Or are you merely attributing that p.o.v. to some other posters on this thread? Your sentence structure is a little hard to follow.
Approximately, approximately. It’s the evil they want on side. Only the Right can deliver.
No. Beings preferring the simple solution to the precise one. Orcs, in a word
No, not in the least.
I refer you to the other thread as the discussion unfolds there.
Ummm… I’m not really sure I understand all this. Please clarify if you wish a response.
Two. Oliver North is not a Neocon; he’s just a conservative. He’s a Reagan guy, fer cryin out loud.
And Hitchens would not accept the label for himself, and neither would I. He refers to himself as a “recovering trotskyite” but still associates himself more with traditionally leftist attitudes than the right.
He supports American power only as an alternative to the Islamic Fascism he sees as a mortal threat to secular civilization (and has been saying so since Rushdie). I strongly get the sense that he’d gladly embrace a transnational organization with an actual commitment to the values of the Enlightenment and the teeth to actually do something. He rejects the UN not out of principle but because it is corrupt and powerless.
Moreover, while most neocons are not themselves religiously motivated, they are willing to make common cause with the religious right; while Hitchens, OTOH, may allow that Pat Robertson isn’t keeping little girls from going to school, that’s about as nice a thing you’ll hear him say. He made his name trashing Mother Theresa, for Voltaire’s sake.
On domestic issues, he definitely inclines more to the liberal side of the ledger. But he follows no party lines or intellectual lineages that I can see; he is essentially a contrarian.
Maybe. I know you can’t just say, “Ok, Iraqis, Sadaam’s gone, you’re free and democratic now.” After WWII ended, we didn’t schedule free elections in Germany right away, either, and the censorship of newspapers there was a lot more severe than the censorship of newspapers in Iraq. The newspaper that was shut down wasn’t just a dissident paper…it was calling for the overthrow of the interim government and the killing of Western soldiers and civilians. I hope you’d agree that that’s outside normal political discourse. They didn’t hold free elections based on population, because the Shi’ites vastly outnumber everyone else, and there was a fear that minority rights wouldn’t be respected. As for the contracts thing, is it a sweetheart deal for Haliburton? If Haliburton’s able to deliver on the contracts and they’re not gouging the Iraqis, I don’t see that it’s a remarkably big deal. The work needs to be done, and they’re qualified to do it. If there’s corruption, or the Iraqis aren’t getting value for their dollar, it’s a problem, but I don’t know that that’s the case.
Iraqi reconstruction and the transition to democracy won’t be done in a day, and you can’t expect Iraq to turn into a stable democracy overnight. Give it time.
I’ll just point out that support for Panama is not a particularly controversial position. People don’t go around saying, “Damn those Panamanians! They have no right to be in Panama and they’re oppressing the poor innocent [whoever the Panamanians would oppress].” On the other hand, vocal support for Taiwan is too controversial. No politician is going to come out advocating a two China policy. Mainland China’s influence is just too strong. So, we quietly support Taiwan and China pretends not to notice, and c’est la vie.
So, if Panama is Papa Bear and Taiwan is Mama Bear, Israel is Baby Bear. Support for Israel isn’t taken for granted…there’s a lot of people who don’t like it, and many on the left are having a love affair with the Palestinians, who have somehow managed to get official “victim” status, while other, less romantic ethnic groups who are being persecuted more harshly by people other than Jews get ignored. On the other hand, support for Israel isn’t seen as a fringe position either. Israel has supporters, it does get US aid, and you can say “We should keep supporting Israel” without being dismissed as a warmonger or foolish. So, support for Israel can be used as a factor while support for Panama or Taiwan really can’t. It’s nowhere near as sinister as you make it out to be.
And I don’t know what to make of your claim that President Bush wants some sort of Christian crusade against Islam, or that people will support him for that. That’s a foolish, wrongheaded, and bigoted stance, and I don’t have any evidence Bush wants that. Bush has, in fact, gone out of his way to say he doesn’t want it. There was a time when you couldn’t turn on the tv or read a newspaper without hearing an administration official say, “We want to stress, this is not a war against Islam. Most Muslims are good, peaceful people who want to lead their lives and not hurt anyone, and we honor them for it. We have many Muslim Americans who are good citizens and true patriots.” This is 21st century America, it’s not the Spanish Inquisition or the crusades, and so far, with the exception of Ann Coulter, the only people talking about a war between Christians and Muslims are the President’s enemies, who are trying to fearmonger.
I can see why an American president couldn’t advocate a two-China policy, but why couldn’t a senator or representative?
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What Bush says and what he thinks are two different things.
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What Bush says, and what some Islam-hating American voters think he really means, are two different things.
And you can read his mind? Any support for the idea that he thinks otherwise?
This really belongs in the other thread, so I’ll make this my last post on this digression. BrainGlutton wrote:
Firstly, I replied that this is approximately correct. I did not want to get into clarification. However, I believe “Christian against Muslim” is an overly specific description.
More significantly, I have emphasised the cogent phrase in bold type. BrainGlutton and I were discussing perception. We were not discussing actual policies or desires.
The question is whether the administration has encouraged or fought the perception. I think that, on balance, it comes down on the side of ‘encouraged’. I’ll say no more as the debate is live in the other thread and you can see for yourself.
This was your response to my questions in post #30. Could you talk more about these two points?
From Benador Associates:
What the Heck Is a Neocon?
*by Max Boot
Wall Street Journal *
The original neocons were a band of liberal intellectuals who rebelled against the Democratic Party’s leftward drift on defense issues in the 1970s. At first the neocons clustered around Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a Democrat, but then they aligned themselves with Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, who promised to confront Soviet expansionism.
So is “neoconservatism” worthless as a political label? Not entirely. In social policy, it stands for a broad sympathy with a traditionalist agenda and a rejection of extreme libertarianism.
On economic matters, neocons…embrace a laissez-faire line, though they are not as troubled by the size of the welfare state as libertarians are.
But it is not really domestic policy that defines neoconservatism. This was a movement founded on foreign policy, and it is still here that neoconservatism carries the greatest meaning…
One group of conservatives believes that we should use armed force only to defend our vital national interests, narrowly defined. They believe that we should remove, or at least disarm, Saddam Hussein, but not occupy Iraq for any substantial period afterward. The idea of bringing democracy to the Middle East *they denounce * as a mad, hubristic dream likely to backfire with tragic consequences. This view, which goes under the somewhat self-congratulatory moniker of “realism,” is championed by foreign-policy mandarins like Henry Kissinger, **Brent Scowcroft ** and James Baker III.
[Neocons] …think, however, that “realism” presents far too crabbed a view of American power and responsibility.
From the Godfather of NeoConservatism:
The Neoconservative Persuasion
From the August 25, 2003 issue: What it was, and what it is.
by Irving Kristol
Neoconservatism is what the late historian of Jacksonian America, Marvin Meyers, called a “persuasion,” one that manifests itself over time, but erratically, and one whose meaning we clearly glimpse only in retrospect.
…the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy.
…an attitude toward public finance that is far less risk averse than is the case among more traditional conservatives.
Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state… seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable. Because they tend to be more interested in history than economics or sociology, they know that the 19th-century idea, so neatly propounded by Herbert Spencer in his “The Man Versus the State,” was a historical eccentricity. People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today’s America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not.
The upshot is **a quite unexpected alliance between ** neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists.
**Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak. **
And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal.
No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.
Irving Kristol is author of “Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea.”
Some do and occasionally imply as much; but foreign policy is primarily the domain of the executive branch. An individual Congressman loudly saying something will do nothing but give the prez an ulcer, occasion a soothing letter to Beijing, and put the congressman on the executive shit list.
Which, occasionally, can be worthy goals in and of themselves. 
Ok. Norquist isn’t a neocon. His only real “issue” is cutting taxes and, near as I can tell, getting rid of the government. That’s not really a neocon issue, even though most neocons would probably agree taxes are too high and that spending should be cut. He was an anti-communist, but I still wouldn’t call him a neocon.
And the neocons aren’t part of the religious right. Most neocons aren’t even religious.
Policeman of the world? How does the US derive this responsibility you speak of? Natural law? Seems the neo-cons make strange bedfellows with the paleo-cons, in the area of freedom of religion - seems there is plenty of work right here in the US.
The underlying idea that the US is somehow responsible for supporting liberal democracy throughout the world, potentially unilaterally, just strikes me as arrogant. I can understand the idea that we have a responsibility to foster human rights through out the world, but I would tend to think we should do it in a democratic fashion - by building coalitions and establishing legitamacy through consensus.
A new question for Captain Amazing: What would be a neo-con foreign policy perspective with respect to Saudi Arabia? Should the US use force, even unilaterally, to bring freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and basic human rights to Saudi Arabia? How is support for the Royal Family tolerated by neo-cons?
Not only arrogant, but familiar. The Soviet Communists thought it was their duty to spread and/or support Marxist proletarian revolution throughout the world, even in countries like Ethiopia and Angola where the USSR had no obvious material or strategic interests. We all know how that worked out.
What really disturbs me about the neocon way of thinking is that it is bound up with the fundamentally misconceived tradition of “American exceptionalism,” the idea that the U.S. is not like other countries, that it has some special messianic role to play in the world, in spreading the “American creed,” whether that creed or role is chiefly defined by republican government or free-market capitalism or Protestant Christianity. No matter how we define it, it’s all bullshit, and we need to throw it over the side, once and for all. We need to accept that the United States has a lot more in common with France or Britain than with the USSR. We are an ordinary nation-state, not an idea-state defined by a political creed. In the past two centuries France has been through five distinct periods of monarchy and five different republics and a period when it was divided between Nazi occupation and a native fascist puppet regime. Yet through all that time, France has remained France – the same country, the same national culture. So it is here. An America ruled by a king or a fascist dictatorship or a communist dictatorship or an established church or any other system would still be America. We stick with liberal republican government because it is, in fact, the best of all political systems humanity has yet tried, and it works for us; but that doesn’t mean it’s what defines us as a nation, nor that it can’t be improved upon. (In my view, a non-Marxist democratic socialist America would be even better than a free-market capitalist America, and a unitary America would be even better than a federal America, and a democratic America would be even better than a republican America, and an America as a province of a global multinational republic would be even better than an independent America; but those are all different discussions.) And it certainly doesn’t mean we have some kind of obligation to spread liberal republican government to the whole world.
I think, BrainGlutton and AZCowboy, you are missing the main reason behind the current push for American international influence in the world. I agree that unilateral actions have similarities to past abusive empires. I also agree that the “forcing the world to be democratic” mentality is arogant.
However, America has a unique position right now to provide the security and vision to bring about the sort of global peace which has never been concevable. This position is something of a default. We are simply the only super power left in the world. We have the only military capable of travelling anywhere in the world and conducting significant operations once we get there.
The point is not that we should force any country or region to adopt any particular form of government, or to engage in any particular types of institutions. However, we have a responsibility to provide the security necessary for much of the world to develop their own forms of free societies capable of integrating into the world community. Military action is by no means sufficient to allow any society to do so. However, it is necessary in some places.
The goal is nothing less that a truly global community where all people are members. It cannot be achieved by forcing Muslims to adopt Christian beliefs. It cannot be achieved by forcing collectivist societies to adopt laissez faire policies. It cannot be achieved by forcing societies to institute republican forms of government. However, it also will not happen if America simply pulls all of its army back inside the borders of the United States of America. It will not happen if rogue madmen are allowed to terrorize their populations and those of their neighbors without consequence. It will not happen if nations newly entering the world community and surrounded by hostile neighbors are forced to fend for themselves militarily.
In order to bring the roughly one third of the world’s population into the world community which is now outside of it they will need help from that world community in many forms. One of which is military protection. Now, it may be feasable in the far future for the UN or the Eurpeans, or even perhaps some as yet undreamed of Asian conglomerate of nations to field a military large enough to fulfill this role. But for the forseable future, the American military is simply the only one capable of the sorts of operations required.
And your wrong, BrainGlutton about the need to reject America as idea-state. There are fudemental differences between American history and the history of almost every other nation on earth. I agree that the idea can be taken too far. Look up the archaic definition of filibuster for an example. But the fact remains that America is not America for the same reasons that France is France. I realize that this notion is important you you and your socialist pals though.
I don’t think I’m missing it, I’m certainly not isolationist, and I agree that many of the goals and ideals you expressed are noble.
It’s the method espoused by the neo-cons that I don’t understand. Using the sole superpower military status of the US to influence (more correctly, coerce) the rest of the world to these (our) higher ideals doesn’t create the sort of legitimate persuasive influence that will win out in the end. Instead of “walk softly, and carry a big stick”, the neo-cons appear to endorse “run roughshod, and swing your big dick.”
I’m OK with the US acting as the world’s policeman (or at least not philosophically opposed). I’m OK with the US governing the world. But only with the consent of the governed (or policed). If we are unable to persuade with ideas, we certainly shouldn’t be persuading with force. Error in the order of operation, I say.
It goes back to my original question - from where is this responsibility derived? Simply because we can?
As pervert said, it just happened.
It’s Lord of the Flies, and we’re all stuck on the island … except one kid is 6’2", muscular and has a gun. Saying he is just another one of the kids is absurd. Saying he should give up the gun and put his greater muscle to work however the smaller kids see fit is just naive. Far more sensible to acknowledge the obvious fact that he’s going to be the leader, and try to make sure he is a good and beneficient leader.
The question of American Exceptionalism is IMO irrelvant; neoconservatism is more based on acknowleging the obvious facts of American power and dealing with them than in any quasi-religious justifications (though they will use them for political purposes).
American interventionism does raise troubling moral questions on the order of “who do we think we are?” But the moral consequences of walking away and saying “it’s none of my business” are just as real. I think part of the reason many former leftists became disenchanted was because at times the American left seems only to regard the former and not the latter.
Your response perpetuates a false dilemma. It’s not one or the other.
Within your analogy, the fact that one kid is bigger and has a gun does not lead to the conclusion that sticking the gun in every dissenter’s face and ruling by force is the most legitimate or even effective method (efficient, yes). And calling it leadership is a bit perverse.
Despite my faux pas in Teddy’s quote, which should have been “speak softly and carry a big stick”, I fail to see why influence through ideals and reason is not preferable to the coercive nature of force. Leadership through coercive force does not instill loyalty, but generates contempt of the leadership.
To use military power just because we found ourselves in a position to do so (“it just happened”), is to abuse that power in a most irresponsible manner. But using that power to diplomatically or economically influence the rest of the world is a considerably more respectful approach. Otherwise, we are not the world’s policemen, but vigilantes. We have no legitimacy - no foundation in the rule of law.
We are no better than a schoolyard bully.