On Monday, June 9, 2003, at 08:18 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Wall Street Journal - June 9, 2003
>
> 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.
>
> ---
>
> 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.
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