Tag: neocons

Discredited Neocon Talking Points From The Iraq War Are Back, Lazily Re-Purposed For Iran

Remember all the infamous one-liners from the Global War on Terror? In the years after 9/11, when the neocon establishment in Washington was pushing ahead with its disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were everywhere. 

It’s a slam dunk case! We have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here. We’ll be greeted as liberators. Islam is a religion of peace. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom.

Those last two are direct quotes from President George W. Bush, the man most responsible — whether through extreme naiveté or extreme duplicity — for propagating these ridiculous slogans and using them to justify decades-long wars that ended in ignominy for the United States. You’d think that after Iraq and Afghanistan this kind of rhetoric would be totally discredited. But you’d be wrong.

Over the past few days, almost since the moment Israel began bombing Iran, we’ve seen the reappearance of almost all the old GWOT rhetoric. Then as now, the purpose is to justify a U.S. military adventure abroad and gaslight the American people into supporting regime change in Iran.

For those of us who were in high school and college during and immediately after 9/11, who saw the propaganda play out in real time, it’s an amazing thing to witness what’s happening now.

In particular, the point about needing to stop Iran before it gets a nuclear weapon is almost word-for-word how Iraq hawks argued for a preventative war against Saddam Hussein in 2003. Iraq’s WMDs had to be destroyed, we were told, before they could be used in a terror attack against the U.S. that would dwarf 9/11. 

For those keeping track, we have been hearing about Iran’s impending nuclear weapon for at least 20 years. Tehran, we’re told, is always just months or weeks away from having deployable nukes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Iran was getting “extremely close” to a nuclear weapon — in 1996.

Similarly, the point about how we have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here — a ubiquitous line in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — is exactly what Netanyahu argued recently on ABC News. “You want these people to have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to your cities? Today, it’s Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it’s New York. Look, I understand ‘America First.’ I don’t understand ‘America Dead.’” (It’s worth noting, too, that Netanyahu was a loud voice in the build-up to the Iraq War warning against Saddam’s non-existent nuclear program.)

Remember how we would be “greeted as liberators” in Iraq? That was Vice President Dick Cheney’s line. Turns out the Iranians are also waiting to be liberated and will greet western militaries with open arms! After all, God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom, right? According to Mark Levin, who is old enough to know better, isolationists “stand in the way of Trump and Netanyahu transforming the Middle East” — as if transforming the Middle East is both a feasible and desirable thing for the United States to do.

It’s the same with all these neocon arguments. Remember Ahmed Chalabi? He was the western-friendly Iraqi dissident politician and founder of the Iraqi National Congress, which became a major source of evidence of Iraq’s WMD program and ties to Al Qaeda for the Bush administration. Chalabi himself was at one point floated as a possible post-Saddam leader of Iraq.

Yet nearly all the information Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress provided to U.S. intelligence agencies in the lead-up to the war turned out to be false, including information from an Iraqi defector codenamed named “Curveball,” whose first-hand descriptions of mobile biological weapons factories wound up in intelligence dossiers that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq. In the end, Chalabi’s fabrications were exposed (no WMDs were ever found in Iraq), and he was revealed as almost certainly an Iranian agent.

Now we have a new Chalabi: Reza Pahlavi, the exiled Shah of Iran, who this week released a pro-regime change video. “The Islamic Republic has come to an end and is falling,” he said. “What has begun is irreversible. The future is bright and together we will navigate this sharp turn in history. Now is the time to stand; it is time to take back Iran. May I be with you soon.”

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Pete Hegseth, a ‘Recovering Neocon?’

Politicians frequently “change their minds.” In principle, willingness to change one’s mind is a laudable trait, whether you’re a politician or any other type of person. To absorb new information, and then adjust one’s outlook in accordance with that information, is a prudent habit to cultivate for anyone who wants to engage constructively with the world. However, the propensity of political figures to “change their minds” usually requires an extra layer of critical examination, unless you’re inclined to just credulously accept their self-serving bulls**t.

When a political figure resolutely declares that they have an unflinching ethical or policy conviction, and then go on to abandon that conviction, at minimum this should obligate some explanation for the shift. If the explanation reflects a sincere and transparent reevaluation of certain facts or premises, that’s one thing to consider. If the explanation reflects naked expediency and opportunism, that’s another thing. If no real explanation is provided at all, that’s something else entirely. “Mind-changing,” thus, is not a virtue unto itself — nor is it necessarily a defect. The crucial factor is the accompanying explanation (or lack thereof), and how much soundness one ascribes to it.

For instance, if Bernie Sanders suddenly announced tomorrow that he was no longer in favor of imposing higher taxes on billionaires, that would certainly raise doubts as to the veracity and coherence of his life-long political project. If Thomas Massie declared he was suddenly in favor of the state controlling key economic sectors, that too would make one wonder about the fundamental reliability and consistency of his long-articulated worldview. So, while political figures are certainly free to “change their mind” about things, the rest of us are also free to make judgments about whether those “mind-changes” are credible.

How, then, to evaluate the claimed “mind-change” of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense? In the recent past, Hegseth wasn’t just a casual supporter of the Iraq War — he was a full-blown professional pro-war activist and lobbyist, whose entire career was conjoined with his strident pro-war advocacy. Hegseth ran a group called “Veterans for Freedom,” whose explicit purpose was to pressure Congress to support the Iraq War and galvanize public opinion behind George W. Bush’s foreign policy, including by appearing in the media to make robust pro-war arguments — a role which Hegseth eventually marshaled into a gig on Fox News. As Hegseth fondly recounted in his 2020 book, American Crusade, one of the group’s primary tasks was to tour around the United States exhorting fellow citizens to join their pro-war cause. “We gave speeches aimed at building support for the war,” Hegseth recalled. “I believed in the mission we had in Iraq.”

But nowadays, Hegseth appears to be singing a different tune. In a podcast appearance last month, host Shawn Ryan asked: “Should we have been in Iraq?” To which Hesgeth replied: “I was a huge proponent of it at the time, but in retrospect, absolutely not,” adding, “I’ve been a recovering neocon for six years now.”

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Assad’s Downfall Proves Neocons Have Learned Nothing From Disastrous Middle East Meddling

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has fled his country, now under the protection of Vladimir Putin in Moscow. In only a few days, a regime that had withstood over a decade of brutal civil war crumbled into dust before the onslaught of a new rebel offensive.

Now, Syria teeters on the brink of tribal mayhem as disparate factions espousing differing strains of radical Islamism begin to squabble over the carcass and jostle for power. ISIS has even reemerged as part of the victorious rebel coalition, prompting U.S. airstrikes over the weekend.

But, on cue, the neocons crawled out of the woodwork to gloat, finding some solace in the bloodshed and mayhem after their recent electoral drubbing. In a little over 24 hours, they proved that they’ve learned nothing from over two decades of disastrous American meddling in the Middle East.

Unrepentant warmonger and Never Trumper Bill Kristol wasted no time waxing poetic on the carnage, posting on X, “The fall of Assad. On some days, one can believe that while the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends toward justice.” Perhaps the image of a toppled Assad statue reminded Kristol of when the same thing happened during the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq — back when people actually cared about what he had to say.

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Neocons Try Again in Syria

A day after Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon last week the long dormant war in Syria reignited as jihadist forces seized the city of Aleppo and advanced virtually unhindered in its quest to overthrow the Syrian government until finally meeting resistance from the Syrian Army backed up by Russia. This is the last chance for neocons in the United States to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before Donald Trump, who tried to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, resumes the presidency in 49 days.

On the neocon list of ways to make the world safer for Israel, Iran originally occupied pride of place. “Real men go to Tehran!” was the muscular brag. But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was persuaded to acquiesce in a less ambitious plan – to “do Iraq” and remove the “evil dictator” in Baghdad first.

As the invaders/occupiers got bogged down in Iraq, it seemed more sensible to “do Syria” next. With the help of “friendly services,” the neocons mounted a false-flag chemical attack outside Damascus in late August 2013, blaming it on President Bashar al-Assad, whom U.S. President Barack Obama had earlier said, “had to go.”

Obama had called such a chemical attack a red line but, mirabile dictu, chose to honor the U.S. Constitution by asking Congress first. Worse still for the neocons, during the first days of September, Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire by persuading Syria to destroy its chemical weapons under U.N. supervision.

Obama later admitted that virtually all of his advisers had wanted him to order Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria.

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The Insanity of Neocons

Stephen Bryen, who’s now retired from a stellar career at the very highest levels both in the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex and in the Executive and also the Legislative branches of the U.S. Government, and whose predictions about the war in Ukraine war thus far have consistently turned out to be true, is, for whatever reason, nonetheless a neocon (advocate for increasing yet further the U.S. empire) in the case of China; and, so, while he’s realistic about the need for the U.S. Government to withdraw from Ukraine, he is nonetheless a normal neocon in regards to China.

On November 29th, he headlined “China Alarmed As US Marine Prepare HIMARS and ATACMS for Yonaguni”, and argued that it’s a good move by Biden now, that he’ll be placing in Japan U.S. missiles that can hit Taiwan for the purpose of “stopping a Taiwan invasion,” by which stupid phrase he intends to mean that we’ll be stopping “an invasion of Taiwan,” by — you guess whom, which is, of course, according to the neocons’ plan, to be done by — China, as soon as Taiwan will announce that it is NOT a part of China, and for which purpose the U.S. Government has been arming Taiwan so that Taiwan can then (with American weapons and maybe direct Military involvement) resist the invasion by China that will be China’s inevitable response to this U.S.-planned breakaway from China by Taiwan. And THAT will then give the U.S. Government the ‘right’ to invade and conquer China — which is the real objective of all of this scheming and war-planning by Breyen and ogther neocons.

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Warmongering Neocons To Spend $2 Million On Ads For Ukraine War

With Republican support for the proxy war in Ukraine continuing to erode, Bill Kristol and fellow warmongering, neocon colleagues have launched a $2 million campaign to rally GOP voters and legislators to the lost cause — and specifically, to Biden’s request that Congress approve another $20.6 billion in Ukraine war funding.

While top congressional leaders are expected to back Biden’s request, more and more Republican legislators are saying “enough is enough.” 

Kristol routinely spawns new political entities to advance the neocon agenda. In this case, a group called Defending Democracy Together — an anti-Trump 501(c)(3) of which Kristol is president — has itself spun out an entity called Republicans for Ukraine. It’s a textbook example of astroturfing — the term that describes a political drive that fosters the illusion of widespread grassroots support for a particular political position. 

Both organizations are led by Kristol and Sarah Longwell, a Never Trumper who is also the publisher The Bulwark, a neocon website she cofounded in 2018 with Charlie Sykes and — there he is again — Bill Kristol. Defending Democracy Together’s other projects include “Republicans Against Trump,” “Republicans For Voting Rights,” “Republicans For The Rule Of Law,” as well as a pro-immigration entity and another that promotes alarmism about Russian tweets. 

Kristol and Longwell’s hopeless effort to materially change the Ukraine poll numbers centers on a collection of video testimonials from self-identified Republicans who want the US government to redistribute even more wealth to Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman in the name of fighting Russia — as if American security had anything at all to do with which government controls the Donbas region.  

The ad campaign will be delivered on television, billboards and online. A TV spot will run during the first Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, August 23. 

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Return of a Disgraced Neocon

CNN reports that President Joe Biden has nominated criminal neocon Elliott Abrams for a position on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which according to the U.S. State Department is responsible for “appraising activities intended to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics” and pays “acute attention” to the U.S. government’s official foreign propaganda arm, the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Usually when you hear someone called a “neocon” it’s not a strictly accurate description from a technical point of view and is frequently used to just mean “warmonger.”

But Abrams is actually a proper Project for a New American Century neoconservative ideologue with deep ties to the old-school neocons of the 1970s, and has helped promote violent U.S. imperialism in Latin America and the Middle East for decades.

In addition to serving as the Trump administration’s special representative for both Iran and Venezuela (two of the nations where former President Donald Trump’s foreign policy was at its most murderous), Abrams is probably best known for confessing to his role in the criminal coverup of Iran-Contra during the Reagan administration.

CNN — notoriously reluctant to criticize either U.S. foreign policy or Democratic presidential administrations — was surprisingly critical on this point in its report on Biden’s nomination of Abrams to the position.

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Bush-Era Neocons Should Shut The Fuck Up About Iraq (And Everything Else)

David Frum and Max Boot, two neoconservatives who helped grease the wheels for the invasion of Iraq, have some thoughts they’d like to share with us as we approach the 20th anniversary of that horrific and unforgivable war. Both of these perspectives can be read in widely esteemed mainstream publications, because everyone who was responsible for inflicting that war upon our species has enjoyed mainstream influence and esteem to this very day.

Both men concede in their own ways that the war was a mistake, while simultaneously cheerleading the US proxy war in Ukraine that has brought humanity closer to nuclear armageddon than it has been at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both men mix their Iraq War retrospectives with war apologia, historical revisionism, and outright lies. And both men should shut the fuck up. About everything. Forever.

Frum’s article is posted in The Atlantic, where he is a senior editor, and it is titled “The Iraq War Reconsidered“. Frum is credited with authoring George W Bush’s infamous “Axis of Evil” speech, which marked the beginning of an unprecedented era of US military expansionism and “humanitarian interventions” in geostrategically valuable nations after 9/11.

In just the second sentence of his article Frum opens with an absolute scorcher of a lie, saying “an arsenal of chemical-warfare shells and warheads” were discovered in Iraq to suggest that the weapons of mass destruction narrative had been proven at least somewhat true. As The Intercept’s Jon Schwartz explained back in 2015, the only chemical weapons in Iraq were either (A) munitions sealed in bunkers at an Iraqi weapons complex by UN inspectors in the nineties and left there because they were too dangerous to move, and (B) some old munitions that had been lost and forgotten after the Iran-Iraq War. In neither of these cases is it true that Saddam Hussein was hiding any weapons of mass destruction.

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The Neocons’ Primary War Tactic: Branding Opponents of U.S. Intervention as Traitors

One of the most bizarre but important dynamics of Trump-era U.S. politics is that the most fanatical war-hungry neocons, who shaped Bush/Cheney militarism, have become the most popular pundits and thought leaders in American liberalism. They have not changed in the slightest — they are employing the same tactics they have always invoked, and for the same causes — but they have correctly perceived that their agenda is better served by migrating back to the Democratic Party which originally spawned their bloodthirsty ideology.

The excuse offered by Democrats for their embrace of neocons — we did it only as a temporary coalition of convenience to oppose Trump — is false for many reasons. This unholy alliance pre-dated Trump. In 2014 — long before anyone envisioned Trump descending down an escalator on his path to the White House — the journalist Jacob Heilbrunn wrote a New York Times op-ed entitled “The Next Act of the Neocons.” He predicted, correctly as it turned out, that “the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy.”

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