Category Archives: Neoconservatism

UPDATE III: ALL The Victims of September 11

Iraq, Jihad, Just War, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Terrorism, War

The “SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 VICTIMS” is a site dedicated to America’s victims of the September 11, 2001 assault. It is profoundly moving (even if the hyperlinks to each individual profile do not display). The list, however, is woefully incomplete. All told, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians have died due to the actions the American state took to avenge the murder of those who perished in the WORLD TRADE CENTER, on AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHTS 11 and 77, on UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHTS 175 and 93, and in the PENTAGON.

On 10.11.06, I made a point of clarifying a study in The Lancet detailing the direct and indirect casualties of our invasion of Iraq:

“In the final days of Saddam’s reign of terror, i.e., in the 15 months preceding the invasion, the primary causes of death in Iraq were natural: heart attack, stroke and chronic illness. Since Iraq became another neocon object lesson, the primary cause of death has been violence, according to the report.”

Moreover, “since March 2003, Iraqis have suffered from an excess of deaths, if you will.”

The relative risk, the risk of deaths from any cause was two-and-a-half times higher for Iraqi civilians after the 2003 invasion than in the preceding 15 months. But ‘the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than before the U.S.-led invasion.

In 2006, The Lancet cited a figure of 650,000 Iraqis, over and above the mortality rate during the Saddam era. Among these deceased Iraqis were thousands of individuals who had died because, since the invasion, the incidence of heart attacks, cancer, strokes, stress and displacement-related deaths, deaths associated with a lack of health care and potable water, etc had increased twofold, at least.

The total figure is now out of date.

Tomorrow, Sept. 11, think of our casualties—and of those innocent lives we shattered to avenge our dead.

UPDATE I (Sept. 12): NEED TO KNOW. “September 9, 2011: 9/11, ten years later” is a PBS program that offered decent 9/11 programing.

UPDATE II (Sept. 13): “9/11” by Nebojsa Malic of the “Gray Falcon” fame.

UPDATE III (Sept. 19): THE RECKONING: AMERICA AND THE WORLD A DECADE AFTER 9/11.

The Worst of Times

Bush, Economy, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Jihad, Liberty, Military, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Terrorism, War

National Journal has had an aha Moment: “The 10 years since the terrorism attacks of 9/11 rank among America’s most troubled,” concludes the Journal’s Ronald Brownstein:

[George W. Bush’s] “mismanaged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq sapped U.S. strength and imposed costs vastly exceeding their benefits. Overstretched and in the red, America ends the decade weaker on many international dimensions than when it began… At home,… the median income is now lower than in 2001 and the number of Americans in poverty nearly one-third higher. Most incredibly, fewer Americans are working today than in September 2001—a decadelong record of decline matched since 1900 only during the 1930s. Faith in all public and private leadership is flickering.”

No doubt, it began with Bush, who was bad to the bone.

Neocons Are Second-Handers

Conservatism, libertarianism, Literature, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Pseudo-intellectualism, Republicans, Ron Paul, South-Africa

Readers often conflate popularity with quality. Periodically, a reader who’s recently stumbled upon the commentariat’s dirty little secret—libertarians who’ve been writing predictive op-eds for over a decade—will suggest that this writer petition one of their favorite, famous, thoroughbred neoconservatives for an audience. “Show your latest book,” the well-meaning reader will urge, to this or that NYT best seller neocon, pseudo-conservative, know-nothing.

Take the “portfolio,” goes the well-meaning chap’s advice, and seek a pat on the head from a particular dufus whom my reader, for some reason, considers to be a Delphic oracle.

Of course, in the larger scheme of things, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa” should survive long after the various neocon books.

Liberals this; liberals that; Bush was great; Cheney too, the world is dead without America; Europe sucks; we’ve discovered that debt and big government are bad now that Obama’s in power:

If you don’t already know that these titles and their authors all have precious little to impart for posterity—you should!

Mark Steyn’s freshly presented tired ideas are one of many such examples. Steyn is an entertaining writer and fun to read. However, The “One-Man Global Content Provider’s” epistolary razzmatazz should never be confused with unconventional analysis, as explained, by way of an example, in “Beck, Wilders, and His Boosters’ Blind Spot.”

As for this writer and her relationship with mainstream neoconservatives: Been there done that. I may one day write about the almost-flirtatious sweet nothings some big-name neocon-cum-conservatives whispered in my e-ear when I first appeared on the US scene. There were dinner invitations too, one at least was even attended.

All that was before I registered, on Sept. 19, 2002, the first of many principled objections against their war of choice on Iraq. That was before the neocons discovered I was not an S. E. Cupp, a Margaret Hoover, or a ditzy Dana Perino.

After that fatal date, I became a political persona non grata.

The neocon modus operandi is to ignore and vilify truth-tellers such as Ron Paul, so long as the truth is unpalatable. After a period of time has passed—say five years hence—Ron Paul’s economic and foreign policy prescriptions (or my analysis of the New democratic South Africa and its lessons for America) will become quite kosher because it will no longer be possible to deny reality. Then the usual gasbags will proceed to “borrow” ideas they have not originated.

Seldom will originators be credited, not by neocons, at least.

When it comes to Machiavellian machinations, however, neocons are originators second to none.

UPDATED: John McCain Is Scum (The Biggest Bully on the Block)

Foreign Policy, John McCain, Just War, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Terrorism, War

I’ve dubbed him McMussolini, and a serial killer by proxy. John McCain, concurs Larry Auster, is simply “the worst man in America.” Adds Larry: Americans who’ve gone along with John McCain’s latest criminal endeavor, the war of choice against Libya, “share in his guilt”:

McCain has justified the war on Libya because Kaddafi “has blood on his hands”–a reference to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. But, as shown on MSNBC last night by the man substituting for Lawrence O’Donnell, McCain visited Libya in 2009 and had a friendly meeting with Kaddafi. The meeting is shown in photographs, and there is a transcript. At one point McCain expresses his support for “progress in the bilateral relationship” between Libya and the U.S.
So in 2009 McCain had put Pan Am 103 behind him, as he had no choice to do, given that the U.S. had made peace with Kaddafi following his abandonment of his WMDs programs in 2003. But in 2011, the “script” had changed (that ever-changing “script” which tells liberals who is the oppressive villain and who is the saintlike victim in any given situation), and under this new script Kaddafi was suddenly a terrible enemy again and had to be destroyed, and it was as though the 2003 peace, and the good relations Kaddafi had maintained with the U.S. since 2003, including his friendly meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Tripoli in 2006, had never existed.
I repeat that if we had destroyed Kaddafi in 1988 in retaliation for the Lockerbie bombing that would have been just and right; but we did not do that; we let it pass, for 15 years, and ultimately we made peace with Kaddafi, as a part of which he paid substantial monetary damages to the families of the victims. On the political level, the Lockerbie bombing was a closed account, and no U.S. leader had the right in 2011 to bring it up again and say that we had to punish Kaddafi over it.
During the course of his career Kaddafi has been known as a whimsical tyrant. But in our war against Libya, it is not Kaddafi, but the U.S., which has behaved with the whimsicality of a tyrant.
John McCain is the worst man in America; but to the extent that we have gone along with this criminal war we all share in his guilt

UPDATE (Aug. 29): THE BIGGEST BULLY ON THE BLOCK. Huggins wrote: “That Khaddffi needed to be eliminated is not up to debate.” By who? God=USA? In he same vain the (pale) imitation of a Huggins over in the Arab world is saying, “That Bush needed to be eliminated is not up to debate.” And he’d have a solid point. Start seeing matters from both sides, and then you’ll come back to my position: quit invading these backward and benighted regions. What we’ve done—and are doing—to them is way worse than anything these people are capable of doing to us.