Category Archives: Neoconservatism

NEW COLUMN: No Pardons For Neocon War Crimes (Part 2)

Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iraq, Just War, Morality, Neoconservatism, The State, War

NEW COLUMN, “No Pardons For Neocon War Crimes” (Part 2), is on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

An excerpt:

“HOW does America change if our intelligence agencies were more accurate in their assessment of Saddam Hussein’s chemical and nuclear weapons programs?”

The question was posed, just the other day, in “Make America Competent Again,” by David French, at the Dispatch, a neoconservative website. The tract is an agony aunt’s meander that calls on shoring-up competency in state and civil society.

But first: Dissecting, deconstructing and exposing the neoconservative mindset and machinations matters. The reason is this:

Thanks to President Trump, neoconservatives are not exactly having a moment—they’re down in the doldrums. But they’ll be back. For neoconservatives and liberal interventionists make up the Permanent State. The ideology the likes of David French, formerly of National Review, and his ilk promote—foreign-policy bellicosity, endless immigration, mindless consumerism, racial shaming, “canceling” of deviationists and conformity to an American identity that’s been melted away in vats of multiculturalism—is in our country’s bone marrow, by now.

Therefore, the fighting words in response to French’s framing of the invasion of Iraq as a mere glitch in intelligence are these:

Oh no you don’t, you so-and-so!!

No creedal neoconservative should be able to get away with the claim that a problem of criminality is really just a problem of competency.

You’d think that a military man like Mr. French would know that fixing problems rests on defining them with precision. Recasting state corruption and war crimes as incompetence cures neither state crimes nor incompetence.

America’s war on Iraq was a war crime, plain and simple. It was a reflexive collaboration between elements in a vast, by now familiar, intelligence bureaucracy, comprised of neoconservative and liberal interventionists, whose aim was to help The Powers that Be pulverize a country, Iraq, for the purpose of making it over in the image of America.

Contra Mr. French, the war on Iraq cannot be reduced to systemic incompetence. Anyone who doggedly tracked and documented the ramp up to war, as this column did, can attest that the United States bullied its way to war, monomaniacally. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “No Pardons For Neocon War Crimes” (Part 2), is on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

Finally, A Fox News Guest Stands Up To Laura Loud Mouth, Asserts His Expertise, Rejects Her Agenda

China, Conservatism, Healthcare, Neoconservatism, Science

“No, it’s not correct. It’s not correct to say that.”—Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., to Laura Ingraham

Finally, a Fox News guest stands up to Laura Loud Mouth Ingraham—who always ends up drowning out her guests.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, whose credentials are impeccable and apolitical-–I’ve followed him since he and his team tracked down “patient zero” in the HIV/AIDS epidemic—asserts his expertise, and rejects Ingraham’s agenda.

Chinese scientists are not to be equated with Chinese officials, Fauci explains to the ego in the anchor’s chair.

AND:

“No, you are NOT correct,” Fauci tells Laura Loud Mouth. “A World Health Organization group of respected scientists whom I know, and personally interact with, is in in China. The Chinese scientists and health officials I interact with and know personally are to be trusted. Their information is good.”

As to Laura and her rah-rah America shtick:  A pundit who uses the words “regime” constantly is a hop, skip, and a jump away from her neocon roots of regime change …

It’s fine to present your guest with your theory, succinctly. Tucker Carlson does that.

But learn from Tucker. Let the expert speak. People like me are not interested in Laura’s hackneyed views. But when she has an extremely knowledgeable guest on, we’d like him to get a word in edgeways.

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UPDATED (2/17): NEW COLUMN: Incompetent, Imperial Neocons And The Permanent State (Part 1)

Conservatism, Culture, Donald Trump, Government, Neoconservatism, Politics

New column is “Incompetent, Imperial Neocons And The Permanent State (Part 1).” It’s now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

An excerpt:

Mr. French, on the other hand, appears to take a bow for a philosophical bent that belongs to classical conservatism: “The culture is upstream from politics.” Or, as Russell Kirk, the father of American conservatism, put it, “At heart, all political problems are moral and religious problems.”

Relinquish the ego. Quit letting your reptilian brain lead you, and allow, in a sentence or two, that the stuff “I THINK” in “MY WRITING,” to parrot Mr. French, belongs to a proud conservative tradition.

That tradition might need revision. For the world, political and cultural, has changed, metaphysically.

Although a man of the left, Canadian columnist Rick Salutin had, without doubt, advanced astute observations about the relationship between culture and politics. Because they comport with the metaphysical changes alluded to, Salutin’s observations are the better ones.

Back in 1998, Salutin offered up a prescient, if distressing, view of politics as culture, following “the capitulation of most sources of opposition to the neoconservative … agenda.”

Wrote Salutin: “In a culture of imagery and spectacle, politics has become mostly a show, entertainment.”

“[F]or the moment, politics in the democratic, electoral sense, is no longer about making choices [left or right] regarding social and economic direction.”

“What’s increasingly clear to voters is that they are not choosing the direction of their society—that has already been settled; they are voting for a cast of characters who will play the role of The Government on television and on [Capitol Hill] for the next [couple of] years.

The scrip is set, but you get to decide who plays the parts on TV.”

If Deep State durability has proven anything, it is that not even a fire-breathing political dragon like our president can fumigate the snake pit that is the Permanent State. …

… READ THE REST. The complete column is “Incompetent, Imperial Neocons And The Permanent State (Part 1).” It’s now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

UPDATE (2/17): Glad you liked it!

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UPDATE III (1/09/020): Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller DOES AXE Dissident Voices

Conservatism, Critique, Ethics, Neoconservatism, Political Correctness

Here, Tucker Carlson loudly protests the habit of expunging dissent voices, right and left.

OK, but Tucker Carlson is affiliated with Daily Caller, right? And Daily Caller axed my very dissident column because a hate-group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, persists in telling nasty lies about me and my views. (Along the lines outlined in my refutation of “Slate’s Resident Idiot” when he “Slandered this Jewish Woman — Me.”)

How is that resisting the status quo? Daily Caller also removed op-ed editor Robert Mariani and replaced him with indistinguishable neocons.

I think they all swim in very polluted waters.

UPDATE I (12/30/019):

Tucker markets a syndicated column with a buddy, Patel, who is editor-in-chief of Daily Caller. As its founder, Tucker has plenty sway. Other dissident columns have been removed, too. Love Tucker, but can we stop making excuses for our idols?

https://twitter.com/jesse31522/status/1211568797141762049

UPDATE II (12/31/019): 

Regarding this comment on Twitter: Then Tucker must NOT wax fat against dissidents being expunged, when his pride-and-joy site, the one he founded, does that very thing to those of us who were Old, Hard Right before Tucker was. And there are other thinkers who’ve been purged from Daily Caller. Mencken warned about this kind of mindless mindset among Americans. Find a hero, usually a celeb or a politico–and worship, worship the idol, excuse his every incongruous stance. You can be sure Tucker HAS PLENTY INFLUENCE @DailyCaller. It’s likely a choice.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), arguably America’s foremost hate group, had maligned me, a hard-right, Jewish individualist (daughter of a rabbi), who is frequently and mercilessly attacked by anti-Semites (a taste in the Comments to my column, at the Unz Review). So, at the same time that Tucker Carlson was doing magnificent exposes about the SPLC—his website, Daily Caller, was expunging my column because the SPLC demands it.

Intelligent, honest sorts will admit there is a contradiction here. The rest are, as Mencken would have said, part of the “commonwealth of morons”—mindless followers, who refuse to recognize  that the object of their worship (Tucker) might be in violation of his own principles.

UPDATE III (1/09/020):

An interesting postscript to the above debate. Correlation is not causation, but Tucker Carlson seems to have untangled himself from the syndicated column he wrote with Daily Caller editor, Neil Patel. More accurately, the Patel column appears sans Tucker.  Patel worked for Vice President Dick Cheney. Say no more.