http://www.bostonreview.net/BR29.1/robin.html
The outline goes like this. The close of the Cold War turned the US into a self-indulgent power more concerned with the womanly pursuits of consumerism, than the manly virtues of power, war, and empire. The careless power elites were more interested in making a world of money than in making world history.
The neoconservatives bristling with their own idealism of power and empire finally got their chance to `do something' with this effeminized giant after 9/11. Whatever their dream, the US as the sole superpower of the earth can not manage or modify for the better, a minor regional power like Iraq or a completely backward mostly empty territory like Afghanistan. As a consequence:
``We thus face a dangerous situation. On the one hand we have neoconservative elites whose vision of American power is recklessly utopian, who seem increasingly disconnected from any coherent conception of the national interest. On the other hand we have a domestic population that shows little interest in this far-flung empire. The political order projected by Bush and his supporters in the media and academia is just that: a projection, which can only last so long as the United States is able to put down, with minimum casualties, challenges to its power. If this assessment is correct, we may well be entering one of those famed Machiavellian moments discussed by J.G.A. Pocock a quarter century ago, when a republic opts for the frisson of empire, and is forced to confront the fragility and finitude of all political forms, including its own...''
While I agree with this rather bland assessment, where is the scathing derision of the whole neocon image of itself, its moronic aspirations, and its narrow, bigoted, sexist and racist ideological foundations? Where is the notice that this neoconservative project was trumped up from a chicken hawk warrior mind set, by men, few of whom ever served in the military, let alone faced combat duty? And, where is the notice that this administration and its neoconservative wise men bought the acquiescence of the power elite by turning the government into the corporate field offices in Washington, while they handed out no-bid contracts to privatized paramilitary security corporations, without a thought to cost-controls, effectively bribing them to perform some of duties of imperial war: personal body-guards to the imperial elite in the field, consultants on systematic torture, along with occasional extra-judicial executions, not to mention the massive intrusions on US citizen's civil rights all in the name of looking for a few good suspects. The neocons have also managed to corrupt the military system of justice by dismantling its linkage to the UN accords. All of which, follows the adage, if power corrupts, then absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Well and then there is that minor element, the full orchestration of mass media sounding the drum beats of war, war, war, repleat with planted stories, think tank white papers, all based on complete fabrications of any concrete threat to US national security. Why would utopian dreamers of empire, need such a heavy handed sales routine? I thought that dreamers were supposed to depend on their own convictions and the authenticity of their vision to sell their projects. I guess stupidities, nightmares, and outright crimes need more help.
Given all of the above, it's a little difficult to swallow the idea that the neoconservatives were just imperial minded civic planners gone off on the wrong track.
Reading Robin's essay is almost like reading the neoconservative post-Bush apology. I suppose the neutral tone of voice and the complete absence of outrage is what is expected of academic analysis. Such work has its place, I guess.
But my problem with it goes much deeper than just an annoyance with its style. I think that essays like Robin's will form the basis for the history re-write, which (I suspect) has already begun in neoconservative circles. It was after all such `objective' recording of the Vietnam war that made possible the re-write of that war, as a failure of US courage and resolve. In fact, the Vietnam war, all fourteen years of it, was always a failure from start to finish and had to be constantly re-written about every two years as one political and military failure followed another, chasing each other in tandem down to the last desperate CIA flights out of Tan Son Nhut and the scuttling of choppers off the decks of US aircraft carriers.
So then the re-write of a war, cleansed of its concrete content, such as its vast potential for and actuality of corruption, futility and failure, forms the basis for the next such exercise.
The neoconservatives, the Bush administration, and the public who supported them have the stench of mass death on them from the meaningless gore they have perpetrated all in the name of blatant lies. Like the high minded foreign policy planners in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations before them, it isn't just a matter that mistakes were made, but the project was sound. Massive crimes and public frauds were committed, justified with outright lies, that no only killed hundreds of thousands, but corrupted US political and military institutions in the process through deliberate abuses of executive branch powers that effectively eroded the constitutional basis of government. To gloss over this concrete content of the neoconservative project is more than an omission in the name of objectivity. The omission itself lays the foundation for the continuous cover-up and fraud that has already become the outline for the establishment history of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the absurd domestic War on Terror.
This probably sounds unfair to Robin, but I am going to post it anyway. There has already evolved the idea that rants like mine (those done much better that is, with plenty of factual detail) are somehow just opinions, and opinions of the left, which therefore don't count, because of their `bias'. Let's use as an example, Sy Hersh's essay on Abu Ghraib. An essay on the wrong doing of government complete with names, dates, facts, and the concrete content of who, what, when, and where, is now interpreted as an opinion and opinions obviously have their bias!
See? Facts have been transformed into opinions. That is exactly how Vietnam, as well as the history of neoliberal policies have been cleansed of their content.
CG