(Updated) “Americans can forget about the pursuit of happiness and look forward to perpetual war, death, and catastrophe.”
By Mona
As many who have read me for any significant time would by now know, I am convinced that neoconservatism is a deeply pernicious, even evil political ideology; I further believe that many neoconservative individuals are lying purveyors of wickedness. To continue in my endeavors to support these positions (alas, prior such efforts remain in unretrieved Inactivist archives), I turn to Shadia B. Drury, a scholar of the former University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss; Drury recently wrote in Free Inquiry of the enormous influence the unusual and controversial Strauss has had in shaping the views of neoconservatives.
.
First, as Drury notes neoconservatives regard religion much as Marx did — except they eagerly embrace it as a means of manipulating hoi polloi:
There is a certain irony in the fact that the chief guru of the neoconservatives is a thinker who regarded religion merely as a political tool intended for the masses but not for the superior few. Leo Strauss, the German Jewish émigré who taught at the University of Chicago almost until his death in 1973, did not dissent from Marx’s view that religion is the opium of the people; but he believed that the people need their opium. He therefore taught that those in power must invent noble lies and pious frauds to keep the people in the stupor for which they are supremely fit.
Thus, even as they themselves frequently do not believe in any sort of personal deity who intervenes in the lives of human beings and expects them to “behave,” neoconservatives generally are most willing to ally themselves with the agenda of proto-theocrats who do so believe. For neoconservatives worry a great deal that the masses constantly teeter on the brink of unbridled depravity and that rigid moral orthodoxy is being undermined, thus as Drury puts it:
There is a strong asceticism at the heart of the neoconservative ideology that explains why it appeals to the Christian Right. Neoconservatism dovetails nicely with the views that humanity is too wicked to be free; too much pleasure is sinful; and suffering is good because it makes man cry out to God for redemption.
Such a worldview, of course, should render neoconservatism entirely at odds with libertarianism, liberalism, and liberty — and indeed it does. Godfather of neoconservatism Irving Kristol set forth a manifesto titled The Neoconservative Persuasion in the August 25, 2003 issue of The Weekly Standard, and his rejection of social issue libertarianism could not be clearer, my emphasis:
The steady decline in our democratic culture, sinking to new levels of vulgarity, does unite neocons with traditional conservatives–though not with those libertarian conservatives who are conservative in economics but unmindful of the culture. The upshot is a quite unexpected alliance between neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists. They are united on issues concerning the quality of education, the relations of church and state, the regulation of pornography, and the like, all of which they regard as proper candidates for the government’s attention. And since the Republican party now has a substantial base among the religious, this gives neocons a certain influence and even power. Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak.
And, as Brian Doherty has reported in Reason, Irving Kristol does indeed endorse, as Drury puts it, Straussian notions of “noble lies and pious frauds,” my emphasis:
Kristol has been quite candid about his belief that religion is essential for inculcating and sustaining morality in culture. He wrote in a 1991 essay, “If there is one indisputable fact about the human condition it is that no community can survive if it is persuaded–or even if it suspects–that its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe.”…
Kristol has acknowledged his intellectual debt to Strauss in a recent autobiographical essay. “What made him so controversial within the academic community was his disbelief in the Enlightenment dogma that `the truth will make men free.’” Kristol adds that “Strauss was an intellectual aristocrat who thought that the truth could make some [emphasis Kristol's] minds free, but he was convinced that there was an inherent conflict between philosophic truth and political order, and that the popularization and vulgarization of these truths might import unease, turmoil and the release of popular passions hitherto held in check by tradition and religion with utterly unpredictable, but mostly negative, consequences.”
Kristol agrees with this view. “There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people,” he says in an interview. “There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.”
Second, and in addition to maintaining the cultural glue of religion by any duplicitous means deemed necessary (such as by cynically promoting creationism as Doherty’s article documents), Drury shows that many neoconservatives influential with and in the Bush Administration hold the view that at virtually all times it is critical for a strong nation to be unified against an Enemy, and to be engaged in essentially Perpetual Warfare:
Strauss thought that the best way for ordinary human beings to raise themselves above the beasts is to be utterly devoted to their nation and willing to sacrifice their lives for it. He recommended a rabid nationalism and a militant society modelled on Sparta. He thought that this was the best hope for a nation to be secure against her external enemies as well as the internal threat of decadence, sloth, and pleasure. A policy of perpetual war against a threatening enemy is the best way to ward off political decay. And if the enemy cannot be found, then it must be invented.
With the neoconservatives and the Christian Right in power, Americans can forget about the pursuit of happiness and look forward to perpetual war, death, and catastrophe. And in the midst of all the human carnage and calamity that such policies are bound to bring, the Olympian laughter of the Straussian gods will be heard by those who have ears to hear it. …
The fact that so many of the most powerful men in America are self-proclaimed disciples of Leo Strauss is rather troublesome. For example, Abram Shulsky, the director of the Office of Special Plans, which was created by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was a student of Strauss. Shulsky was responsible for finding intelligence that would help to make the case for war in Iraq. We know now that the intelligence was false and misleading. Shulsky tells us that he learned from Strauss that “deception is the norm in political life. 
Another important Straussian close to the Bush administration is William Kristol…[who] wrote his thesis on Machiavelliæa theorist who was much admired by Strauss for everything except his lack of subtlety. Strauss endorsed Machiavellian tactics in politicsænot just lies and the manipulation of public opinion but every manner of unscrupulous conduct necessary to keep the masses in a state of heightened alert, afraid for their lives and their families and therefore willing to do whateverwas deemed necessary for the security of the nation. For Strauss as for Machiavelli, only the constant threat of a common enemy could save a people from becoming soft, pampered, and depraved. Strauss would have admired the ingenuity of a color code intended to inform Americans of the looming threats and present dangers, which in turn makes them more than willing to trade their liberty for a modicum of security.
Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney, is also a self-proclaimed follower of Strauss. Like many of Strauss’s students, he is animated by a sense of missionæa mission to save America from her secular liberal decadence. And what better solution is there to secular liberal sloth than a war effort?
So, then, lying for the Greater Good is necessary and proper, and neoconservatives are called to peddle falsehood in the service of both their social agenda and warmongering, all to Preserve the State. They will pander to any fear and promote any lie to maintain both their power and an America that is an illiberal, authoritarian nation at war with the Eternal Enemy.
Drury, Doherty and Irving Kristol himself have all shown us who the neoconservatives are and what they do; failing to understand their fundamental commitment to Straussian philosophy (even among those who may not realize they have been imbued with it simply by abiding in a neoconservative milieu) precludes any ability to grasp their ideology and behavior, or read them correctly, at all. They desire to control your life, send your sons and daughters to war, and they believe it imperative to lull you into accepting these goals by any means, even the most egregiously dishonest and disreputable.
That is who the neoconservatives are.
*************
Update:
I’m not sure my friend Michael Ledeen will thank me for ascribing authorship to him and he may have only been semi-serious when he crafted it, but here is the bedrock tenet of the Ledeen Doctrine in more or less his own words: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”….For now let’s fall back on the Ledeen Doctrine. The United States needs to go to war with Iraq because it needs to go to war with someone in the region and Iraq makes the most sense.
Comment by matthew hogan —
February 23, 2007 @ 9:14 pm
As someone who considers neoconservatism partly a dangerous messianic war cult, i nevertheless do think that Drury misrepresents (and Kristol Sr) the Straussian influence. Most neoconservatism is a more simpleminded faith in American national redemptive power. (With Israel as Mini-Me, but with Dr. Evil as not evil but good).
Comment by Mona —
February 23, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
Matthew, I agree the neocons hold a deep, cartoonish faith in the Goodness and Rightness of America, in a simplistic, binary, Us. v. Them way (with Israel, as you say, as Mini-Me). I don’t, however, regard that as incompatible with the manifest Straussian influence — manifest both in the neocons’ more candid utterances and in their MO. The Doherty piece is from 1997, and I was aware of their dedication to pious lies in support of religion even before that. What else explains, e.g., Commentary’s infatuation with anti-evolution contributors? All of the people at that rag are far, far too intelligent to really think evolution is a “theory in crisis.”
Comment by Thoreau —
February 23, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
Mona, I dislike neocons as much as you, but at this point hasn’t the ideology pretty much been discredited? The idealists with the big crazy talk seem to have been pushed out, what’s left is a bunch of stubborn guys who are basically just aggressive nationalists who don’t know when to stop. The grand theorists with their noble lies and all that don’t seem to be terribly influential at this point.
Comment by Thoreau —
February 23, 2007 @ 10:04 pm
Maybe I should say that the guys with the Big Ideas about transforming a region have lost their influence. At this point it’s about fighting because we’re stuck there, and because a few aggressive nationalists are still in power (and can’t be removed until 2008, unless we impeach them).
Comment by Mona —
February 23, 2007 @ 10:25 pm
Thoreau, not only is there zero evidence the neocons have been discredited among the cognoscenti, they are being promoted. Just about a month ago Time magazine hired Bill Kristol as one of its leading columnists. Bill effing Kristol, who has been wrong about virtually every prediction he made about Iraq from day one, and who thinks it is time to go for Iran! All of the usual suspects are still eagerly pursued as talking heads on TeeVee. What possible evidence can you adduce that they have been discredited by the punditocracy and the MSM?
Oh, they are increasingly reviled on the Intertubes here — except that Instapundit’s Pajamas Media also just gave Michael Ledeen a frontpage spot — and the reason we must continue to expose them is to push the MSM to get a clue!
Neocons are not remotely in disrepute where it matters, and for the safety of the nation that must change.
Comment by Jim Henley —
February 23, 2007 @ 10:39 pm
Hey, remember, in the Unqualified Offerings Style Manual it’s always written Emm Ess EmmTM.
Comment by Justin Slotman —
February 23, 2007 @ 10:41 pm
Copyright meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Comment by Thoreau —
February 23, 2007 @ 11:18 pm
Good point, Mona. I took the lack of mention of Democratic Domino Theory as proof that neocon ideas have been discredited. But I guess the people remain in favor.
Trackback by Freedom Democrats —
February 24, 2007 @ 1:04 am
Ideological Framing…
I recently stumbled on a new way of framing political ideologies proposed by David Bruhn. By separating out ends and means, the framework is helpful in understanding what motivates voters and politicians. It also dovetails nicely with my ongoing disc…
Comment by SomeOtherDude —
February 24, 2007 @ 2:30 am
Social Democrats, USA
Copyright: 1996, SD, USA
Kristol described the current Republican coalition as consisting primarily of two main strains: economic and social conservatives. The economic conservatives are anti-state and the social conservatives are anti-liberal who view liberalism “as corroding and subverting the virtues that they believe must be the bedrock of decent society.” He believes that the differences between the economic conservatives and the social conservatives produce “tensions” between the two groups. Kristol’s long range view is that the social conservatives represent “an authentic mass movement that gathers strength with every passing year.”
from:
Splitting the Republican Coalition
Comment by SomeOtherDude —
February 24, 2007 @ 2:31 am
This leads to the issue of the role of the state. Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on “the road to serfdom.” Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, 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. Though they find much to be critical about, they tend to seek intellectual guidance in the democratic wisdom of Tocqueville, rather than in the Tory nostalgia of, say, Russell Kirk.
from:
The Neoconservative Persuasion
Comment by SomeOtherDude —
February 24, 2007 @ 2:31 am
In his foreword to the first paperback edition of The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1978), sociologist Daniel Bell announced that he was “a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture.” People “might find this statement puzzling,” Bell went on, “assuming that if a person is radical in one realm, he is radical in all others; and, conversely, if he is a conservative in one realm, that he must be conservative in the others as well. Such an assumption misreads, both sociologically and morally, the nature of these different realms.”1
From:
Disjoining the Left: Cultural Contradictions of Anticapitalism
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
February 24, 2007 @ 8:21 am
If we really believe that the chief neocons are devotees of Strauss, and, further, are willing to personally promote various Noble Lies, then why shouldn’t this “spread democracy idealism” be suspect as a Nobel Lie.
What propaganda line will cause the most confusion to liberals? That we are fighting to promote human rights and democracy in the Middle East? So that is the reason we promote.
If the neoconservatives are really Straussians, could they really be in favor of democracy and human rights in the Middle East (or anywhere, really?)
It is my impression that the mainstream of the Jewish community in both the U.S. and Israel really believes that hatred of Israel is something ginned up by Arab despots to divert their subjects from concern about domestic politics. So, if the regimes in the middle east become democratic, then they will no longer have this problem with Israel.
I believe that neoconservatives (and the Israeli right) has a much more realistic assessment of the situation. Israel is on stolen land, and the Arabs and Muslims will never forget it. So, of course, war between Israel and its neighbors is perpetural–cold or hot.
But what a great line to use on the U.S. press and the democratic party. The best way to make Israel safe is to have the U.S. reconstruct the entire middle east into a set of democracies? It keeps the U.S. in the middle east, and makes it difficult for liberals (especially Jewish ones) to challenge the policy.
On a similar note, why would this crew turn Iraq over to the Iranians? Oh, that isn’t a problem if you are going to take over Iran next! If Iran is destroyed, how much influence will they have anywhere. And if it is dominated by a pro-U.S. regime, then Iranian influence on Iraq is a good thing.
Perhaps the neconservatives really aren’t Straussians. When one begins speculating about what might be going on if they are Straussians–well, I start feeling like maybe I am becoming paranoid.
Comment by BrianM —
February 24, 2007 @ 9:53 am
According to the President, our patriotic duty in support of the war begins and ends with shopping. That doesn’t square well with Strauss and the neocons wanting to combat decadence by turning a nation into Sparta.
That is, Strauss’s ends aren’t being served by Straussian means of perpetual war. No sacrifice.
Which suggests that either the neocons have limited influence or that they aren’t going for the purification of the polity.
Comment by John Emerson —
February 24, 2007 @ 9:55 am
One of Strauss’s teachers, colleagues, and friends was Carl Schmitt, who ultimately joined the Nazis. (Strauss was anti-Nazi by accident of birth). Schmitt and Strauss maintained a correspondence right up until Schmitt became a Nazi, and they agreed that the lesson of the 1932 Nazi takeover was that liberalism had failed.
What they meant by liberalism, I think, was the idea of individual rights, plus the idea that government exists for the sake of the people, as opposed to the conservative belief that the people exist for the sake of higher things (such as the philosophical elite, the Church, God, or the State). Everyone from the Libertarians to the Social Democrats was a liberal in their eyes.
In a sense I can see Strauss as having overreacted to the most demoralizing event in the history of democracy, Hitler’s rise. But he might have noticed that liberalism had failed mostly in his own country, and that German authoritarianism, militarism, hierarchy, and statism were the real problem. Germany rejected liberalism and found something much, much worse, and for him somehow liberalism was the culprit.
Schmitt held that the essence of the state was arbitrary self-perpetuating power, and that the state shows itself best when it suspends the laws in order to preserve law, and some of the neocons are probably Schmittians by now. Neocons claim to admire Lincoln, but it’s mostly his suspension of habeas corpus that they admire, not the “of the people, by the people, and for the people” part.
B-list neocons have made it clear that they want the draft, a more fully militarized society, a continual state of war leading to a monopolar world, the kind of authority that intimidates dissidents so they STFU, an indoctrinating educational system. The A-list neocons presumably agree, but they’re wise enough to let their subordinates deliver the message.
There’s a reverse double twist irony for me here, because Reagan and Dubya have certainly shaken my faith in democracy. But for the anti-democratic Straussians the rise of know-nothings and Armageddonist loonies is inevitable withion democracy, and hitching a ride with them is the thing to do.
Comment by John Emerson —
February 24, 2007 @ 10:03 am
I do not think that the Straussians ever thought out the macroeconomic consequences of putting the US on a real permanent war footing, making demands on the citizens, and fighting lots of wars.
The electoral strength of the Republicans depends on delivering lots and lots of moolah and consumer goodies to 51% of the population, and the engine of neoliberal internationalism is the desire of the leaders of the underdeveloped world to get their own share of the goodies. Permanent warfare would ruin everything, and without the bribes of trade and development, much of the US influence would evaporate.
Comment by Barry —
February 24, 2007 @ 11:14 am
From what I’ve gathered, this was even a limitation for Hitler. He wanted a series of very short wars, not long enough to cause wartime disruptions of the German economy. Build up stuff, strike, seize, loot while partially demobilizing and building up more stuff.
He was so committed to this that I’ve heard that he ordered a return to peacetime production levels in late Summer/early Fall, 1941. He figured that the USSR was only weeks away from falling, and that the time of ‘major combat operations’ was just about over.
Comment by SomeOtherDude —
February 24, 2007 @ 11:21 am
Neoconservatives and the Dilemmas of Strategy and Ideology, 1992-2006
In all the discussions of neoconservative foreign policy that have taken place over the past couple of years — some more informed than others, some more disapproving that others — there is one abiding perception that seems to unite critics and proponents alike: that a neoconservative foreign policy is distinct from other strands of conservatism because of its emphasis on democracy promotion and that, in fact, exporting democracy for strategic and moral reasons — and through hard power if necessary — is one of the central defining purposes of contemporary second generation neoconservatism.
This paper will challenge the dominant view that neoconservatism prioritises democracy promotion. It will examine the nature of the neoconservative foreign policy strategy articulated during the 1990s — which, it is argued, has been widely misinterpreted — and will discuss the strategic and ideological tensions inherent within the strategy. Though the George W. Bush administration has not followed a neoconservative strategy in every respect, his administration has been strongly influenced by it and so some of these strategic and ideological tensions have also emerged since 9/11. It is my belief that the central cause of this tension is that the most important priority of the neoconservative strategy has always been to preserve the post-cold war ‘unipolar moment’ by perpetuating American pre-eminence and this clashes with the purported emphasis on democratization. The strategy also risks imperial overstretch and, for the most part, it fails to consider matters that are not state-based economic or state-based military issues.
At the end of the cold war, the first generation of neoconservatives that had emerged in the early seventies, was replaced by a second, younger generation that began to gravitate around the idea of American unipolarism.1 (This is the group that will be the subject of our discussion here.) It is important to clarify from the beginning that although this younger group was organised and led primarily by neoconservatives such as William Kristol and Robert Kagan, it was not their exclusive domain; rather it was a mix of neocons and other conservatives, such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who all shared a vision of a unipolar America, a vision of global dominance. Gary Dorrien refers to this group collectively as “unipolaristsâ€.2 In the main, neocons were the most important organisers and theorists within this network, but their ideas enjoyed some wider support.3 How much of a difference there, in fact, is between neocons and their other conservative sympathisers is an issue we will return to.
In terms of strategy, this group embraced the concept of unipolarism.4 At the end of the Cold War, American found itself, to use Charles Krauthammer’s famous phrase, in a “unipolar†position. It no longer had to accept the existence of a competing superpower, so rather than following a defensive strategy, like the one put forward by the first generation of neocons in the 70s, the US could now project power offensively to shape the world and construct an American imperium.5
This was captured in the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document, written for then Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, by staffers Zalmay Khalilzad and Lewis Libby, who worked for the undersecretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz.6 In contrast to the first generation of neocons, they now had the freedom to develop a strategy that rejected coexistence with any rival power and actively sought to prevent the emergence of a new competitor. This was the essence of the neoconservative strategy that was built upon by their think tanks and advocacy groups during the nineties.
In preventing the emergence of a rival power, Washington would be constructing — in the words of Kristol and Kagan —-a “benevolent global hegemonyâ€.7 While this would not solve every problem in the world, American hegemony would be better than any conceivable alternative. Joshua Muravchik wrote in 1992 of “the soothing effect†of American power because it could maintain order in the world and reassure those feeling threatened by other states.8 Moreover, according to Kristol and Kagan, “most of the world’s major powers†“welcome…and prefer†American hegemony to any other alternative because they are much better off under Washington’s tutelage since it looks after their interests too9 and thus discourages them from seeking to challenge American power.
According to most of the neoconservatives, the “benevolence†of this “empire†— to use Kagan’s words — was assured by the fact that moral ideals and national interest almost always converge.10 What is good for American preponderance is, de facto, good both morally and strategically for most of the rest of the world too. As Wolfowitz wrote in Spring 2000: “Nothing could be less realistic than… the ‘realist’ view of foreign policy that dismisses human rights as an important tool of American foreign policy.â€11
More:
Neoconservatives and the Dilemmas of Strategy and Ideology, 1992-2006 [pdf]
Comment by SomeOtherDude —
February 24, 2007 @ 11:26 am
Holy Shit!, I’m sorry, didn’t mean to cut & paste, that much!
Comment by A Patriot —
February 24, 2007 @ 11:41 am
These people (Goldberg, Ledeen, Bush, Cheney, etc.) are not only war criminals but traitors. They need to be summarily executed and buried in shallow graves.
.
[Please be careful with this sort of thing. I'm going to assume you are not calling for the extra-judicial slaughter of other citizens in violation of law, or I'd have to delete your comment. -- ed. Mona]
Comment by A Patriot —
February 24, 2007 @ 11:50 am
And another point to cowards who shrink from such rightous justice – after all the false analogies to Nazi Germany, we really are in a situation now closely aking to Germany in the late 30s. If, somehow, there is some remenant of human civilization after the coming armeggedon, citezes of this nation will be in the position of Germans after WW 2. Of course, in this case, since we are a Democracy and Germany wasn’t, the issue of the level of complicity of ordinary citezens will be much clearer.
And for those still shrinking from nazi analogies, can we at least agree that this nation – whatever you want to call it, the nation we once thought we lived in “The United States of America” is, of course, long gone – is, far and away, the most monterous Democracy the world has ever seen.
Comment by Barry —
February 24, 2007 @ 11:53 am
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
February 24, 2007 @ 8:21 am
“If we really believe that the chief neocons are devotees of Strauss, and, further, are willing to personally promote various Noble Lies, then why shouldn’t this “spread democracy idealism†be suspect as a Nobel Lie.”
I look at the question as being ‘why should we assume that speading democracy is *not* a lie, until proven otherwise?’.
It’s amazing that so many people accept that basic premise, even those who know better.
One thought which occurred to me about the classical success stories – pst-WWII Germany and Japan. Some people wonder why those worked, why those countries were rapidly converted into far more liberal and democratic states than they had been beforehand.
My (should be prize-winnning) theory is that those two cases were the *only* two cases where the USA actually intended to set up democracies; all others have been intended to set up dictatorships, oligarchies or ‘limited’ democracies.
Comment by John Emerson —
February 24, 2007 @ 12:01 pm
Germany and Japan had been democracies before the fascist takeovers, and had most of the prerequisites of democracy. Their wartime leaders had been thoroughly discredited, and a high proportion of the Nazi militants were either dead or demoralized. This was pretty much the ideal case for democracy promotion.
Comment by Barry —
February 24, 2007 @ 12:31 pm
However, the US has had no problem destroying many democracies (see: South/Central America).
It would have been easy to set up some dictatorships in Japan and Germany, using ‘cleaned’ Nazis Some high proportion of the people running post-WII Germany were, in fact ‘rehabilitated’ Nazis; I saw some figure where at least 25% of the senior civil service had benefits/seniority based on being at least middle management level during the Third Reich (and it might have been more). I read a description of the situation in Japan which was stated that the top one or two levels of most companies and bureaus were removed, and the people right below that were promoted.
Even in Iraq, the US had to smash the state/state enterprises of a socialist country, and work to prevent recovery, by running all decisions through the military or a military dictatorship. In some cases, where officers had conducted local elections, the CPA kicked those officials out. They had to deliberately smash the state enterprises which formed a large share of the economy (except for oil; I wonder why). They had to deliberately dissolve and purge *all* of the the army and police, and very large parts of bureaucracy. This was forseen, at that time, as something which would cause great trouble, and it did.
The US had to eliminate all forms of law and order except for the mosque, and work to make sure that there were no alternatives.
It was work, hard work, to bring things to the present state.
Comment by Thoreau —
February 24, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
To echo Mona, we don’t need any calls for violence here. If I wanted lawlessness and violence I’d join the neocons.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
February 24, 2007 @ 5:43 pm
A side comment on the popularity issues…
One of the real lessons for me about the 2000 election and ensuing events is just how much individual obsessions still matter. I know I’m not alone in having spent a lot of my adult life thinking in terms of structure as the key to understanding what’s going on and what might be done, regardless of what moral weight I might be assigning at the moment. Regulatory capture, for instance, is one of those powerful ideas that explains a whole lot of separate events, and lets you move from trying to anchor every instance of regulatory action (including inaction) in terms of biographical or administrative trivia and see a thread connecting them by virtue of the kind of action they are, regardless of the specific participants and policies. And in a media culture very thoroughly obsessed with the shallowest layers of individual personas, turning to structural analysis is an obvious thing to do if you want to get any sort of big picture.
But it’s easy sometimes to get carried away with that.
Institutions do carry imperatives in the fact of their existence and operation, but so do people. You can’t (to grab an example I’ve studied in some depth) make any sense at all out of US relations with China until you look at the actions of about two dozen obsessives bent on using the threat of communism as a weapon for their crusade for political dominance in the US. Anti-communism as a crucial influence in American politics after World WAr II was a surety; the kind of campaigning launched by McCarthy et al in HUAC and carried on by advancing flunkies like Nixon was not. Then in turn it matters that the Nixon administration gave shelter and advancement to people like Rumsfeld and Cheney. Stupid warmongering was, if not a surety, at least perilously close to one after the 2001 Al Qaeda attacks, but this particular crusade wasn’t, and exists only because of what very dedicated people had been doing in the years before 2001.
Making sure that their ideas are exposed as historically wrong, logically inept, and morally disgusting is important. But being outcast and shamed won’t end the story. It didn’t stop these guys when Nixon went out in disgrace, and by itself it won’t stop the guys now in third- or fourth-tier positions who are looking ahead to elections 20 or 40 years down the road. There isn’t, in the end, any substitute for ongoing vigilance about people as well as structures.
Comment by alec —
February 24, 2007 @ 6:34 pm
Good job at explaining the aptly named ‘Unholy Alliance’ of the geriatric Zionist neo-conservatives and the Evangelical Christian movement.
Comment by nobody —
February 25, 2007 @ 5:22 pm
Most people have long stories about how to name what is happening with the Neoconservatives. Straus his message is very clear, it is about asserting power over others and the tricks to keep the status quo of that situation. It is no different from the messages of Machiavelli or Sun Tzu.
Comment by bryan —
February 26, 2007 @ 8:14 am
Machiavelli was a very good stylist.
anyway, what I want to know is what was Straus’ position on just giving the people opium?
Comment by rb —
March 1, 2007 @ 1:15 pm
This is excellent, linked from Greenwald.
In regard to comment 5, this is the same thing they said about the neocons after Clinton came to power. They are not dead, not nearly.
Comment by Phil —
March 2, 2007 @ 4:45 am
Why do we even use the word “neocon” when there’s already a perfectly good word with an identical meaning that everyone already knows?
The word is ‘fascist’.