THINKING THINGS OVER By ROBERT L. BARTLEY
Joining LaRouche In the Fever Swamps
"Just weeks after the LaRouche in 2004 campaign began nationwide circulation of 400,000 copies of the Children of Satan dossier, exposing the role of University of Chicago fascist 'philosopher' Leo Strauss as the godfather of the neo-conservative war party in and around the Bush Administration, two major establishment publications have joined the expose."
So brags an article under the byline Jeffrey Steinberg on Executive Intelligence Review, a Web site devoted to the perennial presidential campaign of Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. This time around, Mr. LaRouche is running on a platform equating the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon with the 1933 Reichstag fire, set by Nazis so they could blame the Communists and take over the German government.
In his part of "Children of Satan," Mr. Steinberg charges that a "cabal of Strauss disciples, along with an equally small circle of allied neo-conservative and Likudnik fellow-travelers" has been hovering around the government for 30 years, "awaiting the moment of opportunity to launch their not-so-silent coup."
It does seem to be true that the LaRouche screed was first in line in thrusting Leo Strauss, author of such volumes as "Natural Right and History," into the middle of the debate over the Iraq war. The theme was later sounded by James Atlas in the New York Times and Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.
Mr. Atlas's article on "Leo-Cons" included a photo essay with shots of Mr. Strauss and presumed disciples including Edward Shils, Allan Bloom, Saul Bellow, Albert Wohlstetter, on to Clarence Thomas and Leon Kass. It ended with big photos of Richard Perle (along with the howler, later corrected by the Times, that he was married to Wohlstetter's daughter Joan) and Paul Wolfowitz.
Mr. Hersh's "Selective Intelligence" basically aired one side of an intelligence debate, defending dovish (or if you prefer, intellectually conservative) CIA analysts. It described the other side as "the Straussian movement," citing Mr. Wolfowitz and Abram Shulsky, head of a special Pentagon shop set up to review intelligence on Iraq. And it included a quote from an academic about "Strauss's idea -- actually Plato's -- that philosophers need to tell noble lies not only to the people at large but also to powerful politicians."
Looking at the striking similarities in these accounts the conspiracy-minded might conclude that the New York Times and New Yorker have been reduced to recycling the insights of Lyndon LaRouche. But it's entirely possible that Mr. Atlas and Mr. Hersh have stumbled into the fever swamps all on their own.
To those of us who have lived this history over the decades, the notion of a Strauss conspiracy is totally unhinged. Leo Strauss, I learned as graduate student in the 1960s, was a champion of ancient philosophers, a critic of attempts at empirical political science if not of modernity itself. While this is centuries and leagues removed from Saddam Hussein, it's true that Mr. Strauss did influence Irving Kristol and his wife Gertrude Himmelfarb, and through them other neo-conservatives.
It happens that I did a lot to put this term on the intellectual map as the 1970s dawned, with profiles of Mr. Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. The "neo" meant that they were conservative converts from earlier radicalism. I recently asked Mr. Podhoretz whether his son John and Mr. Kristol's son William were neo-conservatives. "No!" he answered. "They were to the manner born."
It also happens that I had a long association with the late Albert Wohlstetter, who was in fact the key intellect in promoting new defense policies, in particular the accurate weapons that dominated Iraq, and also in mentoring Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Perle and others. But his background was as a mathematical logician and advocate of operational research. Despite Mr. Atlas's ludicrous classification of Wohlstetter as a Straussian , the two had nothing in common except the University of Chicago campus.
While Mr. Wolfowitz took two courses from Mr. Strauss, he was in fact a student of Mr. Wohlstetter. He makes all this clear in a remarkable interview with Sam Tanenhaus of Vanity Fair, released by the defense department at www.defenselink.mil. The actual article by Mr. Tanenhaus is only now being widely circulated, but various writers, especially in Europe, have grasped fourth-hand accounts to charge that Mr. Wolfowitz had admitted to "deception."
As one of the few people who ran with both neo-conservatives and the Wohlstetter circle, let me testify that they did not appear at each other's conferences or dinner tables. But prominent members of each are Jewish. This is what the recent conspiracy charges are ultimately about.
Sometimes it is overt anti-Semitism; with "Children of Satan," Mr. LaRouche has chosen an Aryan-nation phrase for Jews (descendants of Cain, who was the result of Satan seducing Eve, in this perfervid theology). At other times, often in the hands of accusers who are Jewish themselves, it is a charge of secret loyalties. The Jews, or Israel, or the Likud have conspired to take over American foreign policy.
This is the ugly accusation an alert reader should suspect in encountering the word "Straussian ," or these days even "neo-conservative" in the context of the Iraq debate. Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle find their Jewish heritage a point of attack. But George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are gentiles. Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell don't look Jewish to me, but they also helped draft the basic statement of the Bush Doctrine, the September 2002 "National Security Policy of the United States."
Clearly, the administration's critics are anxious to seize any straw to discredit its success in Iraq, to leap to the worst possible construction of events. It was a "quagmire" when troops were slowed by a sand storm, now it's "deception" because chemical weapons dumps haven't been found. The impulse is so strong that Leo Strauss gets exhumed, words are twisted from their meaning, and the Times and New Yorker make common cause with Lyndon LaRouche.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In January 2003 Robert L. Bartley became The Wall Street Journal's editor emeritus after more than 30 years guiding the paper's editorial pages. He is author of the weekly "Thinking Things Over" column, which has been written by three previous Journal editors, starting in 1934.
Over his career, Mr. Bartley won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, a Gerald Loeb Award and a Citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club of America. He is author of a book on Reagan administration economic policy, "The Seven Fat Years: And How to Do It Again," published in 1992 by the Free Press.
Mr. Bartley joined the Journal in 1962 and served as a staff reporter in the Chicago and Philadelphia bureaus before joining the editorial page staff in New York in 1964. He was appointed editor of the editorial page in 1972, editor of the Journal in 1979 and a vice president of Dow Jones & Co. in 1983. He holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Iowa State University and a master's degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin. He has received honorary degrees from Macalester College, Babson College and Adelphi University.
Mr. Bartley invites comments to edit.page at wsj.com. Please put BARTLEY in the "Subject" field.