text:
The Purity Of The Neocon McCarthyism
You cannot really beat Ron Radosh, who refuses to call Chuck Hagel an anti-Semite but rather takes this route after a column by Pat Buchanan defending the possible defense secretary:
Why is a known anti-Semite like Buchanan endorsing Hagel? Does that tell us anything? What views which Buchanan thinks Hagel holds make Buchanan see him in such a favorable light? Is not this something we should be concerned about?
Labels: Chuck Hagel
Neocon Chickenhawks Are On High Alert!
Because someone is teaching about the Koran in Zanzibar. This despite millions in U.S. "foreign aid"to Zanzibarian schools. What an outrage that some Zanzabarians do not want American politicians to dictate what is taught to their children. We should nuke 'em (to anticipate Bill O'Reilly's next "talking point"). Source
Hagel Defenders Battle Neocon Opposition
The Washington Post wrote in a lead editorial, December 18, that President Obama should not nominate former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel as his Defense Secretary because the President "has available other possible nominees who are considerably closer to the mainstream and to the president's first-term policies." Daily Beast columnist Andrew Sullivan responded to the Post editorial in his best high dudgeon fashion: "Considerably closer to the mainstream" is not a good thing if the mainstream (including the Washington Post) led us to endless, pointless, fruitless occupations and wars that have deeply wounded American credibility and credit, as well as costing up to a hundred thousand innocent lives. We need less mainstream thought in Washington, not more. Read the entire article
Hagel Gets a Sensitivity Litmus Test From the Neocon Press
I've no idea how former Nebraska senator and decorated Vietnam War veteran Chuck Hagel became President Obama's preferred nominee for the job of Secretary of Defense. But when I learned about Hagel's prospects, I was delighted. A social conservative with a skeptical view of America's mission to convert the rest of the world to our current version of democracy, Hagel is someone I've long admired. Indeed I was hoping his campaign for president would take off four years ago. (Alas, it didn't.) For about a week after Hagel's name surfaced as a possibility for Secretary of Defense, I was also hoping that his nomination would sail through the Senate effortlessly. I no longer think that's the case. The Log Cabin Republicans yesterday took out a full-page New York Times advertisement to attack Hagel, who once voiced objections to having those who are openly gay serving in the military. He also objected to the muzzling of free speech in what looked like hate speech laws. His opponents have scolded him for being deficient in sensitivity, and in our politically correct democracy that may be the worst possible offense that any mortal could commit. Read the entire article
Posted by SARTRE at 12:05 PM 0 comments
Maddow slams Hagel, to neocon applause
The war against Chuck Hagel to be Defense Secretary continues. Rachel Maddow concludes this short segment, "Sorry, Charlie" on Chuck Hagel's homophobic comment of 14 years ago with the statement, "I do not know if President Obama wants to nominate Chuck Hagel or not. But if he is, so far it's not going all that well."
Filmmaker peels off labels in 'favorite neocon' doc
Behind the scenes, as the primary strategic planner of the bombing campaign for the first Gulf War, Luttwak was a regular in the war room. To the public, he was a ubiquitous presence on cable news and talk shows in the 1990s.
Although more international in his upbringing and perspective — he speaks at least eight languages — Luttwak, 70, is associated with fellow Jewish conservative power players Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen and Norman Podhoretz.
But Luttwak's opposition to the second Gulf War caused a break in those longtime friendships.
Hating on Hagel: What's behind the neo-con animosity
Chuck Hagel, the former Republican Nebraska senator, is coming under fire from neoconservatives after word leaked that President Obama may tap him to be next secretary of defense.
The neocon publication the Weekly Standard quoted a Senate aide who said, "Send us Hagel and we will make sure every American knows he is an anti-Semite."
The anti-Semitism allegations stem from 2008, when he said the "Jewish lobby" at times "intimidates a lot of people."
Dana Milbank: Neocons push against Chuck Hagel
After word leaked from the White House late last week that Chuck Hagel was in line to become the next secretary of defense, Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard manned the Patriot missile batteries to shoot down that trial balloon.
The neoconservative journal, no fan of the iconoclastic former Republican senator, published a smear under the headline: "Senate aide: 'Send us Hagel and we will make sure every American knows he is an anti-Semite.'" In the posting, this anonymous aide accused Hagel of "the worst kind of anti-Semitism there is." As evidence, the article included a quotation from Hagel referring to the "Jewish lobby."
Other right-wing publications and conservative Zionist groups inevitably joined the chorus, including a column by Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal saying Hagel's prejudice has an "especially ripe" odor.
Chuck Hagel and the Neocon Smear Machine
Reports that President Obama may nominate former Senator Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense haven't been well received at The Weekly Standard. In pre-emptively opposing the nomination, the neoconservative magazine is employing what you might call a two-tiered strategy: the low road and the lower road.
The low road is taken by the Standard's editor, Bill Kristol. He writes that Hagel is "anti-Israel," and then follows this assertion with a series of facts that don't corroborate it. Of course, as Kristol surely knows, "anti-Israel" is taken by some people as code for "anti-Semitic." As for those Weekly Standard readers who don't interpret the term that way -- well, that's what the lower road is for. A separate story written by a Standard staffer quotes a top Republican Senate aide saying flat out that Hagel is anti-Semitic.
Labels: Bill Kristol
J Street Pushes Back on Neocon Bid to "Swift Boat" Chuck Hagel Nomination as Defense Secretary
The Obama-hating neocon right is trying to Swift Boat the expected nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense by making up a fantasy scare story that Hagel, former U.S. senator from Nebraska, long-respected moderate and thoughtful voice on foreign policy, and decorated Vietnam combat veteran, is "anti-Israel." One would like to be able to dismiss this stuff as the ranting of people for whom no amount of warmongering can ever be too much. But such Swift Boat campaigns have worked in the past, regardless of the facts.
In times like these, don't you wish there were some Washington, D.C.-based Jewish-branded organization, which represented the pro-peace values and interests of the majority of Americans and the majority of American Jews, and which would push back against this kind of nonsense?
Labels: Zionism
Neocons Guided Petraeus on Afghan War
Even after the Iraq War disaster and Barack Obama's election in 2008, neoconservatives retained their influence over U.S. war policies in Afghanistan through their close ties to George W. Bush's national security holdovers, such as Gen. David Petraeus who partnered with neocon war hawks in escalating the Afghan War.
How tight Petraeus's relationship was with two neocons in particular, Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, was explored Wednesday in a Washington Post article by war correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran who described how Petraeus installed the husband-and-wife team in U.S. offices in Kabul, granted them top-secret clearances and let them berate military officers about war strategy.
Labels: David Petraeus
A Neocon Looks Back
In this month's issue of Commentary, John Agresto, a self-described neoconservative who served as an adviser to the Iraqi government just after the 2003 invasion, thoughtfully questions the idea that the United States should actively and forcefully spread democracy. He identifies the assumptions that lie beneath the idea:
We seemed convinced of two things: First, that democracy is the form of government under which all men are meant to live, and that democracy, unlike autocracy of any kind, is just in itself. Being just, it includes the very essence of ideas of freedom, equality, protection of rights, and toleration. Democracy is natural, democracy is how men achieve just political life and, most surely, democracy means freedom. Second, we constantly gave the impression that democratic government, being natural, is easy. Throw off the tyrant, overturn the ruling class, write a constitution, hold elections, and voila—Democracy.
Kristol Launches the Neo-Con Campaign to Stop Hagel
While Marsha Cohen and Ali Gharib have reviewed some of the reaction to Chuck Hagel's possible nomination as Secretary of Defense, Bill Kristol, co-founder/director of such august organizations as the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), the Project for the New American Century, and the Foreign Policy Initiative, appears to have officially launched what could be called the neo-conservative stop it. Writing on the Weekly Standard website (of course, he's the publication's editor in chief), Kristol quotes at length from "a fact sheet circulating widely on Capitol Hill" (whose provenance he fails to disclose) entitled "Introduction to the Reading of Hagel", an oh-so-clever reference to the German idealist philosopher of the early 19th century.
What is interesting, if not altogether surprising, is the degree to which the "Reading" quoted by Kristol is centered on the U.S. relationship with Israel — more evidence that Israel and its security and welfare stand at the very center of the neo-conservative worldview, a point that is studiously avoided by most of the Washington foreign-policy establishment, at least when its members are speaking or writing publicly. It doesn't matter what Hagel thinks about China, for example, or about the "pivot" to Asia, or about treatment of wounded vets, or missile defense, or about the appropriate size of the Navy or Marine Corps; it's all about Israel and the purported threats it faces.
Israel lobby rails against Pentagon favorite
Neo-conservatives and leaders of the powerful Israel lobby are mobilizing their forces in what looks like an all-out campaign to pre-empt the nomination by President Barack Obama of an outspoken former Republican senator and decorated Vietnam War hero to replace Leon Panetta as secretary of defense.
The campaign was launched last week after senior White House officials leaked word that Chuck Hagel, who also co-chairs the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), was
likely to get the nomination whenever, as expected any time, Panetta formally announces his retirement.
Neocons Go After Hagel With An Outdated Smear Campaign
These Neocon Zionists have totally lost it. Their smear campaigns are outdated and repulsive. They see everything through the prism of race and ideology rather than logic and facts.
If you criticize their policies and views they call you an anti-Semite as if this term has any relevance in the current U.S. foreign policy debate. These idiotic ideologues think that anti-Semites are hiding under every bed in the United States. They need a reality check.
Political conditions have changed. The climate of opinion about the U.S. role in the Middle East and its unconditional support for the extremist government in Israel has changed. But rather than face up to this reality neocons are acting out like little children and screaming "anti-Semite" at their critics. They can't persuade people why they're right so they're shutting down the debate by bullying people into silence. But this isn't working. They have lost the debate.
PNAC's neocon agenda continues unabated under Barack Obama
There is ZERO difference between Barack Obama & GW Bush.
The neocon agenda, PNAC published in 1997, called for regime change in 6 countries by force. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Lebanon & Jordan.
Iraq was done under GW Bush.
Libya was done by Obama (installing an Islamic Extremist government in the process.)
Syria in progress (the rebels in the Free Syrian Army also contain a high proportion of Islamic Extremists). The rebels are being openly armed by Saudi Arabia. Libyan weapons including shoulder held ground to air missile launchers have found their way into Syria.
Crisis in Syria: Obama vs. the Neocons
Just in case you were wondering if President Barack Obama is any different from, say, "President Mitt Romney" or some hypothetical "President Neocon," the answer is: Yes. Proof: Syria.
Just take a glimpse at the hysteria of the neoconservatives about what ought to be done in Syria.
To be sure, at the outset there's this disclaimer: since the start of the Syrian uprising, I've been extremely critical of Obama's actions. When the protests against President Assad were still relatively peaceful and only limited government repression was reported, and when moderate, establishment-leaning (and non-Islamist) opposition figures were beginning to gather steam, Obama jumped the gun and called for Assad's ouster. That was stupid enough. Since then, though, he's placated Assad's external enemies—among them Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who've backed Islamism from Tunisia to Afghanistan, and of course Israel—by encouraging, allowing and facilitating the supply of increasingly deadly weapons to the rebels. Some in the Obama administration seem enchanted by the idea that the fall of Assad will deal a huge blow to Iran, even though the United States ought to be fearful of a Sunni-Shiite war in the region that will spark renewed civil war in Iraq and Lebanon. And, of course, OP has seemed unwilling to truly engage Russia (and Iran) in search of a transition in Damascus.
Labels: Barack Obama, Syria
Betrayal of the Constitution: The Neocons Now Run the GOP
John F. McManus, President of The John Birch Society, presents a lecture on Neoconservativism to the Constitution Party 2012 National Convention.
Links to informative news articles of related interest by The New American magazine and other sources:
Neoconservatism's Deadly Influence
A look at the roots of neoconservatism and the reasons why this deadly movement must be rejected in favor of the true conservatism as envisioned by our Founders.
http://tinyurl.com/bqxoe7j
Argument Recycled for Syria Intervention
Neocon WMD Argument Recycled for Syria Intervention
The neocons pushed the criminal Ahmed Chalabi and his "source" – the Baghdad cab driver known as "curveball" – who stated that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. This fantasy and others were amplified by the New York Times (in particular, journalist Judith Miller) and the establishment media in order to cobble together a consensus for invasion. A similar effort is now underway in regard to Syria. Warnings about Syrian chemicals weapons coincide with the arrival of Patriot missiles on the Turkey-Syria border as the U.S. and NATO prepare for direct military intervention to unseat al-Assad and replace his government with one that mirrors the one installed in Libya: a factionalized (and thus controllable) government rife with al-Qaeda and fanatical Salafist terrorists. Read the entire article
Labels: InfoWars
The Two Faces Of Republican(neocon) Senator John McCain
Senator John McCain has one face for his own ultraconservative party and another face for Susan Rice and the Democrats. It is truly worse category political that one Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice(neoconservatives), could figure in a West Bank – Hamas war to roll back a legitimate democratic election without causing Senator John McCain's mind to go into "trouble" mode while another Rice(Susan) may have guessed wrong on something that American deaths were involved in.
McCain's party caused the deaths of 6,000 American soldiers, in an attack on Iraq, based on a neocon lie about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Senator McCain's mind wasn't troubled. Using America's resources to, without authorization of America's Congress, grab another country's oil and give it to commercial interests did not publically trouble Senator McCain's neocon face. Read the entire article
Labels: John McCain
Petraeus gave Afghanistan away to NeoCon Think Tanks
Amid the media frenzy over former CIA director David Petraeus' extramarital affair, we were struck by a quick reference in a Washington Post story about Petraeus' time running the war in Afghanistan:
Prominent members of conservative, Washington-based defense think tanks were given permanent office space at his headquarters and access to military aircraft to tour the battlefield. They provided advice to field commanders that sometimes conflicted with orders the commanders were getting from their immediate bosses.
Labels: Afghanistan
The (Neocon) Frontpage Attacks Grover Norquist as too pro-Muslim
The neocons are jumping ship on tax increases. Anything to save their precious Pentagon from sequestration I suppose:
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/norquist-loses-hi...
Key Neocons Went Directly to Banksters to Block Wikileaks Donations
Two "hard right" politicians, Joseph Lieberman and Peter King, went directly to the transnational credit card corporation MasterCard and arranged an extrajudicial financial blockade of Wikileaks, according to heavily redacted European Commission documents.
Although the exact nature of the deal between Lieberman, King and MasterCard are unknown, the two congressmen have actively worked against Wikileaks in the past.
King, who heads the House Homeland Security Committee, sought to classify Wikileaks as a terrorist organization and said the organization should be prosecuted for violating the Espionage act. Lieberman, the former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced the SHIELD Act (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination) in 2010. The legislation would have made it a federal crime to publish information "concerning the identity of a classified source or informant of an element of the intelligence community of the United States," or "concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government" if the publication opposed U.S. foreign policy.
Labels: WikiLeaks
Liberal Media: A Neocon Love Story
Is there anything more smug than those who "see the light" and use their new-found positioning to expose their positions of old? There's the believer turned atheist. There's the atheist turned believer. There's the liberal turned conservative and so forth. Of course this apostasy adds nothing to the arguments, but often gives the illusion of credibility to a strolling bookstore patron. So my critique of the liberal media shouldn't be of much concern.
The 'mainstream media' –Oh, how much I loathe that term which is thrown around endlessly– is made up of mostly liberals, and mostly of the Orthodox bend. It doesn't bother me–as I bear witness to no ideology. But I confess to a slight tingling sensation when reading an AP report and catch whiff of some liberal bias. I first think of my conservative comrades who must be irate, taking every preceding punctuation mark as a sign of the vast liberal conspiracy. I then think of the reporter and their liberal comrades who, in my estimation, are unaware of any bias in the piece. But most importantly, I think of my smug self and how much better I am than all other parties involved in what is supposed to be a boring press report.
Labels: Media, Neoconservatism
Kristol's Thanksgiving Meditation Makes Central Role of Israel in Neo-Conservatism Clear
For those, particularly in the timid or intimidated U.S. foreign-policy elite, who still pretend or somehow make themselves believe that Israel is not absolutely central to the neo-conservative worldview, I commend this week's Thanksgiving editorial by Bill Kristol, scion of one of the movement's two founding families, in The Weekly Standard, entitled "The West Fights Back". While it deserves to be read — and deconstructed — in full, here's the meat:
For what the West stands against is terror—whether the terror of modern secular totalitarianism or the terror of an older, and now revitalized, religious fanaticism. From the Great Terrors of Stalin and Hitler to the attacks on New York and Tel Aviv, and on Madrid, Bali, and Mumbai, terrorists of all stripes know who their enemies are. They attack across the world and kill Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike—but they grasp that the centers of resistance, the nations that stand most squarely in their path, are the United States and Israel.
And so these two very different nations—Christian and Jewish, large and small, new world and old (though the new world nation is older than its newly reborn old world counterpart)—find themselves allied. More than allied: They find themselves joined at the hip in a brotherhood that is more than a diplomatic or political or military alliance. Everyone senses that the ties are deeper than those of mere allies. Israelis know that if the United States fails, so shall Israel. Americans sense, in the words of Eric Hoffer, "as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us."
Desperate-to-win Neocon Trash Reconsider Rand Paul (in WaPo, no less!)
To say that Rand Paul is a controversial figure is a gross understatement, but critics who confuse the father, Ron, with the son and who write the son off as a fringe figure are missing something.
I don't agree with him that revenue shouldn't be part of a grand bargain or that defense (the only area of government that has already seen real cuts) should cough up more, but neither do I hear him trying to mount a filibuster. And I do think that if conservative hawks are going to preserve a responsible level of defense spending, they will need to put forth a sound process for reforming Pentagon appropriations, health care, etc.
More at the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/reconsid...
My comment: In 2016, desperate-to-win neocon trash will convince themselves that they can work with Rand Paul. This process has already begun. We should not let this taint Rand. Instead, we should enjoy the turnabout and look forward to (even relish) their inevitable disappointment once Rand becomes president.
Will the Liberty movement prevent RINO neocons from ever winning a Presidential race again?
It's no secret that the neocon faction of the GOP hates the people of the liberty movement. We're taking precinct by precinct with the message of peace, individual liberty, natural law, less government and greater freedom, based on the principals of the Constitution. Liberty is popular. The neocons platform of endless war and aggression, big government, behavior control, debt and the forced selection of globalist puppets for Presidential candidates meant that most liberty Republicans voted for everyone but Romney. State election results now reveal that millions voted GOP, but mysteriously left the Presidential box unchecked, as did I. Where do the dying neocon RINO's believe they will find new support to counter the 40+%, or so, of energetic, informed liberty-minded people that now occupy the GOP from the precincts, up? Source
British neocon blog exposed as Israeli mouthpiece
In the past 24 hours the UK-based neo-conservative blog Harry's Place has exposed itself as an outright propaganda outlet of the Israeli armed forces.
For months I have been posting comments on the blog, which in 2006 won the annual Islamophobia award given by the Islamic Human Rights Commission. Although my comments have been generally tolerated, I receive constant verbal abuse for my beliefs as a Muslim from commentators on the blog. Nonetheless, I have continued to comment, in the hope that I might be able to put across just a few points amid the constant tide of Islamophobia. Misguidedly, I thought I might be able to succeed in persuading a few commentators to view Muslims as human beings and not savages, as Harry's Place makes them out to be.
Neocon Bill Kristol Pimping His Marxist Agenda – Thinks You Need To Be Taxed More
No surprise from Bill Kristol. His dad was part of The New York Intellectuals, a group of leftist Trotskyites made up of mostly secular Jews who advocated the ideas of the secular Jewish idol, Karl Marx. Yes, culture matters, and American culture is being destroyed by the likes of these people whose culture is incompatible with America's.
This isn't an isolated instance for Kristol, as the left-wing Washington Post points out, he's advocated previously for the government taking more of your money.
Kristol is another charlatan pretending to be a "conservative" (whatever that means these days) and many of you continue to give him credence. Kristol needs to be sent back to the left where he and his family came from. He wouldn't know America's founding principles if they bit him on his circumcision.
Paula Broadwell: Did Neocon Honeypot Take Down Petraeus?
If we look at the background of Paula Broadwell, the biographer and alleged mistress of former CIA boss David Petraeus, we see connections to the neocon network.
Broadwell, née Krantz, is linked to Norwegian shipping magnate and former banker Jan Henrik Jebsen, who is in turn linked to key neocons, including Scooter Libby, Conrad Black, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and Michael Ledeen at the Hudson Institute, a premier neocon think-tank funded by the likes of the Scaife Foundations and General Electric, Monsanto, and other transnational corporations.
"Hudson operates inside Israel, where it pushes the far-rightist views of the most extreme elements in Israeli society: the settler movement, and the faction of Likud angling for war with Iran. It has also focused its attention on purging universities of academics who don't toe the right-wing ultra-nationalist Likudnik line," writes Justin Raimondo.
The Neocon Proscription
The totalitarians at the Weekly Standard have a plan for Americans who petition for secession: strip them of their citizenship and deport them. Say, you don't suppose their tax "obligations" would end at the same time, do you, and that they could be deported to, say, Singapore or New Zealand? Nah. The neocons would want all their assets seized.
Labels: Neoconservatism, Weekly Standard
Neocon Bill Kristol Admits Ron Paul Supporters Are the Future of The GOP
Behind Petraeus's Resignation
One person familiar with the Obama administration's thinking said President Obama was never close to Petraeus, who was viewed as a favorite of the neoconservatives and someone who had undercut a possible solution to Iran's nuclear program in 2011 by pushing a bizarre claim that Iranian intelligence was behind an assassination plot aimed at the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
As that case initially evolved, the White House and Justice Department were skeptical that the plot traced back to the Iranian government, but Petraeus pushed the alleged connection which was then made public in a high-profile indictment. The charges further strained relations with Iran, making a possible military confrontation more likely.
Labels: Conspiracy
Is a Neocon Purge Coming? Or a Last Laugh?
Moreover, what have the Neocons really lost? A close look at how Obama captured the "center" in the foreign policy debate shows that the supposed socialist peacenik (and his party) moved considerably to the right -- he did not drag the national consensus to the left. Drone strikes, kill lists, a war in Libya, a march toward war with Iran, the expansion of special forces operations throughout the world and a continued belief that spreading freedom to the world is a sacred American mission are all now considered the "mainstream" of U.S. foreign policy.
The neocons may have lost the political battle, but in the battle of ideas, things are (mostly) still going their way -- albeit not as fast as they might have otherwise gone had Romney won.
Romney and his Neocon Cabal have LOST! Let the Neocon Purge Begin!
Can we please let the neocon purge begin! We must go after Lindsey Grahm, Marco Rubio, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, etc. Show no mercy. Let's make the GOP realize it will never get our support again, till it becomes a party of freedom, liberty, and peace! Can we unite around this people?
Labels: Mitt Romney
Romney's Neocons
Alongside the very neocons he denies have any influence in RomneyWorld, Zakheim joined the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, a neocon front group organized in 1990 to support the first Gulf war: in 1998, CPSG issued a new clarion call for an invasion of Iraq addressed to President Bill, with the Usual Suspects (including Zakheim) as co-signers. Zakheim's career as an up-and-comer in neoconservative precincts continued with the formation of the Project for a New American Century – Bill Kristol's interventionist pressure group – on whose behalf he signed a series of open letters calling for war with Iraq. As recently as February, Zakheim continued his letter-signing spree, demanding – along with dozens of fellow neocon "camp followers" – that the President intervene in a vague-but-more-muscular fashion in Syria. In 2000, he co-authored a PNAC position paper on defense spending which called for a huge increase on the grounds that "the best defense is a good offense." He shared credit for this proposal with Wolfowitz, Cohen, John Bolton, and Rumsfeld advisors Devon Cross and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. As Undersecretary of State and Pentagon comptroller during the Bush administration – during which time the Pentagon lost track of $1 trillion — he was a key cog in a foreign policy shop dominated by his fellow neocons.
Aside from that, however, there are plenty of neocon "camp followers" – i.e. fellow travelers, as we McCarthyites used to say - serving the Romneyite cause. I won't bother compiling a comprehensive list, since othershave taken up that task. As Ari Berman notedin The Nation way back in May:
Labels: Justin Raimondo
Neoconservative ? Jewish Conservative
Make what you will of Jay Michaelson's latest in the Forward on conservative Jews and the religious right—after skimming, I found it a mix of sloppily recounted old news and half-baked analysis. Truth be told, I couldn't really get past the assertion at the top where, after describing the Old Right's exclusion of minorities, Michaelson wrote, "That began to change 50 years ago, whenneoconservatism—that is, Jewish conservatism—began to take hold." A minor quibble, but: No, no, no. Neoconservatism and Jewish conservatism are not the same thing. And if Michaelson's ire was directed at neocons, he's only helped inoculate them from criticisms by conflating their ideology with "Jewish conservatism."
The movement's been shaped by right-wing Jewish thinkers, no doubt, who sometimes invoke some aspect or another of Jewish identity as they see it. Neoconservatism, though, is not a Jewish political movement; rather it's an American one (with adherents in the U.K., Canada, Australia and elsewhere). Usually identified with using military might to pursue interests, the movement's otherwise no monolith: neocons disagree on things like utopian democracy promotion or Straussian machination. Many Jewish conservatives seem to be neocons, but not all—see: Dov Zakheim, a Jewish conservative from a hawkish-realist bent that, unlike contemporary neocons, understands the limits of U.S. power. Read the entire article
Neocon WaPo Editors Endorse Obama
The neoconned editorial board of the Washington Post, famous for always calling for more wars, endorse Barack Obama as president for another four years.
Obama has not yet delivered all the wars the WaPo editors want, but he has waged enough, he introduced "kill lists" and a "disposition matrix" to eliminate whoever is though to be a "terrorist" including all the bystanders and he has shown no consciences. The editors hope for more of that.
While Mitt Romney has lots of neocon foreign policy advisers he himself is not one and there are concerns that he might actually turn out to be a realist:
Iran War on the Ballot
However, the prospects for peace could head off in a very different direction if Romney wins. His neocon advisers are considered likely to hijack the Iran sanctions and use them to force "regime change" in Tehran, rather than for their current narrow purpose of compelling Iran to negotiate seriously on limiting its nuclear program.
By effectively shifting the application of the sanctions from nuclear negotiations to regime change, the neocons could put Iran and the United States on course for another war in the Middle East, much as the neocons did in steadily ratcheting up tensions with Iraq in 2002-2003 until a peaceful resolution became impossible.
Labels: War
Liar, Neocon,War-Criminal Colin Powell Endorses Obama – "I think we ought to keep on the path we are on"
The left is just beaming about this one. Nice huh? Nice when a lying war-mongering war-criminal endorses your Peace Prize "winning" president.
View the video
Yet Another Neocon call to arms by Playing Victim and Avoiding Responsibility
The neoconservative hawk and deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, has once again figured it all out. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979, and no US president since then, including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, has done anything but appease that evil regime for reasons that befuddle us all.
Hence, it is now of paramount importance to halt the current president's "outreach" to Iran because all previous attempts motivated by Washington's "excess of decency" have allowed "33 years of Iranian outrages" to go "unavenged" and "undeterred".
Labels: anti-war
"Moderate Mitt": Neocon Trojan Horse
Mitt Romney's peculiar sense of geography -- thinking Iran was some landlocked country that needed Syria as a "route to the sea" -- may have raised some eyebrows over Romney's lack of basic knowledge, but another part of the same answer, referring to the civil war in Syria as "an opportunity," should have raised more alarm.
Though Romney's goal in Monday's foreign policy debate was to downplay his warlike neoconservative stands, his reference to the Syrian chaos as "an opportunity" suggests that his more moderate rhetoric is just another ploy to deceive voters and win the election, not a real abandonment of neocon strategies.
Did the 'Neocon Puppet Masters' Get Outflanked by Romney?
I'm on the road, with only intermittent access to reader e-mail, so sorry for the delay, but I've gotten a bunch of questions (and assertions!) from Goldbloggers who are wondering if the neocons were somehow outflanked by Romney in last night's foreign policy debate. After all, Romney spent most of his time agreeing with Obama; he made no effort to suggest that Afghanistan may become a more complicated, and dangerous, place, once American troops leave in 2014; he took no stand in favor of greater intervention in Syria, and so on. One reader wrote, 'It seems like the neocons have lost the battle for the soul of Romney. He said nothing about having a desire for state-building, or about the importance of intervention in humanitarian crises, etc. So what happened?"
What happened, I think, is that last night's debate wasn't a debate. If we had been watching an actual debate about America's role in the world, I'm sure Romney would have had a lot to say about the shortcomings of Obama's foreign policy. But this wasn't a debate: It was a moment for Obama to show himself to be all commander-in-chiefy, and for Romney to show himself to be sane, responsible and uninterested in foreign entanglements (Iran, of course, being the bipartisan exception). My assumption is that the so-called neoconservatives close to Romney didn't lose an argument about how to approach these issues, my assumption is that these people read polls, too, and know that Americans profess to be tired of the Middle East, and that therefore, it is best, two weeks before the election, not to recommend to their candidate that he push for greater involvement in the Syrian crisis, for example. Neocons, like everyone else in politics, are interested in winning.
The Neocons' Long Game
Romney's new foreign policy tack was evident on the very first question of the night, in which moderator Bob Schieffer served the issue of the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks to him on a plate. Romney chose not to re-boot his fumbled criticism of the Obama administration from the last debate, something his hawkish surrogates and the GOP's Fox News annex have been pushing hard for over the last week. Rather, Romney chose to draw back to a broader view of a region in chaos. His Obama-esque declaration that "We can't kill our way out of this mess," while surely appealing to voters tired of war in the Middle East, was sure to disappoint the neocons, for whom there are few problems in the world that can't be solved through the application of American ordnance.
It wouldn't be the last time Romney echoed the president last night. With regard to the prospect of U.S. military interventions, Romney insisted that "We don't want another Iraq," even though neocons still proclaim the Iraq war a success (a commanding majority of Americans disagrees). On Iraq itself, though he criticized the failure to achieve a new status of forces agreement between the U.S. and Iraqi governments, Romney recoiled from President Obama's suggestion that he didn't support withdrawing American troops. On Syria and Afghanistan, Romney took positions 180 degree opposite what his neoconservative supporters have been advocating, assuring viewers that "I don't want to have our military involved" in the former, and agreeing with President Obama's withdrawal timetable for the latter.
The neocons' war against Obama
The neoconservatives who rebuffed the Republican establishment's warnings about the perils of war in Iraq have now opened another front -against President Barack Obama.
The neocons, unlike the muscular Democrats who led the U.S. into the Vietnam War-including Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk- are not reflecting about what went wrong in Iraq. Nor are they dodging the public spotlight.
Open War Policy Revealed by Romney's NeoCon Advisers
On October 1, 2012, Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney outlined his own version of imperialist American foreign policy before the Virginia Military Institute. What Romney described was, in its goals, no different than that of any other President since JFK.
As was made clear in his speech, the presentation of the mutated Manifest Destiny to be ushered in by Romney would be significantly more open than the "leading from behind" destabilization and coalition-based Obama treachery, as the candidate has clearly stated this on more than one occasion. Read the entire article
Neocon chickenhawk war mongers want to get their wars on again
The attempts by the Neocon chickenhawks in the right-wing noise machine, e.g., Charles Krauthammer, as well as by super-chicken Vietnam draft dodger Willard "Mittens" Romney Willard 'Mittens' Romney had better things to do during the Vietnam War and his Neocon chickenhawk boy wonder Paul Ryan, to conflate the attack on the consulate office in Benghazi, Libya as "what we see in front of us is the absolute unraveling of the Obama administration's foreign policy" as Ryan did yesterday, is complete and utter nonsense.
The Neocon chickenhawks in the right-wing noise machine who have no military or foreign policy experience, and super-chicken Vietnam draft dodger Willard "Mittens" Romney and his Neocon chickenhawk boy wonder Paul Ryan, are in no position to preach to anyone about foreign policy. This is the least experienced, least qualified nominees of a political party in modern American history.
Romney Should Be a Neocon, but Hide It in Debate
First, the good news: Even the editorial board of the Journal seems to understand that speaking openly about their plans for more wars would be bad politics. Accordingly, the Journal doesn't "expect Mr. Romney to offer an explicit defense of the Bush Doctrine" and they worry about the implications of Obama charging Romney with wanting to get the United States into a third (and fourth) Middle East war. This is in keeping with the previous assurance of Bret Stephens (pictured above) that Romney wouldn't start any new wars. Romney should deny wanting any more wars while doing a number of things that make them inevitable.
Second, the bad news: Instead of suggesting that Romney actually trim the neocon sail a bit, the article suggests Romney continue his strategy of wheeling out a fog machine and saying "leadership" and "strength" instead of discussing details. The American people who tune in Monday night deserve to hear some specifics. Not the level of specifics that would satisfy the people who think about international politics for a living, sure, but some specifics. Instead, while suggesting that Romney "offer[] a serious critique of Mr. Obama's foreign policy that doesn't descend to clichés," the article suggests clichés but not seriousness.
Why Tehran Wants a Neocon
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivered his most high-profile foreign-policy speech to date at the Virginia Military Institute last week. As expected, politicians and pundits have interpreted his remarks to fit their respective election-year narratives. For Republicans, the former Massachusetts governor articulated a vision that will reclaim "the mantle of leadership" and guide America into a future of reinvigorated global preeminence. For Democrats, the Republican nominee at best plagiarized President Obama's foreign-policy prerogatives and at worst reaffirmed the fears of many who equate Romney with the disastrous policies of George W. Bush.
But a foreign-policy speech also stirs interest abroad. Perhaps no foreign government paid more attention to Romney's remarks than the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Republican presidential hopeful did not disappoint: "I will put the leaders of Iran on notice that the United States and our friends and allies will prevent them from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability." After hearing six consecutive American presidents talk tough on Iran, decision makers in Tehran feel confident in their ability to distinguish rhetoric from reality. And what they (mis)perceive may surprise you.
Labels: Iran
Why I Do This: From Neocon Foreign Policy to Old Right
What interests me is more principled than the presidential horse race yet still more tangible than mere political theory. I came to the Ron Paul movement as a traditionalist conservative who had been a staunch supporter of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaigns in 1996 and 2000. As a conservative, I believe in the 2nd Amendment. I believe in the 10th amendment. I'm a strict constitutionalist. I am pro-life. I want to abolish the IRS. I want to end the Fed.
But the issue that animates me the most is where I believe too many of my fellow conservatives think in liberal terms without even realizing it: foreign policy. A primary goal in my political life's work has always been to steer conservatives and the Republican Party away from neoconservatism, a progressive and dangerous ideology, and back toward a more traditionalist conservative foreign policy.
Labels: Jack Hunter
John Heilemann: Romney Surrounded By Pro-Interventionist Advisers 'In The Neocon Camp'
Clinging tightly to a studied vagueness when pressed for unpopular specifics, Mr. Romney has put forward a budget framework that would not eviscerate Medicare and Social Security, as is commonly believed, but would slash everything else that's not defense.
President Obama should use Tuesday night's debate to press Mr. Romney to defend — or even just explain — these proposed cuts, which would be far more draconian than those advanced by his running mate, Paul D. Ryan. Mr. Ryan is widely viewed as the real fiscal hawk, but in key areas, his views on spending levels are actually closer to Mr. Obama's than to Mr. Romney's.
Panelist John Heilemann later argued that — as "cheap" as he conceded this talking point may be — Romney has surrounded himself with people who are "in the neocon camp" when it comes to foreign policy and defense and are, thus, rather "pro-intervention" when compared to other pockets within the GOP. He also noted that Romney has difficulty presenting a contrast against Obama on foreign policy because there really aren't too many differences between the two — except, perhaps, when it comes to intervention in Syria.
Why Is Failed Iraq Neocon Dan Senor Dictating Romney's Foreign Policy?
The explanation for Mitt Romney's Middle East madness is hiding in plain sight.
Dan Senor has become Romney's "lead" advisor on the region, matching one blank slate with another. Senor's only real foreign policy experience is his 15 months in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as "senior adviser" to Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the occupation government installed by the Bush White House. It's hard to be senior at the age of 31—which is what the wiry former congressional staffer and Harvard Business School grad was when he moved into his 68-degree cooled office at the gilded Republican Palace in Baghdad in 2003—or even at the age of 41, which is precisely what Senor will be on Election Day this year. Senor, who wore a Bush-Cheney t-shirt at a Thanksgiving road race in Iraq, has been whispering in Mitt's ear since 2006, when he trekked to Boston to meet the then-unannounced candidate.
Beyond Senor's stint at what even Republicans brand the catastrophic CPA, he has also written about the Middle East, though never anything beyond bland op-eds, sometimes in defense of Iraq policies. He and his brother-in-law Saul Singer, an Israeli journalist, published a 2009 best seller called Start-up Nation, celebrated by Romney and Senor's friend Bibi Netanyahu. The public relations firm that promoted it, Marshall, Nappi & Schultz, also handled The War Over Iraq: America's Mission and Saddam's Tyranny, which Senor's mentor Bill Kristol wrote with Lawrence F. Kaplan in 2003 (timed to appear at the same moment as "shock and awe"); as well as books by Islamophobes like David Horowitz and Nonie Darwish, and even Romney's former Bain partner Ed Conard.
Labels: Foreign Policy
The Creaming of Paul Ryan
In the first exchange of the presidential election season over foreign policy issues, the neocons — in the person of GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan — got creamed. That's the good news.
The bad news is that Ryan got creamed by Joe Biden — who serves in an administration that is pursuing each and every one of the neocons' policy goals, and doing a much better job of it than George W. Bush ever did.
Ah, but these days we must take our pleasures where we find them, and who can deny it was fun watching the amateurish Ryan stammer as he tried to remember the talking points the neocons had drilled him on. One fully expected his ears to start fluttering and helicopter him outta there. Martha Raddatz, a respected reporter who specializes in the Middle East, moderated and her first question was about Libya: wasn't this a "massive intelligence failure" on the part of the administration?
Labels: Paul Ryan
Rand Paul Backs Away from Romney's Neocon Foreign Policy
"Romney chose to criticize President Obama for seeking to cut a bloated Defense Department and for not being bellicose enough in the Middle East, two assertions with which I cannot agree," Paul said. "In North Africa and the Middle East, our problem has not been a lack of intervention. In the past 10 years we have fought two full wars there, and bombed or sent troops into several others."
Paul characterized the war with Libya last year as illegal and said the president must consult Congress prior to any military action. "No president, Republican or Democrat, has the unilateral power to take our nation to war without the authority of the legislature," he said.
A Nest of Warmongers, Neoconservatives and Israeli-firsters
With Mitt Romney's comments on Libya drawing attention today–specifically, his criticism of Obama–it's worth examining whom Romney listens to on such matters.
Dan Senor is one of Romney's closest advisers on foreign policy. Since Paul Ryan has been selected as the GOP's vice presidential candidate, Senor has been traveling with Ryan–but today, he left the trail because of the "foreign policy developments" and is in Boston and NYC.
Neocon Redux
President Barack Obama's sin at the first Presidential debate was one of misunderstanding the rules. The rules, that is, of theatre. American presidential politics has for at least two generations been a matter of the forced smile, the folksy refrain, the false sense of interest in the people. But when he decided to treat Romney as a sparring partner at a school debate, or at the very least a village idiot's gathering, he came across as "detached". The hideous reaction to the President's disinterested behaviour has spawned a host of impromptu advisors seeking a retainer with the President. Please Mr. President, we are here to help you deceive.
The age of ramped up deception is certainly upon us. Mitt Romney chose to tell his audience at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington that he is keen on aping an old neoconservative platform. He chose, with a certain degree of ill-informed guise, the words of George Marshall. "The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it." This is hardly believable, but then again, this is Mitt, a person so malleable as a gummy character he is hard to pin down.
Mitt Romney and the Neocon Mind Pre-911
Mitt Romney gave a foreign policy speech on 8/12/2012 that was right out of the neocon playbook. The great neocon talking points, especially, "American Exceptionalism", were used. American Exceptionalism is a code phrase for American Dominance or American Imperialism.
Niall Ferguson has said that America is Imperialistic, and should show it off, flaunt it. He supports the neocons and American dominance in the middle east.
The Neocons' Waiting Game
Many realities of foreign policy do not lend themselves to clear, coherent positions in an election campaign. The reasons for this go beyond the fact that in most election years far more votes are to be won or lost on domestic issues than foreign ones, even during better economic times than we have now.
One of the reasons is the reactive nature of much of foreign policy, in which presidents are forced to spend more of their attention dealing with problems the world throws at them than on imposing their own program on the world, however much they may have hoped to do such imposing when coming into office.
Neocon versus Realist: Romney Punts At VMI
So where did Mitt Romney come down in his big speech, "The Mantle of Leadership," at the Virginia Military Academy, on the side of the neocons or realists? He didn't. Instead of choosing between neocons and realists, he chose not to choose. His speech was a blend of great power chest-thumping that artificially inflated the differences between him and Obama, on the one hand, and cautious prescriptions that did little to suggest the course he would pursue as president, on the other. Rhetorically, the speech was pure neocon. Romney talked about returning to the great traditions of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan. He talked about spreading freedom abroad. And he painted a Manichean portrait of the Middle East, suggesting that Obama has failed to appreciate the urge for freedom and liberty in the region, while foolishly distancing Washington from Jerusalem. Romney sought, above all, to suggest that Obama is a new president Carter, that once again America is under siege abroad. According to Romney, Read the entire article
Why Target Iran?
The fabled journey of the neocons from far left to far right has been celebrated in story and song, and there is no need to go into all the gory details here: we've heard it all before — in a PBS documentary, "Arguing the World," and in numerous memoirs by the participants. Yet this famous hegira didn't take them anywhere: it was a journey standing still. For they had simply transferred their allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States without changing the basic underlying assumptions of their radical universalism: instead of a world communist revolution as advocated by Leon Trotsky and his followers, these disillusioned Marxists now dreamed of a "global democratic revolution," as one of George W. Bush's speechwriters put it in a presidential oration celebrating the anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy.
Smirking Neocon Establishment Propagandist . . .
. . . Ben Stein said on the "Sunday Morning" show this morning that "America won" the "debate" between Romney and Obama because there essentially was no debate. They both agree on most everything, he said, and most importantly, neither wants to "change any of our social institutions." They are two peas in a pod who promise to do nothing more than expand the welfare/warfare/fascist police state that America has become. Stein ended his smarmy bloviation with a big fake smile. (This is the same Ben Stein who was featured for years on the FOX News Channel as an expert stock picker who admitted that he doesn't personally own any stocks himself, only mutual funds).
Norman Finkelstein and Neocon Denial
While a number of mainstream media pundits have acknowledged that the neocons played a major role in bringing about the war on Iraq (though usually without mentioning their connection to Israel or their predominantly Jewish ethnicity), there are stringent critics of Israel and US policy in the Middle East who totally reject this interpretation. One of the most notable of these is Norman Finkelstein, who expounds on his view in his latest book, "Knowing Too Much." Because I must limit the length of this article, my argumentation must be kept to a minimum. My book, "The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel," provides a detailed and extensively-documented account of all the issues covered here. It should be added that Finkelstein has labeled my book as conspiratorial—which is just the opposite of what the word "transparent" in the title conveys and what is explicitly stated in the book—and he denies that there is any evidence for my contentions. It does not appear that Finkelstein has actually read my book; he probably considers it not worth reading.
Linda Gasparello: Neocons grooming the next generation
Where have all the Bush-Cheney-era foreign policy hawks, known as the neocons, gone?
Gone to a new think tank in Washington, D.C., or at least a good many of them. The Foreign Policy Initiative is a neocon nest.
It's where Eric Edelman, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Dan Senor — who are all directors — and others, think, speak, write and hatch new neocons.
If you've puzzled over who advised Mitt Romney, a foreign policy fledgling, to declare Russia America's "No. 1 geopolitical foe" during the campaign and to assure in his speech at the Republican National Convention that, "Under my administration, our friends will see more loyalty, and Mr. Putin will see a little less flexibility and more backbone," look no further than FPI.
Neocon Uber-Hawks Want War on Iran
In January 2009, Obama succeeded Bush. Neocons stuck around. They infest Washington. War gets their juices flowing. They urge it on Syria and Iran.
Potential catastrophic consequences don't matter. Uber-hawks don't worry about them. It's someone else's problem.
Romney is America's Netanyahu. Both talks about red lines, deadlines, and timelines. Claims about an existential Iranian threat don't wash. Both know it. They'll say anything further their imperial aims. More on Romney below.
Neocons Return, Set Sights on Romney
The Foreign Policy Initiative on Dupont Circle is a neocon nest. It's where Amb. Eric Edelman, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Dan Senor — who are all directors — and others, think, speak, write and hatch new neocons.
If you've puzzled over who advised Mitt Romney, a foreign policy fledgling, to declare Russia America's "No. 1 geopolitical foe"during the campaign and to assure in his speech at the Republican National Convention, "Under my administration, our friends will see more loyalty, and Mr. Putin will see a little less flexibility and more backbone," look no further than FPI.
NeoCon At Globalist Think-Tank Says Use False Flag to Start War With Iran
Evidence of the power of WINES was manifested in the bill HR 4133 which allocates US resources to Israel at the expense of the taxpayer. This legislation marks Obama's unwavering commitment to Israel as a puppet of the global Elite.
Mainstream media is following the Zionist script to the letter in regard to the false claims of Iranian endeavors to build nuclear weapons. Now there are reports that Iran is capable of launching a pre-emptive strike should Israel attack, as they are threatening to do.
FBI Investigating NeoCon Lobbyist For False Flag Terrorism Threats
Pete goes over the events surrounding the controversial call for a false flag by The Washington Institutes Patrick Clawson and calls the FBI field office in Washington DC to ask that the matter be investigated. Officer 1642 of the FBI promised to look into the matter.
Mr. Clawson said last Friday in a meeting that included the Atlantic Counsel he was not advocating anything but that getting the President to move on the matter of going to war with Iran would be hard and that a iranian submarine could just go down one day and never come back up … He then asked, "who would know?" Clawson used historical false flag attacks as examples such as Pearl Harbor and the Gulf of Tonkin to show how false flags are effective in a Presidents call to war. In the second hour Pete talks about the misinformation surrounding the murder and Rape of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the similarities to the rape and murder of Maummar Gaddafi. People in the region are calling the incident payback for the death of Gaddafi and that it had nothing to do with The film Innocense of Muslims.
Neo-cons of today: premium ignorance
Romney's sycophantic support for Netanyahu and his reliance on neo-conservative retreads from the Bush-Cheney administration has all but erased any standing the Republican nominee has in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Romney's hitching of his Middle East foreign policy wagon to Netanyahu received a severe blow when Netanyahu delivered a school teacher-like lecture to the UN General Assembly on setting a "red line" representing 90 percent uranium enrichment for Iran's nuclear program. Read the entire article
The neocons inside Mitt Romney's head
Romney and Paul Ryan haven't spent time thinking and speaking a lot about foreign policy. They have simply taken the path of least resistance and parroted the views of their neocon advisers. They talk all tough at Iran and Syria and label the president a weak apologist and buildup bogymen and rant about how America must dictate events in the Middle East. That's not a doctrine; it's a treacherous neocon echo. It's amazing that many of the neocons who were involved in the Iraq debacle are back riding high. (Foreign Policy magazine reports that 17 of Romney's 24 special advisers on foreign policy were in W.'s administration.) But no one has come along to replace them, or reinstitute some kind of Poppy Bush-James Baker-Brent Scowcroft realpolitik internationalism. The neocons are still where the GOP intellectual energy is, and they're still in the blogosphere hammering candidates who stray from their hawkish orthodoxy. Democrats have claimed the international centre once inhabited by Bush senior and his advisers. Read the entire article
Maureen Dowd / Outsourced foreign policy: Romney leaves it to bellicose neocons and right-wing think tanks
It's amazing that many of the neocons who were involved in the Iraq debacle are back riding high. (Foreign Policy magazine reports that 17 of Mr. Romney's 24 special advisers on foreign policy were in W.'s administration.) But no one has come along to replace them or reinstitute some kind of Poppy Bush/James Baker/Brent Scowcroft realpolitik internationalism.
The neocons are still where the GOP intellectual energy is, and they're still in the blogosphere hammering candidates who stray from their hawkish orthodoxy. Democrats have claimed the international center once inhabited by Bush senior and his advisers.
Patrick Clawson, a member of the globalist-controlled and neo-con influenced think-tan Washington Institute for Near East Studies,(WINES) recently spoke about the use of false flags as a necessary way for instigating a war with Iran.
Clawson remarked that Obama has had a difficult time "getting the US into a war with Iran" and advocated the use of conventional means (i.e. using a false flag to provoke a military strike).
Romney Foreign Policy Shows Strong CFR, Neo-con Influence
William Kristol deserves special mention, due to his background in one America's premier neoconservative families. He is founder of The Weekly Standard, which has been described as a "redoubt of neoconservatism" and as "the neo-con bible."
Kristol's father, the late Irving Kristol, served as the managing editor of Commentary magazine and has been described as the "godfather of neoconservatism." (More about neoconservatism in a moment.)
A look at Reuel Marc Gerecht and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the other organization mentioned by the Times, shows a similar neoconservative bent. Gerecht is a former director of the Project for the New American Century's Middle East Initiative and a former resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The Project for the New American Century was co-founded by the previously mentioned neo-con William Kristol and CFR member Robert Kagan. As for the American Enterprise Institute, a Wikipedia article notes:
The Neocon Behind the Charge that Libertarians are Hedonists
As an addendum to my post on Jeremy Egerer and specifically his claim that libertarians "seek civilization in earthly pleasure," i.e. libertarians are hedonists, Murray Rothbard points out that the charge was initially made by the original neocon, Irving Kristol. Rothbard, long ago, demolished this myth:
This myth has recently been propounded by Irving Kristol, who identifies the libertarian ethic with the "hedonistic" and asserts that libertarians "worship the Sears Roebuck catalogue and all the 'alternative life styles' that capitalist affluence permits the individual to choose from."
Neocons Gather To Fete Iraq War Godfather
At Bernard Lewis's neocon gala, the talk was of war, peace, democracy and Muslims.
But in a room full of onetime advocates of the second Iraq War, no one much wanted to talk about a possible military strike on Iran.
Paul Wolfowitz, the Bush administration Pentagon official who pushed hard for an invasion of Iraq in 2003, chatted during cocktail hour with Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter whose discredited reports on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq whipped up support for that invasion. At dinner, Henry Kissinger and billionaire conservative donor Bruce Kovner shared a table.
An Israeli consul general and the publisher of the New York Daily News were there, as was Itamar Rabinovich, the former Israeli ambassador and prominent academic. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a letter of congratulations.
The Neo-Con Islamist Hokey Pokey
At the same time, ex-liberals like Irving Kristol turn a growing disenchantment with LBJ's Great Society into a new kind of conservatism, one obsessed not with individual liberty, but collective liberty centered around a mythical enemy (Islam!) (Liberals!) (Reds!).
The film hinges on comparing the two movements as ideologies rooted in the same ideals: a staunch opposition to liberalism, the existence of a shadowy and existential threat to "our" way of life, and the centrality of society's moral decay. The film is a re-dux of one of my favorite innovations in political philosophy, the Horseshoe Theory. It says that the ends of the political spectrum sit not farthest apart, but closest together—much like the ends of a horseshoe. The paradigm places moderates farthest from each other and extremists closest together.
More Evidence Neocon Network Behind "Innocence of Muslims" Video
In an article breaking down the linkages behind the "Innocence of Muslims" video, Justin Raimondo points to a chart on The Flower Throwers website:
Drilling down the chart, we see the same old cast of neocon characters who have worked tirelessly to keep the anti-Muslim agenda front and center and thus feed the war on terror against Israel's enemies. Principle among these are David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes and Aubrey Chernick.
Chernick is the lesser known of the three. He runs a Los Angeles-area software company named the National Center for Crisis and Continuity Coordination and is a former trustee of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank for Democrat neocons (disgraced sexting Democrat Anthony Weiner once described this faction as "the ZOA [Zionist Organization of America] wing of the Democratic Party"). WINEP is a project of AIPAC, the Israeli pressure group. Chernick's fortune is dedicated to funding the Anti-Defamation League and CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), a group that counters negative reporting on Israel.
Daniel Pipes is the well-known Islamophobe who founded the Middle East Forum (MEF), an organization that attacks academics for criticizing Israel. MEF specializes in drawing attention to the so-called "Islamic network" in the United States. "Quietly, lawfully, peacefully, Islamists do their work throughout the West to impose aspects of Islamic law, win special privileges for themselves, shut down criticism of Islam, create Muslim-only zones, and deprive women and non-Muslims of their full civil rights," Pipes wrote in 2008. He has supported many Likudnik and neocon initiatives and organizations, including the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the Israel-based advocacy outfit Jerusalem Summit, and the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon. Pipes was also a scholar at WINEP.
David Horowitz, a former radical Marxist, is a key member of the neocon intelligentsia. As Infowars.com has noted, Horowitz has taken money from CIA operative Richard Mellon Scaife. The David Horowitz Freedom Center is affiliated with Jihad Watch, the virulent anti-Muslim website run by anti-Islam blogger and author Robert Spencer, who along with Islamophobe Pam Geller (who founded Stop Islamization of America) plays an instrumental role in the "Innocence of Muslims" operation. Horowitz has described Islam as a religion of "hate, violence and racism." Both Horowitz and Pipes have donated money to Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-Muslim politician.
The more we learn about the "Innocence of Muslims" video, the more obvious it becomes that it was devised by a group of Islamophobes and hardcore radical Israel supporters to further enflame tensions in the Middle East.
The neocon Clash of Civilizations narrative requires an ultimate conflict between the West and Islam. We are now witnessing neocons in both establishment parties and Likudnik fanatics pushing religious and ethnic hatred and conflict to its zenith as the United States and Israel prepare a coordinated attack on Iran that will undoubtedly result in a world war with cataclysmic proportion.
Anti-Muslim Film Setting The Stage For October Surprise?
Mitt Romney speaks like a neocon, but is he one?
Mitt Romney has preferred to keep to economic issues in his presidential campaign, but when he has turned to foreign policy he's revealed the influence of the muscular, with-us-or-against-us neoconservative thinking that waxed strong in the George W. Bush administration.
That was true last week when Governor Romney excoriated President Obama for what he said was a weak and apologetic response to anti-American violence in the Middle East. It came through again Tuesday in the video that surfaced with Romney telling donors in Florida that the Palestinians "have no interest whatsoever" in peace.
"We're seeing in Romney's pronouncements the strain of the Vulcans, the extremist form of vulcanism together with the evangelical position on Israel," says Geoffrey Kemp, a foreign policy expert at Washington's Center for the National Interest, a realist think tank. "It's very,
The Mystery of Neocon Influence
The success the war-promoters had, with an energetic sales campaign amid a post-9/11 political milieu, in getting many Republicans and Democrats alike to go along with their project has lessened the inclination to call the neocons fully to account. Those who went along at the time do not want to be reminded of that.
There has consequently been a blurring of the distinction between the promoters and mere followers. When Paul Wolfowitz was on Fox News the other day to join in criticizing the Obama administration for its "apologetic posture" toward the Muslim world, the host introduced him as "one of the people who believed that we needed to go to war with Iraq," as if he had been just another congressman who voted for the war resolution.
Chickenhawks Come Home To Roost — in BOTH Parties
Lew, apparently the neocons are digging up their old playbook from the early Bush years: everyone who opposes them is an anti-Semite.
Once again, we have the wonderful Trotskyite dialectic — what Orwell called "DoubleThink": what was bad for Maureen Dowd to say (neocons have commandeered the Romney Campaign) is proclaimed with proud braggadocio when uttered by a neocon (Obama is a "born-again neocon," boasts Kid Kristol).
How can this be? Here is the key: Dr. Paul correctly identified the neocon principle of "noble lying" almost ten years ago — long before the nation had to suffer the disastrous consequences. "Truth will make you free," said Solzhenitsyn (NOT a neocon!), but falsehood always brings violence in its wake."
The forbidden question: Why can neocons celebrate their triumphs freely, while critics who point them out are vilified as bigots?
And it's curious, isn't it, that those who pulled the trigger on Dowd for telling the truth didn't brag about it instead? Here enters DoubleThink: They did, they do, and they will. After all, two "born-again neocons" are the major party "choices" in the coming presidential elections.
The neocons can't lose. Their dirty little secret? DoubleThink dialectic allows them to weep, even as they gloat.
Labels: Washington
Romney reveals neocon tendencies
What is clear is that this Republican assault was not a spur of the moment off-hand verbal gaffe. Rather, it was a coordinated attack that reflected a consistent mindset shaped by the neoconservative criticism of Obama's Middle East diplomacy and, I might add, diplomacy in general.
The world, as seen by the neocons, is one of black and white absolutes. We, Americans, are good. Inherently good. And our goodness is measured not by what we do, but who we are. Our goodness is ordained to confront evil and is destined to triumph. But our victory is assured only if we remain resolute, because our enemies take advantage of any display of weakness. For that reason, neocons maintain that we do not negotiate with evil - hence diplomacy is eschewed in favour of military strength and "resolve".
Labels: Libya
Mock on, Maureen Dowd: Why She's Right About the Neo-cons
In the twilight years of the New Left, revolutionaries would regularly parse their adversaries' statements for indications of "objective racism." Even the slightest irregularity—calling someone's thoughts "dark"—could unleash a volley of accusations. I was reminded of this in reading the responses to Maureen Dowd's recent column, "Neocons Slither Back," about the neo-conservative influence on Mitt Romney's foreign policy.
A host of people have accused Dowd of anti-Semitism for using a term "puppet master" to describe Romney's advisor Dan Senor and for implying that Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan are "foreign policy neophytes" who have received their current ideas about the world from neo-conservative intellectuals who previously prodded "an insecure and uninformed president into invading Iraq."
Is Mitt Romney a neocon?
In the wake of renewed Mideast violence, neocons — still tarred by their hawkishness during the Bush years — are embracing Mitt as one of their own.
Mitt Romney has taken a lot of heat, even from fellow Republicans, for his swift attacks on President Obama's handling of last week's first embassy protests in Egypt. One group, however, enthusiastically rallied to his side: Neoconservatives — the foreign-policy hawks who support using military might to spread democracy and defend U.S. interests abroad — argue that Romney was right to accuse Obama of projecting weakness. Of course, such support can be a mixed blessing for the GOP presidential candidate. Neocons like William Kristol and Liz Cheney, whose ideology defined George W. Bush's foreign policy, bring a lot of baggage with them, thanks largely to the problematic way the Iraq war unfolded. So Romney is left facing a delicate balancing act: He won't want to distance himself from a key GOP constituency, but likely wants to avoid the unpopular "neocon" label. So: Is Romney essentially a neocon, or isn't he?
Yes. Neocons have Romney in their clutches and are making him one of their own: After 9/11, neocons "captured one Republican president who was naïve about the world," says Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. They're at it again. Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, have no experience abroad, but their "disdain for weakness and diplomacy" and enthusiasm for bombing Israel's neighbors (look out, Iran) sound "ominously familiar." Why? When their lips move, you're hearing the voice of their neocon puppet masters.
"Neocons slither back"
Neocons Engineering October Surprise?
Appearing on the Alex Jones Show on Sunday, Webster Tarpley said the video is part of an ambitious international intelligence operation aimed at creating an October Surprise designed to install Mitt Romney and his coterie of Bush-era neocons in the White House.
"The pro-Israeli neocons of the Bush-Cheney era have attached themselves to Romney as their main hope of getting back into power," Tarpley wrote for Infowars.com on Sunday. He attributed the video "trailer" to "a well-known Islamophobic network reputedly inspired by US intelligence," a network that includes "Pamela Geller, a notorious professional Islamophobe."
Why are the Neocons Still Around?
Recent attempts by adversaries of President Obama to blame him for yet another undesirable circumstance—in this case, popular outrage in the Middle East over an anti-Islam video—reminds us of one of the oddest aspects of discourse in the United States about foreign and security policy: that the same people who not too many years ago inflicted on us the Iraq War are still part of that discourse. They get air time and column space, and evidently at least somebody seems to be listening to them.
One mistake should not condemn someone to silence, but we are not talking about just any old mistake. The Iraq War was one of the biggest and costliest blunders in the history of U.S. foreign relations. The human and material costs, including an ultimate fiscal and economic toll in the multiple trillions in addition to the political and diplomatic damage, have been immense. Moreover, promotion of that war demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of fault lines in the Middle East, political culture in the region, the nature of political change there, the roots of enmity and security threats toward the United States, and the limitations of U.S. power and especially military power. There is no reason anyone should pay one iota of attention to what the promoters of that war have to say today on anything related to those subjects. And yet those are the very sorts of subjects, often with particular reference to countries such as Iran, Syria and Libya, on which neocon promoters of the Iraq War expound today.
Mitt Romney, nationalist
The case that Romney's reaction was neoconservative (if Horowitz had cared to present one) would have to rest on the candidate's statement that is "a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values." But this sentiment is not confined to neoconservatives. Romney's articulation of it is so widely shared that no politician, including Obama, would publicly advocate its negation — i.e. that it is sometimes a good course for America to apologize for its values.
Those who see neocons under their bed, or who exploit the term for ulterior motives, are missing a key point: unwillingness to apologize for American values is not the same thing as being willing to impose them on others through military, or even political, action.
Netanyahu's Neocon Gambit
It is hard to overestimate the risks that Benjamin Netanyahu poses to the future of his own country. As Prime Minister, he has done more than any other political figure to embolden and elevate the reactionary forces in Israel, to eliminate the dwindling possibility of a just settlement with the Palestinians, and to isolate his country on the world diplomatic stage. Now Netanyahu seems determined, more than ever, to alienate the President of the United States and, as an ally of Mitt Romney's campaign, to make himself a factor in the 2012 election—one no less pivotal than the most super Super PAC. "Who are you trying to replace?" the opposition leader, Shaul Mofaz, asked of Netanyahu in the Knesset on Wednesday. "The Administration in Washington or that in Tehran?"
Mofaz, a former Defense Minister, who participated in the fabled raid on Entebbe, in 1976, along with the Prime Minister's brother, was reacting to Netanyahu's outburst against the Obama Administration, at a news conference in Jerusalem. "The world tells Israel 'Wait, there's still time,' " Netanyahu told reporters in English. "And I say, 'Wait for what? Wait until when?' Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel."
Labels: Benjamin Netanyahu
Romney runs from 'neocon' label– because Americans reject neoconservatism by more than 2 to 1!
The Washington Post reports that Romney doesn't want to be called a neocon, even though he's mobbed up with neocons:
The Romney campaign does not dispute that Mitt Romney is a neoconservative, it just refuses to say the word neoconservative.
"His embrace of American values and interests and his call for American leadership abroad throughout this campaign is indicative of a philosophy of peace through strength," Alex Wong, the campaign's foreign policy director, said in an interview.
Obama harshly criticized by neocon wing of GOP over Libya attack
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham came out Wednesday offering a harsh criticism of Mr. Obama saying, "This administration has no concept of the Arab Spring. They're disengaging and the lack of leadership is about to lead to an explosion in the Middle East."
Graham wasn't alone. His Senate colleague, Sen. John McCain (R) Arizona also said Obama is "weak in his leadership" while being interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN yesterday.
McCain, a man who never met a war he didn't like, did sneak in this one comment during the interview concerning the late ambassador:
Mitt Romney: Still Infatuated With Discredited Neocon Ideas About Foreign Policy
I want to connect the Romney statement—now so well-critiqued (see, for instance, William Saletan's superb post on Slate today) to the point made by Kurt Eichenwald in his Sept. 10 New York Times op-ed and then further on my Current show that evening. The White House received about 70 CIA briefings stressing the imminence of an al-Qaida attack before 9/11, and yet didn't sufficiently respond. A reason for this, Eichenwald said, is the prism through which the Bush White House saw the world. The neocons who were making decisions could not understand that nonstate actors such as Osama Bin Laden were perhaps just as important as the traditional state actors they had dealt with during their last time in the White House, eight years earlier. This may have led them to discount the importance of the new terrorist threat while focusing almost exclusively on the threat of Iraq.
So it is with Romney. The same neocons still surround him. He seems to still view the world and its threats through a Cold War prism, misunderstanding the threats that actually exist. The ultimate outcome of the Arab Spring is impossible to predict. But the one clear point so far is that Romney and his team have misstated what happened, misunderstood what needs to be done, and let politics intercede where careful diplomacy was needed. Bluster is not diplomacy, and a lack of understanding of history does not make good policy.
Exposure Of Neocon American And Zionist Imperialist 9-11 Deception
The late American anti-war, pro-Humanity writer Gore Vidal put it succinctly in declaring that " Unlike most Americans who lie all the time, I hate lying " see "Mainstream media lying":
https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/home ). Two nonprofit US journalism groups, the Center for Public Integrity and the affiliated Fund for Independence in Journalism, estimated that the Bush Administration told 935 lies about Iraq between 9-11 and the invasion of that ancient and now devastated country (see "Study: Bush, aides made 935false statements in run-up to war", CNN, 23 January 2008:
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-01-23/politics/bush.iraq_1_intelligence-flaws-iraq-and-al-qaeda-study?_s=PM:POLITICS ) . Yet Mainstream media around the World blindly accept the lying Bush "official version of 9-11" despite compelling contrary advice from science, architecture, engineering, aviation, military and intelligence experts that the US did 9-11(see "Experts: US did 9-11":
https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ ). Similarly, Mainstream media have been complicit in massive lying by omission about 11 million preventable American deaths since 9-11 and the deaths of 9 million Muslims from violence or war-imposed deprivation in the post-2001 War on Terror – Western Mainstream media have resolutely ignored the avoidable deaths of some 20 million people linked to the US War on Terror, half of the victims being American.
Decent people around the World must realize the awful extent of this Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist 9-11 deception that has so far killed 21 million fellow human beings but which is resolutely ignored by Neocon American- and Zionist Imperialist-beholden mainstream media. The neo-liberal argument is that suspension of human rights at home and an endless War on Terror from Libya to Pakistan is required to prevent a repetition of 9-11 (3,000 dead) or a lesser atrocity such as the Madrid, London and Mumbai atrocities (scores to hundreds killed) . Yet the warmongers resolutely lie by omission over 20 million deaths, half American, linked to this same War on Terror.
Neocon Gambits
The neocon strategy, in both Israel and the U.S., is to paint Obama as naïve in the extreme. In this, Netanyahu and Romney are united—and profoundly cynical.
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Mock on, Maureen Dowd: Why She's Right About the N...
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Exposure Of Neocon American And Zionist Imperialis...


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text:
Synagoga Kolumnowa w Rydze (, jid. Zojlen-szul, ) – synagoga znajdująca się w Rydze, stolicy Łotwy, przy ulicy Stabu 63 (niem. Säulenstraße, ros. Столбовая).

Synagoga została zbudowana w latach 1899–1901 według projektu ryskiego architekta Mandelsztama. Jej wnętrze było uznane za najpiękniejsze spośród miejskich synagog. Od 1901 roku aż do lipca 1941 roku odbywały się tu regularnie nabożeństwa. 4 lipca 1941 roku niemieckie wojska z pomocą lokalnej społeczności zamknęły od 30 do 200 Żydów we wnętrzu synagogi, a budynek podpalili. Wśród zabitych znalazł się rabin I. M. Kiłow, który w ostatniej chwili dostał się do budynku, by podzielić los wiernych.

Po II wojnie światowej spalona synagoga została odbudowana, jednak gminie żydowskiej zwrócono ją dopiero w 1995 roku. Od tego czasu mieści zarząd duchowny ryskiej gminy oraz siedziba towarzystwa kulturalnego "Szamir". Od 1998 roku za sprawą rabina Rygi Barkana znów odbywają się tu nabożeństwa. Cześć pomieszczeń budynku jest wynajmowana, m.in. pod szkołę biznesową Latvijas Biznesa koledža.

Synagoga przy Stabu ielā jest bóżnicą chasydzką, rabin Rygi i Łotwy Natan Barkan uznawany jest za następcę lubawickiego rabina Schneersohna.

Linki zewnętrzne
 Makieta i plan synagogi przy Stabu ielā 63
 Losy ryskich żydów podczas II wojny światowej

Stabu
Ryga

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


After years of development in the desert north of Los Angeles, a very big, six-engined mega jet with the wingspan of an American football field flew Saturday morning for the first time.
The aircraft, the largest in the world by wingspan, took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 9:58 a.m.
Stratolaunch, the world's largest airplane with a 385-foot wingspan, took off and successfully landed for the first time in the California desert on Saturday.
The world's largest plane flew for the first time on Saturday.
Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, founded Stratolaunch Systems Corp.in 2011 after emerging in aerospace by funding the development of the experimental air-launched SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the first privately built manned rocket to reach space.
Stratolaunch Systems is owned by Vulcan, which manages the estate of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died in October after complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
The trial has been spotted by photographers at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
Citing initial parameters, the officials said that the platform performed a variety of flight control manoeuvres to calibrate speed and test flight control systems, including roll doublets, yawing manoeuvres, pushovers and pull-ups, and steady heading side slips.
The pilot Evan Thomas told reporters the experience was "fantastic" and that "for the most part, the airplane flew as predicted".
However, neither Krevor nor Jean Floyd, the chief executive of Stratolaunch, said anything about the test flight program, including when the plane will fly again and how long the overall test program will last. Its twin fuselages - sort of the airplane equivalent of a catamaran - are 238 feet (72.5 meters) long.
"Today's flight furthers our mission to provide a flexible alternative to ground launched systems", he added. The odd aircraft, built by the legendary aeronautical engineering company Scaled Composites in the Mojave Desert, has two fuselages and is powered by six Boeing 747 engines.