New at Reason
Michael Young looks high and low for neocons in the Bush administration—and can't seem to find any.
Comments to "New at Reason":
ed | December 27, 2007, 1:48pm | #
What we now have in Washington is a mishmash of old political realism and improvisation, topped with increasingly empty oratory on freedom and democracyA label! We need a label, dammit!
Uhhhhhh.... We're still occupying a Middle Eastern Nation until the point that it becomes a Western Democratic-Republic. That's straight neocon, your looking at some new bush while the whole forest is still there.
brotherben | December 27, 2007, 1:52pm | #
According to the 5 tenets defining neoconservatism put forth by Irving Kristol, George W. Bush and his policies are neocon all the way. A textbook example.Michael Joe-ng | December 27, 2007, 1:53pm | #
but if anyone bothered to look more closely, they would see that the United States has not really engaged in what we might call a neoconservative approach to the region since at least 2004, when the situation in Iraq took a sudden turn for the worse.All that good stuff, when things were going good? That was totally neoconservative. All the bad stuff, when things were going bad? That wasn't neoconservative, that was something else.
And please, try not to remember everything I wrote in 2005 about the Iraqi elections. Paleoconservative realists hijacked my computer and made up something called "Arab Spring." I think it's a kind of soap.
Brandybuck | December 27, 2007, 1:53pm | #
We might not have hard core neo-conservatism, but neo-con lites are all over the place!joe | December 27, 2007, 2:01pm | #
Young writes, The U.S. has also returned to an old "realist" template in selling sophisticated new weaponry to the Arab Gulf monarchies to partly balance Tehran's power.This would, indeed, be evidence of a change in American foreign policy - if it was accompanied by an example of the Bush administration cracking down on the Saudis during that idealistic neoconservative period Young postulates.
Don't hold your breath waiting for such an example.
Face it, Mr. Young - the freedom and democracy shtick was exactly as much empty rhetoric to justify global adventurism aimed at expanding our realist hard power in 2003 as it is in 2007. Those idealistic democracy-spreaders in National Review were talking about basing rights and oil in 2002.
Justin Raimondo | December 27, 2007, 2:07pm | #
No neocons anywhere in the admnistration? I blame Syria ....VM | December 27, 2007, 2:08pm | #
"more activist bent in spreading democracy, freedom, and free markets throughout the world."and by restricting the very same at home.
article: 0/10. fail.
What I think we're stuck with are neocons in the White House who are forced by a lack of troops to do things that are anathema to them. Double the number of troops toting guns, or cross over into some bizarro world where the feudalist Sunni and Shiites embrace a modern democracy, and you'd see those neoclowns back on the warpath.
R C Dean | December 27, 2007, 2:22pm | #
a mishmash of old political realism and improvisation, topped with increasingly empty oratory on freedom and democracySounds like the primaries, to me.
henry | December 27, 2007, 2:30pm | #
I use the four part test devised by the Ramones to ferret out neo-cons. Someone is a neo-con if they follow these rules:"First rule is: The laws of Germany
Second rule is: Be nice to mommy
Third rule is: Don't talk to commies
Fourth rule is: Eat kosher salamis"
It's actually a sensible article, but... when did Cheney pass on?
Prolefeed has it exactly right. And shame on Mr. Young for imparting one single scintilla of realpolitik to the Mayberry Machiavellis. They have ended up where they are solely because this is where they fell, stumbled, and rolled to after Plan A didn't work out. Plans B through M (including the Surge) have been made up as they went along not because they hue to any consistent political philosophy.
Pain | December 27, 2007, 3:18pm | #
Please, nobody even knows what neocon even means anymore. It's just some booga-booga word meant to get everybody's hackles up.It's like calling someone a commie during the Cold War. It means whatever the person saying wants it to mean.
Big Dick Cheney | December 27, 2007, 3:20pm | #
I am Neocon, hear me roar...ø¿ø | December 27, 2007, 3:24pm | #
[edit] Neoconservative policiesIrving Kristol, the "god-father" and one of the founders of neoconservatism, stated five basic policies of neoconservatism that distinguish it from other "movements" or "persuasions"[9]. These policies, he claimed, "result in popular Republican presidencies":
Taxes and Federal Budget: "Cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth. This policy was not invented by neocons, and it was not the particularities of tax cuts that interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth." In Kristol's view, neocons are and should be less concerned about balancing fiscal budgets than traditional conservatives: "One sometimes must shoulder budgetary deficits as the cost (temporary, one hopes) of pursuing economic growth."[9]
Size of Government: Kristol distinguishes between Neoconservatives and the call of traditional conservatives for smaller government. "Neocons do not feel ... alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable."[9]
Traditional Moral Values: "The steady decline in our democratic culture, sinking to new levels of vulgarity, does unite neocons with traditional conservatives". Here Kristol distinguishes between traditional conservatives and libertarian conservatives. He cites the shared interest of Neocons and Religious Conservates in using the government to enforce morality: "Since the Republican party now has a substantial base among the religious, this gives neocons a certain influence and even power."[9]
Expansionist Foreign Policy: "Statesmen should ... distinguish friends from enemies." And according to Kristol, "with power come responsibilities ... if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you."[9]
National Interest: "the United States of today, inevitably ... [will] feel obliged to defend ... a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces ...that is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II ... that is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today."[9]
ed | December 27, 2007, 3:46pm | #
Please, nobody even knows what neocon even means anymore. It's just some booga-booga word meant to get everybody's hackles up.Indeed, such labels are intellectual shortcuts for dimwits.
Ironically, if you spell-check "neocon" you get neuron.
de stijl | December 27, 2007, 3:54pm | #
Please, nobody even knows what neocon even means anymore. It's just some booga-booga word meant to get everybody's hackles up.Exhibit B
Taktix® | December 27, 2007, 4:07pm | #
Indeed, such labels are intellectual shortcuts for dimwits.Brevity is the soul of wit...
joe | December 27, 2007, 4:15pm | #
I've asked this a number of times of people who insisted on the pure, idealistic, realpolitik-rejecting motives of the Bush adminstration in their bloody foreign policy:Can you please name for me a single episode when the Bush administration supported democracy or opposed tyranny in the absence of a realist national interest concern?
I can think of plenty of counter-examples, from holding handsies with the King of Saudi Arabia to backing the coup against the elected president of Venezuela, but I cannot for the life of me come up with an example of the "idealistic" Bush administration ever putting ideals like liberalism or democracy ahead of oil, money, obedient governments, or military power.
Pain | December 27, 2007, 4:37pm | #
de stijl,Communism has a definition too. But if you listen to some people during it's hey day you would get wildly different ideas about what it was (you still do). Ultimately, much of the time, it just turned into a buzz word that had only passing resemblance to it's actual ideas.
de stijl | December 27, 2007, 4:39pm | #
Can you please name for me a single episode when the Bush administration supported democracy or opposed tyranny in the absence of a realist national interest concern?Afghanistan?
de stijl | December 27, 2007, 4:42pm | #
Pain,I know. A semi-regular here (and full-time wacko in real life) named Eric Dondero thought neocon meant a pro-life Republican a la Pat Robertson. Seriously.
Shit, I named he that should not be named.
brotherben | December 27, 2007, 4:50pm | #
"Afghanistan?"Unless of course one subscribes to the Michael Moore theory.
de stijl | December 27, 2007, 4:53pm | #
What's the MM theory on Afghanistan?BTW, they fucked that up, too. Trying to do it on the cheap to prove Rummy right.
brotherben | December 27, 2007, 4:59pm | #
Hamid Karzai, the former oil company executive that Michael Moore said was installed in place by the Bush regime to ensure an oil pipeline was built in Afghanistan.prolefeed | December 27, 2007, 5:01pm | #
Unless of course one subscribes to the Michael Moore theory.You mean the theory that if you cherrypick a few horror stories about health insurance from a nation of 300 million individuals, you can convince the gullible that the Potemkin village health care scheme allegedly provided to all Cubans by their communist benefactors will seem preferable?
Oh, wait, you mean a different Michael Moore whackjob theory.
brotherben | December 27, 2007, 5:13pm | #
I like to think of meself as open minded, not a whackjob theorist.aaack
Richard Scott | December 27, 2007, 5:26pm | #
Neither the article, or anyone else here mentions Bush pushing for war with Iran, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Nothing is more neocon.Alan Vanneman | December 27, 2007, 5:30pm | #
"One can go on."Certainly Michael Young can, and does. If only he hadn't stopped making sense.
Ken Shultz | December 27, 2007, 5:31pm | #
"What we now have in Washington is a mishmash of old political realism and improvisation, topped with increasingly empty oratory on freedom and democracy. That should please quite a few of Bush's domestic critics. He's returned to the futile routine in the Middle East that they always urged him to."Empty oratory and futile routines, um, yeah, that's what criticizing President Bush is all about!
Ken Shultz | December 27, 2007, 5:34pm | #
Is there a specifically "neocon" exit strategy?How would they get us out of a quagmire?
joe | December 27, 2007, 6:38pm | #
de stijl,Are you kidding me? On 9/11, 2800 Americans were killed by a terrorist organization that was headquartered in Afghanistan, and operated freely there under the protection of its government.
We pretty clearly had a high-level national interest - defense of our homeland from attack - in going to Afghanistan.
Rob McMillin | December 27, 2007, 8:42pm | #
Who is this Michael Young guy and how is it that he's managed to ignore the President's August, 2006 speech in which he all but called for war with Iran? And how about the embarrassed attempt to overturn the NIE's assessment so he could still get the war the neocons so desperately want against Israel's enemies?Richard Scott is exactly right. The Bush administration has changed not one whit.
edna | December 27, 2007, 11:04pm | #
Can you please name for me a single episode when the Bush administration supported democracy or opposed tyranny in the absence of a realist national interest concern?the bushies would argue (not entirely without merit) that the two are congruent, not opposed. how would you address that argument? could your question be recast without that assumption?
Lamar | December 27, 2007, 11:14pm | #
"the bushies would argue (not entirely without merit) that the two are congruent, not opposed. how would you address that argument?"The election of Hamas?
edna | December 27, 2007, 11:36pm | #
if you define "democracy" as "election between whomever hasn't been killed yet or intimidated out of the process by fatah or hamas," then your point is valid.of course, hamas fails the "tyranny" side of the definition. not that "fatah" is any better.
damn, this sounds familiar.
Ben Rushing | December 28, 2007, 2:40am | #
Let's not forget that Democracy was not something that our founding fathers wanted. They saw democracy as the ability for people to vote themselves allotments of the state's recources.The United States of America was a Federal Republic with only the lowest offices being voted for by the people ensuring that individual states would set and enforce thier own laws.
Over the years the American people have elected officials that passed laws which turned the US into a democracy that has been able to ignore the constitution when it has the voters consent. Democracy has failed the people of United States and will fail if there are not enough educated and willing voters.
Ron Paul will fail to get the nomination, because there are too many prgmatic anti-personal freedom people and socialist anti economic freedom people who are registered voters in the Republican party to see that he is our best option. His Pacifism has not helped him either, but this is the case with democracy.
Never underestimate the power of ignorant people in large groups.
Isaac Bartram | December 28, 2007, 8:40am | #
joeI understood de stijl's point that we fucked up Afghanistan, not that we shouldn't be there.
Isaac Bartram | December 28, 2007, 9:20am | #
...de stijl's point was that we fucked up Afghanistan...Chris S. | December 28, 2007, 9:29am | #
Did you know that no country has ever tried communism? It's true! Every supposedly communist country was and is actually something else -- something that was first animated by communist ideals, but then drifted towards some form of autocracy. Communism isn't the problem -- it's the drift towards autocracy that causes all the problems.Oh, if I had a nickel for every utopian who said "we didn't go far enough..."
joe | December 28, 2007, 11:32am | #
edna,I would address that argument by noting that it is a cheap rhetorical ploy, and by pointing to the two counterexamples I gave - the coup against the elected president of Venezuela and the lovey-dovey stance towards the House of Saud - to demonstrate that the Bushies do not, in fact, think that our national interest and our ideals are one and the same.
They didn't think that support for democracy in South America or for liberalism in Arabia was in our national interest, did they? They seemed to think that our interests were best served by thumbing their nose at those ideals.
joe | December 28, 2007, 11:35am | #
Chris S.,Did you know that no country has ever tried free-market capitalism? It's true! Every supposedly capitalist t country was and is actually something else -- something that was first animated by capitalist ideals, but then drifted towards some form of autocracy. Capitalism isn't the problem -- it's the drift towards autocracy that causes all the problems.
Oh, if I had a nickel for every libertarian who said "we didn't go far enough..."
No, wait, you know what? I'm going to go back and leave "utopian" in that last sentence. Because it works so well here, too.
joe | December 28, 2007, 11:37am | #
Isaac B.,Hmm, you might be right.
I read de stijl's statement as being about our motives for going there, as that was the subject of my question.
de stijl | December 28, 2007, 11:53am | #
Sorry! Haven't been paying attention to this thread.My point about Afghanistan is that it is not attributable to realist national interest concern, but rather just baseline for any nation's foreign policy: respond to attack. However, in reading the definition of political realism it seems that a core tenet is that a state is motivated by the desire for power or security.
I hadn't included the "security" bit in my understanding.
The point I was trying to make was that Afghanistan was not a neocon style power play action, but a response to the 9/11 attacks.
And even then, we fucked it up to prove Rummy's theory about transformation of the military.
joe | December 28, 2007, 12:25pm | #
de stijl,I disagree that we fucked it up to prove Rummy's theory about transformation of the military.
Putting an additional Special Forces company on the back side of Tora Bora, instead of hiring those Tali-buddies, would have been perfectly in keeping with Rumsfeld's ideas about the smaller, lighter military. That this was not done is a consequence of the decision to invade Iraq, and the subsequent need to deploy available SF units into Iraq to prep for the invasion. The limited number of main-force troops available to stabilize the country and fight off the reconstituted Taliban over the past three years (John Kerry gave a speech last week begging for 5000 more troops for Afghanistan. Five thousand!) was also a consequence of Iraq overstretching the military.
IMHO, Rumsfeld was quite right about transformation, and would have made a good peacetime SecDef. It was his, and others', ideas about geopolitics, not military doctrine, that screwed up our efforts in Afghanistan.
Michael Young | December 28, 2007, 12:56pm | #
Some might want to read this:"[O]nce the Saddam Hussein regime is removed from power in Iraq, the United States should support Iraq's transition to democracy by providing immediate and substantial humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, by providing democracy transition assistance to Iraqi parties and movements with democratic goals, and by convening Iraq's foreign creditors to develop a multilateral response to Iraq's foreign debt incurred by Saddam Hussein's regime."
No, not the "neocon" Bush administration's statement of policy before the Iraq war, but the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 that Bill Clinton signed into law in October of that year. If readers want to get all heated up about what a neocon is, fine, but then apply to the Clinton administration the same benchmark as to the Bush administration.
Advocating the use of force or invading a country do not make you a neocon. Most administrations have done it. Reagan invaded Grenada; Bush Sr. invaded Panama and went to war in the Gulf; Clinton went to war in the Balkans and bombed a medicine factory in Sudan. And so on, only proving my point that Bush is not so very different than his predecessors.
Yes, Clinton in the end did not go to war in Iraq; but in the end the Bush administration will not go to war with Iran either, regardless of Bush's and Cheney's speeches. In fact, I have serious doubts the U.S. could have ever gone to war against Iran, given the domestic mood on Iraq, despite Bush's rhetoric. Threatening war against an Iran thought to be going nuclear really is really not enough to define neocon behavior either; just as Clinton's acceptance of regime change in Iraq did not make him a neocon.
The bottom line is that there are, and always were, many inside the administration and at the Pentagon who sought to block the war option with Iran, hence the administration's need to publicize the contents of the National Intelligence Estimate, rather than to allow a leaked version to go out that the White House would not have been able to spin.
Chris S. | December 28, 2007, 2:28pm | #
No Joe, I would freely admit that we're living in a capitalist country, and most of our allies are capitalist. Sure, we're not 100% free market, but we're principally capitalists.And why wouldn't capitalism take credit for both its flaws and benefits? The net result of this system has been historically unparalleled prosperity. There are some problems with our system, and some are directly caused by capitalism, but on the whole, capitalist countries have faired vastly better than countries with principally centralized, planned economies. The difference between me and an it's-not my-fault communist or neoconservative is that I'm able to acknowledge that the flaws in our capitalist society are not indications that our society isn't an accurate representation of capitalism. I wish neoconservatives would also take responsibility for the consequences of their favored political system. Iraq was and is a direct result of neoconservative ideals regarding unilateral force, the spreading of American ideals through force, and faith in social transformation through government force. The notion that the U.S. could easily and unilaterally transform Iraq from a dictatorship to a western-style democracy molded after our own image is uniquely neoconservative.
Perhaps Michael Young thinks it matters that the Bush administration doesn’t represent the Platonic form of neoconservativism. I can’t agree. The neo-conservatives tried their way, and it sucked. As a result of their obvious failures (obvious to everyone but themselves), they simply don’t have the political clout to convince the American public, the military, or Congress that another idealistic war in the name of radical social transformation is worth our blood and money. They haven’t changed – the world has changed around them, leaving the administration and all of its compassionate conservative big-government goobers powerless. It also didn’t hurt that the NIE report pulled the rug out from under them (woohoo!).
I'm sure they'll be back in 10 years, and the U.S. will be forced to endure another b.s. neoconservative failure that "wasn't actually neoconservative."
Dan Friedman | December 29, 2007, 9:11am | #
"Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon"You can visit the Daily Star online and read the opinions Young expresses to his Lebanese audience. They're not the those of a neocon or a "realist," they're the worst of both worlds with a bit of liberal boilerplate thrown in for good measure.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=17&article_id=87666
Gabe Harris | December 29, 2007, 9:37pm | #
"What we now have in Washington is a mishmash of old political realism and improvisation, topped with increasingly empty oratory on freedom and democracy"so that old oratory was very full and truthful? what a bunch of crap...Michael Young you were pushing all this "spread the freedom by cluster bombing the f*** out of the goat herders" BS as recently as this year...now your telling us the freedom part is just oratatory and it's all good now because we are back to good old american foreign policy of supporting fundamentalist despots like the house of saud, Musharef in pakistan, Kurd killers in turkey...now we just need to install a knew Shaw in Iran and maybe re endow the taliban and why not cut osama another check...that will keep it stable for our liberal internationalism...you disagree with that? oh you must be an isolationist! you see I'm a serious thinker and don't use meaningless smear words like neo-con.
Mike | December 29, 2007, 11:48pm | #
Geez,And I thought all the whack-jobs were at KOS & LGF.
Thanks for disabusing me of that assumption.
And they have the gall to call this site "Reason"?
de stijl | December 31, 2007, 10:24am | #
And they have the gall to call this site "Reason"?Two day late, but Drink!!1!
Chris Wren | January 2, 2008, 10:34am | #
I always marvel pundits like Young who talk about events in 2004 as though they were ancient history or part of another geological era.Mike Garcia | January 2, 2008, 2:03pm | #
Michael Young looking high and low for neocons? This article has got "Flame Bait" written all over it!If you had done basic research using only Wikipedia, you could have followed-up on the influence that various think tanks have had on the current and previous administrations. For example: the Project for the New American Century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNAC
lists 17 members or signatories that were appointed to key positions within the President's administration, including Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, John R. Bolton, and Richard Cheney.
P.S.
I'm writting an editorial letter "Your Money and Foreign Policy" on my blog
http://patriotg.blogspot.com/
stating that these think tanks advocated a foreign policy of interventionism -- a policy doomed to fail -- just as domestic economic interventionism (socialism) is doomed to fail. I welcome your comments before I send it out later this week. Thanks.
Rob McMillin | January 7, 2008, 4:27pm | #
Yes, Clinton in the end did not go to war in Iraq; but in the end the Bush administration will not go to war with Iran either, regardless of Bush's and Cheney's speeches.They sure are trying hard to make it happen:
http://tinyurl.com/2g79fz
More anonymous government sources telling us Iranian naval vessels are doing threatening things, though what exactly they were is, of course, shrouded in fifty layers of state secrets privilege. Mike, you've gotta be squinting *awfully* hard to not call this administration anything *but* neocons.