen had een dag na de aanslagen minister Rumsfeld, zonder zelfs ook maar één enkel bewijs van wie de daders waren, tijdens een kabinetsvergadering al geëist dat Irak 'een hoofddoel van de eerste ronde in de oorlog tegen terrorisme' zou zijn, aldus de journalist Bob Woodward van de Washington Post die een boek schreef over de eerste 100 dagen na 11 september, vol vertrouwelijke informatie die hij van hoog geplaatste autoriteiten kreeg. Zes dagen na de terroristische aanslagen, op 17 september 2001, ondertekende president Bush een tweeëneenhalf pagina's tellend document, voorzien van de stempel TOP SECRET, waarbij het Pentagon opdracht kreeg om militaire operaties voor te bereiden voor een invasie van Irak. Voor het eerst in het nieuwe millennium waren de schaakstukken in stelling gebracht. Het grote spel 'met als inzet de heerschappij over de wereld' kon beginnen.
http://home.planet.nl/~houck006/oorlogomolie.html
En de concrete drijfveren zijn zoals altijd bij elke grootmacht: grondstoffen, goedkope arbeid en markten die de alleenheerschappij mogelijk moeten maken. Dat wordt natuurlijk verhuld achter mooie woorden over democratie en mensenrechten, die vervolgens weer op grote schaal geschonden worden, zoals de VS op talloze plaatsen op aarde heeft laten zien, van Vietnam tot Irak. Desondanks krijgen Amerikaanse ideologen als Zbigniew Brzezinski, de voormalige Veiligheidsadviseur onder president Carter, de volle ruimte van de neoliberale spreekbuis de Financial Times om te beweren dat 'Russia, like Ukraine, will become a real democracy,' want:
Come what may, the events in Ukraine are historically irreversible and geopolitically transformatory. Sooner rather than later, Ukraine will be truly a part of democratic Europe; later rather than sooner, Russia will follow unless it isolates itself and becomes a semi-stagnant imperialistic relic.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5ac2df1e-6103-11e3-b7f1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2uzZkqif2
If I were asked to boil down neoconservatism to its essential elements—that is, those that have remained consistent over the past nearly 50 years—I would cite the following:
- a Manichean view of a world in which good and evil are constantly at war and the United States has an obligation to lead forces for good around the globe.
- a belief in the moral exceptionalism of both the United States and Israel and the absolute moral necessity for the U.S. to defend Israel’s security.
- a conviction that, in order to keep evil at bay, the United States must have — and be willing to exercise — the military power necessary to defeat any and all challengers. There’s a corollary: force is the only language that evil understands.
- the 1930s — with Munich, appeasement, Chamberlain, Churchill — taught us everything we need to know about evil and how to fight it.
- democracy is generally desirable, but it always depends on who wins.
The Emergence of Neoconservativsm
Although many of you have heard about its Trotskyite origins, the neoconservative movement as we know it today dates mainly from the 1960s. It was in that decade that you see the startling rise of Holocaust consciousness beginning with the Eichmann trial and the Oscar-winning movie Judgment at Nuremberg, both of which had a major impact not only on the Jewish community but on the general public here as well. These events were followed by the rise of the New Left, the Counter-Culture, and the anti-war and Black Power movements, as well as the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. All of these left a number of mainly — but by no means exclusively — Jewish public intellectuals and liberals feeling, in the words of Irving Kristol, ‘mugged by reality’ in a way that launched them on a rightward trajectory.
That trajectory gained momentum in the early 1970s, when the anti-war candidate, George McGovern, won the Democratic nomination for president, and when Israel seemed to teeter briefly on the edge of defeat in the early stages of the 1973 war, which itself was immediately followed by the Arab oil embargo. Two years later, the UN General Assembly passed the ‘Zionism is Racism’ resolution, and U.S. power globally seemed in retreat after the collapse of its clients in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. These all created a context in which neoconservatism gained serious political traction.
At this point, it may be useful to address an important ethno-religious issue. Neoconservatism has largely been a Jewish movement. By no means, however, are all neoconservatives Jewish. The late Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, former CIA chief James Woolsey, and Catholic theologians Michael Novak and George Weigel are just a few examples of non-Jews who have played major roles in the movement.
That said, it’s true that most neoconservatives are Jewish and, increasingly, Republican. So it’s very important to stress that the very large majority of Jews in this country are neither neoconservative nor Republican — a source of considerable frustration to Jewish Republicans over the last 30 years. Recently, for example, The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial pages are probably the country’s most influential neoconservative media platform, ran an op-ed entitled ‘The Political Stupidity of the Jews Revisited,’ in which the author bemoaned the persistent tendency of Jews to vote Democratic, and most recently for Obama.
Neoconservatism is much more of a worldview than a coherent political ideology. That worldview has been shaped by rather traumatic historic events, most notably the Nazi Holocaust and the events of the 1930s that led up to it. Of course, the Great Depression and pervasive anti-Semitism were important causes. But neoconservatives also stress three others: the failure of liberal institutions in the Weimar Republic to prevent the rise of Nazism in Germany, the appeasement of Hitler by the western European democracies and their failure to confront him militarily early on, and the ‘isolationism’ practised by the United States during this fateful period.
This assessment leads neoconservatives to believe that spineless liberals, military weakness, diplomatic appeasement, and American isolationism are ever-present threats that must be fought against at all costs. This is an integral part of their worldview, and you can often hear it in their polemics. For them, the importance of maintaining overwhelming military power — or what they call ‘peace through strength’ — as well as constant American engagement, or unilateral intervention, if necessary, outside its borders cannot be overstated.
The latter point is particularly critical because neocons believe that, in the absence of a tangible threat to our national security, Americans naturally retreat into isolationism. As a result, they have engaged in a consistent pattern of threat-inflation — or fear-mongering — over the past 40 years, from Team B’s exaggeration of alleged Soviet preparations for nuclear war in the mid-1970s to the hyping of the various threats allegedly posed by Iraq, radical Islamists, and Iran after 9/11. Thus, Norman Podhoretz, one of the movement’s patriarchs, has argued that, just as we defeated Nazism in World War II and Communism in ‘World War III,’ so must we now defeat “Islamofascism” in what he has called ‘World War IV.’ For neocons, a new Hitler is always just around the corner, and we must be in a permanent state of mobilization against him.
But assuring American engagement and military dominance is not just a matter of protecting our national security. It is a moral imperative. In their Manichean world, neocons see the U.S. as the ultimate white hat. As Elliott Abrams, Podhoretz’s son-in-law and George W. Bush’s top Middle East aide, once put it: ‘[the United States is] the greatest force for good among the nations of the Earth.’ This conviction helps explain Paul Wolfowitz’s call for what amounted to a unilateral ‘Pax Americana’ in his famous 1992 Defense Policy Guidance. It helps explain Bob Kagan’s and Bill Kristol’s 1996 appeal to an increasingly anti-interventionist Republican Party to return to what they called a ‘Neo-Reaganite’ policy of ‘benevolent global hegemony.’ Their manifesto in turn set the stage for the Project for the New American Century whose associates did so much to coordinate the march to war in Iraq both from inside and outside the Bush administration after 9/11.
In my view and that of other veteran observers, such as Jacob Heilbrunn, the defense of Israel has been a central pillar of the neoconservative worldview from the outset. The fact that neoconservatism began as — and remains — a largely Jewish movement is one very relevant reason. But, like the U.S. itself, Israel is also seen as morally exceptional due in major part to the fact that its birth as an independent state was made possible by the terrible legacy of the Holocaust and the guilt it provoked, particularly in the West. Moreover, its depiction in the media since 1967 as both a staunch U.S. ally and a lonely outpost of democracy and Western civilization besieged by hostile, if not barbaric, neighbors has contributed to this notion of moral superiority. Of course, its most recent wars, its treatment of Palestinians, and the steadily rightward drift of its governments have made this image increasingly hard to sustain, not only in the West, but within the Jewish community here as well.
Although strong defenders of Israel, neoconservatives are not necessarily ‘Israel-Firsters.’ They believe that both the U.S. and Israel are morally exceptional. That means that neither one should necessarily be bound by international norms or institutions, like the UN Security Council, that would constrain their ability to defend themselves or pre-empt threats as they see fit. It means that both should maintain overwhelming military power vis-à-vis any possible challengers. In the neoconservative view, the interests and values of the two countries are largely congruent, if not identical. As Bill Bennett once put it, ‘America’s fate and Israel’s fate are one and the same.’
But that doesn’t mean that neocons defer to whatever Israeli government is in power, as AIPAC tends to do. They have often had quite different priorities. Through the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for the New American Century, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, to name a few groups, neocons very much led the public campaign for invading Iraq from virtually the moment the Twin Towers collapsed. But I don’t think Ariel Sharon — who considered Iran the greater threat — was all that enthusiastic about the idea. Similarly, many neocons were quite unhappy with Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza and with his successors’ decisions to end wars against Hezbollah and Hamas over the past decade without achieving decisive military victories. Unlike AIPAC, neocons almost always think they know better.
This has changed somewhat since Netanyahu took power in 2009 and especially since the 2013 elections, which resulted in the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. Bibi has had a very close relationship with key neocons since the 1980s when he was based here as a diplomat in the U.S. and neoconservatives got their first real taste of power under Reagan. Their worldviews are very similar. Still, there have been differences. Although most neocons have been calling for regime change in Syria through covert or direct U.S. military action, Bibi has wanted the civil war there to go on and on for as long as possible. And although neocons, who have long viewed Moscow as a dangerous adversary, have urged a harder line against Russia over Crimea and Ukraine, Bibi has maintained a discreet silence and enjoys a business-like, if not cordial, relationship with Putin.
So, Manicheanism, moral exceptionalism, a benevolent Pax Americana backed up by huge military budgets, Israel’s security — these are all central to the neoconservative worldview.
It’s often said that neocons are Wilsonians devoted to the spread of democracy and liberal values. I think this is way overplayed. I agree with Zbigniew Brzezinski who has sometimes observed that when neoconservatives talk about democratization, they usually mean destabilization.
Some neocons, notably Bob Kagan, are indeed sincerely committed to democracy promotion and human rights. But his is a minority view, as demonstrated most recently in the case of Egypt where, like Netanyahu, most influential neocons greatly appreciate President Sisi and want Washington to do more to help him. And, like Bibi, most neocons think a de facto alliance between Israel and the region’s Sunni autocrats who have led the counter-revolution against the Arab Spring, would be the cat’s pyjamas. Indeed, most neocons have historically always had a soft spot for what they used to call ‘friendly authoritarians.’ And when was the last time you heard neoconservatives advocate for full human rights for Palestinians, let alone their right to national self-determination, unless it is to be exercised in what is now Jordan? In any event, their record over the past 40 years suggests that their devotion to democracy depends entirely on the circumstances.
Two final notes about neocons. First, this is a movement with no single recognized leader or politburo. Yes, they work together quite closely and coordinate their messaging to create very effective echo chambers. But they also often have differences of opinion over tactics and sometimes over real substance. Some neocons, like Frank Gaffney (a top Ted Cruz adviser) and Daniel Pipes, actively promote Islamophobia, for example, while others, such as Kagan and Reuel Gerecht, disdain it. There are soft neocons like David Brooks of The New York Times and hard neocons like Bret Stephens at The Wall Street Journal. In other words, the movement is not monolithic, except in the core elements I outlined above.
Second, neocons have been admirably nimble in creating tactical alliances with very different political forces to achieve their ends. In the mid-1970s, they worked with aggressive nationalists like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to derail Kissinger’s efforts at détente with Moscow. Under Jimmy Carter, they brought the Christian Right, despite the clear anti-Semitism of some of its leaders, into that coalition. (As Irving Kristol explained: ‘it’s their theology, but it’s our Israel.’) That broader coalition helped propel Reagan to victory in 1980.
Then, alienated by George H.W. Bush’s pressure on Israel to halt settlement activity and enter into serious peace talks after the Gulf War, many neocons opted for Clinton — and, by the mid-1990s, allied with liberal internationalists in pressing him to intervene in the Balkans over Republican opposition. By 2000, however, they had reconstituted the old Reagan coalition of aggressive nationalists and the Christian Right, and, after 9/11, they led the charge, along with Rumsfeld and Cheney, into Iraq.
Less than a decade later, however, they were back with the liberal interventionists on Libya and Syria. And now some of them, like Kagan and Max Boot, are warning they may back Hillary this year, especially if Trump — whose comments about the Iraq war and even-handedness between Israel and the Palestinians have made them very uneasy, if not outright hostile — gets the Republican nomination.
Indeed, it’s quite possible that we may see something similar this year to what happened nearly a quarter century ago when the neocons ditched Bush in favor of Bill in hopes of sustaining global interventionism and Israel.
https://lobelog.com/neoconservativism-in-a-nutshell/
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