>wow. this is the whole ball of wax.
>not shy at all, these folks.
Oh, but don't believe everything you hear! Just ask Poddy the Younger.
Doug
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New York Post - April 18, 2003
I CONFESS By JOHN PODHORETZ
OK, I'll admit it. I'm part of a vast conspiracy to control American foreign policy.
Yes, we neoconservatives have succeeded in brainwashing the leaders of the United States and Britain, using nefarious mind-controlling techniques. Those techniques include: Writing articles, circulating letters, giving speeches and appearing on television.
It's amazing and terrifying when you think about it. But even though I will be hunted down like a dog by my fellow conspirators for revealing this highly privileged information, I will now share with you the secret tale of how the neocon conspiracy came to dominate the mind of George W. Bush:
A group of people came to believe in certain things. Because they agreed, they got to know one another. They worked together. They became friends. Their relationships were strengthened by a commitment to a shared cause.
Because they cared about the ideas they shared, they dedicated their energies to making the best arguments for them. Because they believed these ideas would make the world safer and would make America better, some of them went to work in government to convert them into government policy.
Others published their ideas in forums hospitable to those ideas. For a long time, there weren't very many hospitable forums. So these people created new forums in which to advance these ideas.
They advanced their arguments no matter what. Sometimes their arguments had a somewhat attentive audience in government circles, as during the Reagan administration. Sometimes the attention was only grudging, as in the first Bush administration. And sometimes their arguments fell on deaf ears, as with the Clinton administration.
Here's what's interesting, though. Even though the Reaganites paid attention, these people felt entirely comfortable about criticizing the Reagan administration when it did things these people considered wrong.
And even when they had no influence and felt disgust for the president in power - the Clinton years - they offered praise and support when the president acted in ways they considered admirable.
In other words, they were more faithful to the ideas they shared than to the political party with which they were loosely aligned.
How evil!
It's kind of flattering, this notion that a group of people called "neoconservatives" - a term hostile people use to refer to Jewish Republicans with hard-line foreign policy views in and out of government without using the word "Jewish" - have seized the reins of power in the United States.
Especially considering the fact that it's not true. Condoleezza Rice is not a Jew. Nor is Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell or CIA Director George Tenet. Nor is, to put it mildly, George W. Bush.
Rice's mentor in government was Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to Bush the Elder. There have been few government officials more hostile to the neocon worldview than Scowcroft.
In the House of Representatives, Dick Cheney was no friend to Israel and a consistent opponent of U.S. government spending on foreign aid - both key issues for neocons.
And as liberal Jews are always fond of pointing out, George W. Bush once asked his mother whether Jews could go to heaven since they had not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. Not very neoconservative-sounding.
These are the people in charge of U.S. foreign policy. Now, they have "neoconservatives" working for them in senior positions (well, all but Powell and Tenet). But these non-neocons are the policymakers.
Indeed, George W. Bush actually passed over one key neocon (Paul Wolfowitz) when it came to choosing a secretary of Defense back in 2000.
So: Why all this hysterical attention on the neoconservatives?
The purpose of focusing attention on a supposed conspiracy of neoconservative officials in and out of government is to deny President Bush ownership of his own foreign policy. Bush's enemies want to believe very badly that he is nothing more than an empty suit. They take comfort in believing that the president is the stooge of a bunch of clever Jews.
There's a sobering aspect for the neocons in Bush's full-throated advocacy of the positions we've advanced over the past three decades: The president seems to have come to an understanding of these ideas almost entirely on his own. He didn't need the books we wrote or the magazines we published.
On the one hand, that suggests our ideas are so commonsensical you don't need a degree from Neocon University to follow them. On the other hand, maybe our influence is really kind of an illusion.
Don't tell anybody, OK? This will be our little secret.E-mail: