Hey, I find it equally distasteful that Powell and Rice serve them. But I don't hold it against anyone for pointing out, and examining the significance of, their ethnic background.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
llevitt wrote:
> You call it an "ethnic political phenomenon," and those involved "a political clique . . . formulating policies and scheming in those regions," and fulminate over the fact that there happen to be some Jews, as discussed by Lieber, who have become neo-cons and have gravitated toward the Bush administration. Their political background certainly is relevant, for it points up the continuity of their dissonance from the majority of American Jews. Personally, I find it distasteful that those named have been serving the purposes of the Bush administration with such diligence; but as pointed out, they are certainly not the source of the policies (read right-wing Christian fundamentalist, a far larger, more influential, and more powerful political force, albeit not "ethnic"). Moreover, they have every right -- however misguided -- to do so.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: John Woodford
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 3:39 PM
> Subject: Re: [CHOMSKY] Fw: Chronicle article: The Neoconservative-ConspiracyTheory:Pure Myth
>
> This article is hardly a rebuttal. More like "white propaganda," albeit sophomoric in its flimsy logic.
> The ethinc political phenomenon re Bush policy is there to be seen and analyzed, just as one would the
> attempts to tilt toward Pakisan, Turkey, Miamia gusanos and so on have been analyzed when a poiltical
> clique is formulating policies and scheming in those regions.
> The issue has nothing to do with how empty a vessel Bush is compared with a Tsarina or what the
> heritage of Chomsky or other anti-administration vooices may be. Or what the ethnic make-up of the top
> offiicals is. All irrelevant.
>
> llevitt wrote:
>
> > F. Leon and others ought to read this article; it is opportune to have appeared at this very moment.
> >
> > This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education
> > (http://chronicle.com) was forwarded to you from:
> >
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
> > The following message was enclosed:
> > neocon-conspiracy - a myth
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> >
> > This article is available online at this address:
> >
> > http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i34/34b01401.htm
> >
> > - The text of the article is below -
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > _____________________________________________________________
> >
> > The Neoconservative-Conspiracy Theory: Pure Myth
> >
> > By ROBERT J. LIEBER The ruins of Saddam Hussein's shattered tyranny may provide
> > additional evidence of chemical weapons and other weapons of
> > mass destruction, but one poisonous by-product has already
> > begun to seep from under the rubble. It is a conspiracy theory
> > purporting to explain how the foreign policy of the world's
> > greatest power, the United States, has been captured by a
> > sinister and hitherto little-known cabal.
> >
> > A small band of neoconservative (read, Jewish) defense
> > intellectuals, led by the "mastermind," Deputy Secretary of
> > Defense Paul Wolfowitz (according to Michael Lind, writing in
> > the New Statesman), has taken advantage of 9/11 to put their
> > ideas over on an ignorant, inexperienced, and "easily
> > manipulated" president (Eric Alterman in The Nation), his
> > "elderly figurehead" Defense Secretary (as Lind put it), and
> > the "dutiful servant of power" who is our secretary of state
> > (Edward Said, London Review of Books).
> >
> > Thus empowered, this neoconservative conspiracy, "a product of
> > the influential Jewish-American faction of the Trotskyist
> > movement of the '30s and '40s" (Lind), with its own "fanatic"
> > and "totalitarian morality" (William Pfaff, International
> > Herald Tribune) has fomented war with Iraq -- not in the
> > interest of the United States, but in the service of Israel's
> > Likud government (Patrick J. Buchanan and Alterman).
> >
> > This sinister mythology is worthy of the Iraqi information
> > minister, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, who became notorious for
> > telling Western journalists not to believe their own eyes as
> > American tanks rolled into view just across the Tigris River.
> > And indeed versions of it do circulate in the Arab world. (For
> > example, a prominent Saudi professor from King Faisal
> > University, Umaya Jalahma, speaking at a prestigious think
> > tank of the Arab League, has revealed that the U.S. attack on
> > Iraq was actually timed to coincide with the Jewish holiday of
> > Purim.) But the neocon-conspiracy notion is especially
> > conspicuous in writing by leftist authors in the pages of
> > journals like The Washington Monthly and those cited above, as
> > well as in the arguments of paleoconservatives like Buchanan
> > and his magazine, The American Conservative.
> >
> > Many of those who disseminate the new theory had strenuously
> > opposed war with Iraq and predicted dire consequences in the
> > event American forces were to invade. The critics had warned
> > of such things as massive resistance by the Iraqi military and
> > people, a quagmire on the order of Vietnam, Saddam's use of
> > weapons of mass destruction (though some of the same voices
> > loudly questioned whether Iraq had such weapons at all), Scud
> > missile attacks that would draw Israel into the fray,
> > destruction of Iraq's oil fields (thus creating an ecological
> > catastrophe), and an inflamed and radicalized Middle East in
> > which moderate governments would be overthrown by an enraged
> > Arab street.
> >
> > Authors disparaged the notion that the Iraqi people could ever
> > welcome coalition forces as liberators. In words dripping with
> > sarcasm, Eric Alterman asked readers of The Nation, "Is
> > Wolfowitz really so ignorant of history as to believe the
> > Iraqis would welcome us as 'their hoped-for liberators'?" And
> > the inimitable Edward Said, writing in the London Review of
> > Books, offered a scathing denunciation not only of Wolfowitz
> > but of such apostates as Fouad Ajami, the Iraqi exile author
> > Kanan Makiya, and the exile opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi
> > for their "rubbish" and "falsifying of reality" in selling the
> > administration a bill of goods about a quick war. Instead,
> > Said asserted, "The idea that Iraq's population would have
> > welcomed American forces entering the country after a
> > terrifying aerial bombardment was always utterly implausible."
> >
> > One of the less fevered explanations, as offered by Joshua
> > Micah Marshall in the April Washington Monthly, asserts that
> > the invasion of Iraq was not primarily about eliminating
> > Saddam Hussein, "nor was it really about weapons of mass
> > destruction." Instead, Marshall presents the war as the
> > administration's "first move in a wider effort to reorder the
> > power structure of the entire Middle East."
> >
> > But more extreme versions of the argument are readily
> > available. For example, Alterman writes that "the war has put
> > Jews in the showcase as never before. Its primary intellectual
> > architects -- Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle (former aide to
> > Senator Henry M. 'Scoop' Jackson; assistant secretary of
> > defense in the Reagan administration; now a member of the
> > Defense Policy Board, an unpaid body advising Secretary of
> > Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld), and Douglas J. Feith (the No. 3
> > official at Defense) -- are all Jewish neoconservatives. So,
> > too, are many of its prominent media cheerleaders, including
> > William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and Marty Peretz. Joe
> > Lieberman, the nation's most conspicuous Jewish politician,
> > has been an avid booster."
> >
> > Alterman adds, "Then there's the 'Jews control the media'
> > problem. ... Many of these same Jews joined Secretary Rumsfeld
> > and Vice President Richard B. Cheney in underselling the
> > difficulty of the war, in what may have been a deliberate ruse
> > designed to embroil America in a broad military conflagration
> > that would help smite Israel's enemies."
> >
> > Michael Lind's language is more overtly conspiratorial. In an
> > essay appearing in London's New Statesman and in Salon, after
> > dismissing the columnist Robert Kagan as a "neoconservative
> > propagandist," Lind confides the "alarming" truth that "the
> > foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made
> > by a small clique." They are "neoconservative defense
> > intellectuals," among whom he cites Wolfowitz; Feith; Lewis
> > Libby, Cheney's chief of staff; John Bolton at the State
> > Department; and Elliott Abrams on the National Security
> > Council.
> >
> > Most of these, we are told, have their roots on the left and
> > are "products of the largely Jewish-American Trotskyist
> > movement of the 1930s and '40s, which morphed into
> > anti-communist liberalism" and now "into a kind of
> > militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American
> > culture or political history." Lind complains that in their
> > "odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for 'democracy,'" they
> > "call their revolutionary ideology 'Wilsonianism,' ... but it
> > is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled
> > with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism." Along with the
> > Kristol-led Weekly Standard and allies such as Vice President
> > Cheney, "these neo-cons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and
> > inexperience."
> >
> > Lind's speculation that the president may not even be aware of
> > what this cabal has foisted upon him embodies the hallmarks of
> > conspiratorial reasoning. In his words, "It is not clear that
> > George W. fully understands the grand strategy that Wolfowitz
> > and other aides are unfolding. He seems genuinely to believe
> > that there was an imminent threat to the U.S. from Saddam
> > Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction,' something the leading
> > neocons say in public but are far too intelligent to believe
> > themselves."
> >
> > Those themes are echoed at the opposite end of the political
> > spectrum, in The American Conservative, where the embattled
> > remnants of an old isolationist and reactionary conservatism
> > can be found. Buchanan, the magazine's editor, targets the
> > neoconservatives, alleging that they have hijacked the
> > conservative movement and that they seek "to conscript
> > American blood to make the world safe for Israel."
> >
> > Even in its less fevered forms, the neocon-conspiracy theory
> > does not provide a coherent analysis of American foreign
> > policy. More to the point, especially among the more extreme
> > versions, there are conspicuous manifestations of classic
> > anti-Semitism: claims that a small, all-powerful but
> > little-known group or "cabal" of Jewish masterminds is
> > secretly manipulating policy; that they have dual loyalty to a
> > foreign power; that this cabal combines ideological opposites
> > (right-wingers with a Trotskyist legacy, echoing classic
> > anti-Semitic tropes linking Jews to both international
> > capitalism and international communism); that our official
> > leaders are too ignorant, weak, or naive to grasp what is
> > happening; that the foreign policy upon which our country is
> > now embarked runs counter to, or is even subversive of,
> > American national interest; and that if readers only paid
> > close attention to what the author is saying, they would share
> > the same sense of alarm.
> >
> > A dispassionate dissection of the neocon-conspiracy arguments
> > is not difficult to undertake. For one thing, the Bush
> > administration actually has very few Jews in senior policy
> > positions and none among the very top foreign-policy decision
> > makers: the president, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of
> > State Colin L. Powell, Secretary Rumsfeld, and National
> > Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice -- all of whom are
> > Protestants. (British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the most
> > influential non-American, is also Protestant.)
> >
> > But even identifying policy makers in this way carries the
> > insidious implication that religious affiliation by itself is
> > all-controlling. In reality, Americans of all persuasions have
> > exhibited deep differences about foreign policy and war with
> > Iraq. Before the war, public-opinion polls consistently showed
> > Jews about as divided as the public at large, or even slightly
> > less in favor of the war, and Jewish intellectual and
> > political figures could be found in both pro- and antiwar
> > camps. For example, the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, the
> > professor and author Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins
> > University, and Senator Lieberman of Connecticut supported the
> > president, while opposition came from a range of voices,
> > including the radically anti-American Noam Chomsky, of the
> > Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the moderate-left
> > philosopher Michael Walzer, of the Institute for Advanced
> > Study in Princeton, N.J.; Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan; and a
> > bevy of leftist Berkeley and New York intellectuals -- Rabbi
> > Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine; Norman Mailer;
> > Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia University; and
> > many others.
> >
> > More to the point, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice are
> > among the most experienced, tough-minded, and strong-willed
> > foreign-policy makers in at least a generation, and the
> > conspiracy theory fails utterly to take into account their own
> > assessments of American grand strategy in the aftermath of
> > 9/11.
> >
> > The theory also wrongly presumes that Bush himself is an empty
> > vessel, a latter-day equivalent of Czarina Alexandra, somehow
> > fallen under the influence of Wolfowitz/Rasputin.
> > Condescension toward Bush has been a hallmark of liberal and
> > leftist discourse ever since the disputed 2000 presidential
> > election, and there can be few readers of this publication who
> > have not heard conversations about the president that did not
> > begin with offhand dismissals of him as "stupid," a "cowboy,"
> > or worse. An extreme version of this thinking, and even the
> > demonization of Bush, can be found in the latest musings of
> > Edward Said, as quoted in Al-Ahram Weekly: "In fact, I and
> > others are convinced that Bush will try to negate the 2004
> > elections: We're dealing with a putschist, conspiratorial,
> > paranoid deviation that's very anti-democratic." That kind of
> > disparagement has left critics ill prepared to think
> > analytically about the administration or the foreign-policy
> > imperatives facing the United States after 9/11.
> >
> > Whether one favors or opposes the Bush policies, the former
> > Texas governor has proved himself to be an effective wartime
> > leader. The Bush Doctrine, as expressed in the president's
> > January 2002 State of the Union address ("the United States of
> > America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to
> > threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons") and
> > the September 2002 document on national-security strategy set
> > out an ambitious grand strategy in response to the combined
> > perils of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
> >
> > Reactions to the doctrine have been mixed. Some foreign-policy
> > analysts have been critical, especially of the idea of
> > pre-emption and the declared policy of preventing the rise of
> > any hostile great-power competitor, while others (for example,
> > John Lewis Gaddis of Yale University) have provided a more
> > positive assessment. But the doctrine has certainly not been
> > concealed from the public, and the president and his
> > foreign-policy team have spoken repeatedly of its elements and
> > implications. While Bush's February 2003 speech to the
> > American Enterprise Institute, in which he articulated a
> > vision for a free and democratic Middle East, has been
> > criticized as excessively Wilsonian, its key themes echo those
> > found in the widely circulated Arab Human Development Report
> > 2002, written by a group of Arab economists for the United
> > Nations Development Program, which decried Arab-world deficits
> > in regard to freedom, knowledge, and the role of women.
> >
> > Partisanship aside, the president has shown himself to be
> > independent and decisive, able to weigh competing advice from
> > his top officials before deciding how to act. In August of
> > last year, for example, he sided with Secretary of State
> > Powell over the initial advice of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and
> > Cheney in opting to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution on
> > Iraq. Powell's own February 5 speech to the Security Council
> > was a compelling presentation of the administration's case
> > against Iraq, and well before the outbreak of the war, Powell
> > made clear his view that the use of force had become
> > unavoidable.
> >
> > Conspiracy theorists are also naive in expressing anxieties
> > that the Defense Department may sometimes be at odds with
> > State or the National Security Council over policy. Political
> > scientists and historians have long described policy making as
> > an "invitation to struggle," and Richard E. Neustadt's classic
> > work Presidential Power characterized the ultimate resource of
> > the presidency as the power to persuade. Franklin D. Roosevelt
> > deliberately played his advisers against one another, the
> > Nixon presidency saw Henry Kissinger successfully undercut
> > Secretary of State William P. Rogers, and the Carter and
> > Reagan presidencies were also conspicuous for the struggles
> > between their national security advisers and secretaries of
> > state. In short, competing views among presidential
> > foreign-policy advisers are typical of most administrations.
> >
> > Nor is Bush's support for Israel somehow a sign of
> > manipulation. From the time of Harry Truman's decision to
> > recognize the Jewish state in May 1948, through Kennedy's arms
> > sales, the Nixon administration's support during the 1973 Yom
> > Kippur War, and the close U.S.-Israeli relationships during
> > the Reagan and Clinton presidencies, this is nothing new.
> > American public opinion has consistently favored Israel over
> > the Palestinians by wide margins, and a February Gallup poll
> > put this margin at more than 4 to 1 (58 percent versus 13
> > percent). The strongest source of support for Israel now comes
> > from within Bush's own Republican base, especially among
> > Christian conservatives; and in addition to his own
> > inclinations, as a politically adroit president, he has
> > repeatedly shown the determination not to alienate his
> > political base.
> >
> > Ultimately, the neocon-conspiracy theory misinterprets as a
> > policy coup a reasoned shift in grand strategy that the Bush
> > administration has adopted in responding to an ominous form of
> > external threat. Whether that strategy and its component parts
> > prove to be as robust and effective as containment of hostile
> > Middle Eastern states linked to terrorism remains to be seen.
> > But to characterize it in conspiratorial terms is not only a
> > failure to weigh policy choices on their merits, but
> > represents a detour into the fever swamps of political
> > demagoguery.
> >
> > Robert J. Lieber is a professor of government and foreign
> > service at Georgetown University and the editor of Eagle
> > Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the Twenty-First
> > Century (Prentice Hall, 2002).
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Copyright 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
--
John Woodford
Executive Editor, Michigan Today
412 Maynard
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1399
Direct: 734-647-1838
Fax: 734-764-7084
Main: 734-764-7260
|