Category Archives: Neoconservatism

NATO Another Noose Around The American People’s Necks

Donald Trump, Europe, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, The State

Donald Trump, bless him, puts America First. He can’t help himself. And so it was, again, with his comments against NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As with any bureaucracy, NATO is good for those it employs. The NATO superstate, however, is bad for The People, who must pay for it and live with its self-perpetuating policies and sinecured politicians.

NATO was “… formed to fight the Soviet Union . … “The USSR evaporated a quarter-century ago,” but like a zombie, “NATO has lurched along, taking on new roles. …”

Foolishly and self-servingly, the establishment, Left and Right, equates what governments do, with what the people need. These shysters, Ted Cruz included, have risen on their hind legs in defense of America’s continued membership in NATO, to the tune of 2 percent of GDP. It’s not a conscious act; like a single-celled amoeba, these single-purpose organisms thrash about in unison to preserve the physical integrity of the state structures that feed them.

Where Trump disappoints slightly is when he talks restructuring instead of disinvesting, but there’s so much one human being can say and promise to do. Mr. Trump is fearless.

UPDATED: What ‘Bombing ISIS’ In Syria Looks Like

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Russia, Terrorism, War

This is what “bombing ISIS” in Syria looks like. You can’t find them, you can’t tell friend from foe, and you kill kids galore. It’s a bad idea.

“The truth about Syria: Undercover behind rebel lines,” By Clarissa Ward

The Russians did it. How will our Daisy Cutters differ?

UPDATED (3/22): Donald Trump, will you consider?

There are no good bombs.

NRO’s Charles Cooke Second Rate Effete

Britain, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Neoconservatism, Politics, Republicans, Uncategorized

If only Ann Coulter would take him on and finish him off. In mannerism and pomposity, the insipid effete Charles Cooke is National Review’s Piers Morgan of the Right. These newer, washed-out British imports are nothing like the brilliant Christopher Hitchens. In fact, a Hitchens witticism nicely encapsulates the enterprise of the Cooke Republicans: “What is original is not true and what is true is not original.”

The few essays of Cooke I’ve read sport a sort of crass pragmatism. Perhaps it has to do with the impetus of his expertise: “British liberty,” and “American exceptionalism,” the latter being the hobby horse—really the Trojan Horse—of neoconservatives. As to British liberties: Our learned friend, Paul Gottfried, intimated, in Conservatism in American, that English prescriptive liberties are not exactly an American thing.

Note below Cooke’s silly psychologizing, connoted in Kelly’s tweet. Silly, since it is quite possible that Donald Trump is a natural strongman. Trump seems as authentic in his macho man persona as Charles Cooke is in his girly mannerism.

Hope For Rubio’s Political Demise, Or Expect More Wars

Bush, Neoconservatism, War

Marco Rubio is the closest to George Bush in his robotic, ruthless ability to “regurgitate the militaristic talking points of the party’s neoconservative wing.” He’s even hired the war criminals that lined the Bush administration. As has Rubio curried favor with the most internationalist, interventionist among the donor-class: Little Marco is bitch to billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.

Via Foreign Policy Focus:

Adelson doled out an estimated $100 million — more than anyone else in American history — during the 2012 presidential election, at first in support of Newt Gingrich and then to the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan presidential ticket.

“… another major hardline “pro-Israel” donor: hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. Rubio’s political career was in fact jump-started by powerful donors in the ideological vein of Adelson and Singer. Norman Braman, a Florida businessman with a decisively hawkish attitude on U.S. Middle East policy, has been the ‘single-largest backer of Rubio’s presidential campaign.’”

And here are the “disgraced foreign policy entrepreneurs” whom Rubio has recruited:

Rubio counts among his foreign policy advisors numerous prominent neocons, including Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, hawkish former senator Jim Talent, former Reagan official and Iran-Contra convict Elliott Abrams, neoconservative writer and historian Robert Kagan, and former George W. Bush national security advisor Stephen Hadley.

Rubio has also been advised by the avowedly militarist John Hay Initiative, an advocacy group founded in 2013 by former Romney advisor Brian Hook and former George W. Bush administration officials Eric Edelman and Eliot Cohen. The Hay Initiative consists of more than 250 “experts,” of whom the vast majority have hawkish track records, and is “structured somewhat like a campaign foreign policy team in waiting,” according to the Daily Beast. Observers have opined that the group is a “rebirth of the Project for the New American Century.” (My hunch was right.)

Another Rubio advisor, neoconservative Council on Foreign Relations fellow Max Boot, recently garnered attention for his call for the United States to unilaterally declare a Sunni autonomous region in Iraq. Rubio promptly echoed him, stating that as president he would “demand” that Iraq’s government grant “greater autonomy” to the country’s Sunni regions.

On his official campaign team, Rubio has appointed Jamie Fly as his “counselor for foreign and national security affairs.” A former director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, another PNAC successor organization that was founded in 2009 by Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, Fly co-wrote a paper in 2012 with Gary Schmitt (of PNAC fame) that explicitly called for a military attack on Iran that would “destabilize the regime.”

Is Rubio’s full-spectrum saber-rattling just campaign rhetoric, or is it reflective of what he would actually do as president? Either way, his water-carrying for hardline donors and disgraced foreign policy entrepreneurs is bad news for global peace and stability.

READ “Marco Rubio Is Winning the Neocon Primary.”