A review of Iraq Study Group

By Tod Lindberg
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published December 12, 2006

A literary agent once told me that when you are trying to sell a book to a publisher, you should always keep in mind that it's not really the book you're selling; it's the idea of the book. Your objective is to get people excited about what's to come. The finished book, even if it's a very good book, ought to be almost anti-climactic. Otherwise, you haven't managed to get people as excited as you should have in the first place.
In this respect, indeed only in this respect, the report of the Iraq Study Group was exemplary. The idea that a bipartisan council of eminent persons would take an unvarnished look at Iraq and offer their collective wisdom on a fresh approach to extricate ourselves from our troubles was one whose time had come.
In the first place, we have the obvious fact of a policy that isn't working, at least if by "success" you mean a reduction in the violence in Iraq. So what's the new policy?
In the second place, the party of the president of the United States just suffered a big electoral defeat triggered by the perception of incompetence in handling the war. It's therefore a season of comeuppance and accountability, and the Iraq Study Group was perfectly positioned to crystallize the inchoate dissent voters were expressing into a comprehensive repudiation of past policy and the embrace of a coherent alternative.
In the third place, many Americans, including those most vocal in electing a Democratic Congress, want out of Iraq, preferably right now, but in any case sooner rather than later, and not on George W. Bush's indefinite schedule but in accordance with some timetable. Here was the chance to respond to their concerns.
Fourth, and most broadly, the report of the Iraq Study Group was to represent the end of the Bush administration as we know it. At last, a stake would be driven through the heart of what critics see as a naive and messianic mission of democracy promotion. The Iraq Study Group would represent the return of Washington to a sense of realistic seriousness and bring the final curtain down on the neoconservatives.
So, that's why so many people found the idea of the Iraq Study Group to be so exciting. Now as it happens, the "The Iraq Study Group Report" was not like a book deal. It was a book deal: Vintage brought it out. We are accordingly entitled to ask to what extent the anticipation surrounding the release of the report, including the selective leaks of some of its supposed recommendations and the photo portrait sessions for its co-chairs, was in fact manufactured or at least tweaked up by Vintage publicists in order to sell more books.
In any case, now we have our report and um, er, well, it's a flop. Oh, to the extent that it put a powerful wallop on the Bush administration for the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq, it delivered on one of its promises. But, let's face it, we are not exactly short on studies, reports, articles and books admiring the problem. What we are short on is serious proposals about where we go from here, and the more people got a look at the actual recommendations of the Iraq Study Group report, the clearer it became that the ISG didn't have one.
The elements of the report's big proposal for regional dialogue, engagement with Syria and Iran, and reactivation of the Arab-Israeli peace process may or may not be good ideas, but the notion that they would produce measurable results on the ground in Iraq is fanciful. If it is indeed true that the problems of Iraq can be solved only in the context of a broader settlement of Middle East security and identity politics, then that's a just a fancier way to conceive of inevitable failure.
As for the recommendations internal to Iraq, how come nobody before now ever thought of training up Iraqi military and police forces so that they can do more to provide security for the country? Oh, wait, that's already Bush administration policy. And it's hard to imagine that anybody who's seriously against the war at this point will find any satisfaction in a drawdown of forces as partial, contingent and far down the road as the ISG proposes.
As for the return of realism, it turns out realism has nothing much to say. The report is vaguely pro-Sunni and unambiguously pro-Saudi, but it evidently couldn't muster the nerve to say that what we really need is a good, pro-Riyadh strongman to take over the place and cut deals with our special envoy.
Yes, the ISG report will sell a few copies. How could it not, given the buildup? But as for policy, its main effect is to defer withdrawal pressure for a year as Mr. Bush claims to be implementing its bipartisan recommendations. Which means he's still going to have to figure Iraq out for himself. So once again, the reports of his demise have been exaggerated.

Source

How to Escape the Oil Trap

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are now awash in oil money, and no matter what the controls, some is surely getting to unsavory groups.

By Fareed Zakaria

Aug. 29 - Sept. 5, 2005 issue - If I could change one thing about American foreign policy, what would it be? The answer is easy, but it's not something most of us think of as foreign policy. I would adopt a serious national program geared toward energy efficiency and independence. Reducing our dependence on oil would be the single greatest multiplier of American power in the world. I leave it to economists to sort out what expensive oil does to America's growth and inflation prospects. What is less often noticed is how crippling this situation is for American foreign policy. "Everything we're trying to do in the world is made much more difficult in the current environment of rising oil prices," says Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World." Consider:

Terror. Over the last three decades, Islamic extremism and violence have been funded from two countries, Saudi Arabia and Iran, not coincidentally the world's first and second largest oil exporters. Both countries are now awash in money and, no matter what the controls, some of this cash is surely getting to unsavory groups and individuals.

Democracy. The centerpiece of Bush's foreign policy—encouraging democracy in the Middle East—could easily lose steam in a world of high-priced oil. Governments reform when they have to. But many Middle Eastern governments are likely to have easy access to huge surpluses for years, making it easier for them to avoid change. Saudi Arabia will probably have a budget surplus of more than $26 billion this year because the price of oil is so much higher than anticipated. That means it can keep the old ways going, bribing the Wahhabi imams, funding the Army and National Guard, spending freely on patronage programs. (And that would still leave plenty to fund dozens of new palaces and yachts.) Ditto for other corrupt, quasi-feudal oil states.

Iran. Tehran has launched a breathtakingly ambitious foreign policy, moving determinedly on a nuclear path, and is also making a bid for influence in neighboring Iraq. This is nothing less than an attempt to replace the United States as the dominant power in the region. And it will prove extremely difficult to counter—more so, given Tehran's current resources. Despite massive economic inefficiency and corruption, Iran today has built up foreign reserves of $29.87 billion.

Russia. A modern, Westernized Russia firmly anchored in Europe would mean peace and stability in the region. But a gush of oil revenues has strengthened the Kremlin's might, allowing Putin to consolidate power, defund his opponents, destroy competing centers of power and continue his disastrous and expensive war in Chechnya. And the "Russian model" appears to have taken hold in much of Central Asia.

Latin America. After two decades of political and economic progress in Latin America, we are watching a serious anti-American movement gain ground. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela—emboldened by his rising oil wealth—was the first in recent years to rebel against American influence, but similar sentiments are beginning to be heard in other countries, from Ecuador to Bolivia.

I could go on, from Central Asia to Nigeria. In almost every region, efforts to produce a more stable, peaceful and open world order are being compromised and complicated by high oil prices. And while America spends enormous time, money and effort dealing with the symptoms of this problem, we are actively fueling the cause.

Rising oil prices are the result of many different forces coming together. We have little control over some of them, like China's growth rate. But America remains the 800-pound gorilla of petroleum demand. In 2004, China consumed 6.5 million barrels of oil per day. The United States consumed 20.4 million barrels, and demand is rising. That is because of strong growth, but also because American cars—which guzzle the bulk of oil imports—are much less efficient than they used to be. This is the only area of the American economy in which we have become less energy-efficient than we were 20 years ago, and we are the only industrialized country to have slid backward in this way. There's one reason: SUVs. They made up 5 percent of the American fleet in 1990. They make up almost 54 percent today.

It's true that there is no silver bullet that will entirely solve America's energy problem, but there is one that goes a long way: more-efficient cars. If American cars averaged 40 miles per gallon, we would soon reduce consumption by 2 million to 3 million barrels of oil a day. That could translate into a sustained price drop of more than $20 a barrel. And getting cars to be that efficient is easy. For the most powerful study that explains how, read "Winning the Oil Endgame" by energy expert Amory Lovins (or go to oilendgame.com). I would start by raising fuel-efficiency standards, providing incentives for hybrids and making gasoline somewhat more expensive (yes, that means raising taxes). Of course, the energy bill recently passed by Congress does none of these things.

We don't need a Manhattan Project to find our way out of our current energy trap. The technologies already exist. But what we're searching for is perhaps even harder—political leadership and vision.

Write the author at comments@fareedzakaria.com.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9024768/site/newsweek/

Israel's Lost Moment

By Charles Krauthammer

Israel's war with Hezbollah is a war to secure its northern border, to defeat a terrorist militia bent on Israel's destruction, to restore Israeli deterrence in the age of the missile. But even more is at stake. Israel's leaders do not seem to understand how ruinous a military failure in Lebanon would be to its relationship with America, Israel's most vital lifeline.

For decades there has been a debate in the United States over Israel's strategic value. At critical moments in the past, Israel has indeed shown its value. In 1970 Israeli military moves against Syria saved King Hussein and the moderate pro-American Hashemite monarchy of Jordan. In 1982 American-made Israeli fighters engaged the Syrian air force, shooting down 86 MiGs in one week without a single loss, revealing a shocking Soviet technological backwardness that dealt a major blow to Soviet prestige abroad and self-confidence among its elites at home (including Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev).

But that was decades ago. The question, as always, is: What have you done for me lately? There is fierce debate in the United States about whether, in the post-Sept. 11 world, Israel is a net asset or liability. Hezbollah's unprovoked attack on July 12 provided Israel the extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate its utility by making a major contribution to America's war on terrorism.

America's green light for Israel to defend itself is seen as a favor to Israel. But that is a tendentious, misleadingly partial analysis. The green light -- indeed, the encouragement -- is also an act of clear self-interest. America wants, America needs, a decisive Hezbollah defeat.

Unlike many of the other terrorist groups in the Middle East, Hezbollah is a serious enemy of the United States. In 1983 it massacred 241 American servicemen. Except for al-Qaeda, it has killed more Americans than any other terror organization.

More important, it is today the leading edge of an aggressive, nuclear-hungry Iran. Hezbollah is a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary. Its mission is to extend the Islamic Revolution's influence into Lebanon and Palestine, destabilize any Arab-Israeli peace, and advance an Islamist Shiite ascendancy, led and controlled by Iran, throughout the Levant.

America finds itself at war with radical Islam, a two-churched monster: Sunni al-Qaeda is now being challenged by Shiite Iran for primacy in its epic confrontation with the infidel West. With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march. It is intervening through proxies throughout the Arab world -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq -- to subvert modernizing, Western-oriented Arab governments and bring these territories under Iranian hegemony. Its nuclear ambitions would secure these advances and give it an overwhelming preponderance of power over the Arabs and an absolute deterrent against serious counteractions by the United States, Israel or any other rival.

The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the United States to let Israel take down that organization. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but also against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West.

Hence Israel's rare opportunity to demonstrate what it can do for its great American patron. The defeat of Hezbollah would be a huge loss for Iran, both psychologically and strategically. Iran would lose its foothold in Lebanon. It would lose its major means to destabilize and inject itself into the heart of the Middle East. It would be shown to have vastly overreached in trying to establish itself as the regional superpower.

The United States has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel's ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later. He has allowed his war cabinet meetings to become fully public through the kind of leaks no serious wartime leadership would ever countenance. Divisive cabinet debates are broadcast to the world, as was Olmert's own complaint that "I'm tired. I didn't sleep at all last night" (Haaretz, July 28). Hardly the stuff to instill Churchillian confidence.

His search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation but America's confidence in Israel as well. That confidence -- and the relationship it reinforces -- is as important to Israel's survival as its own army. The tremulous Olmert seems not to have a clue.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Our Orphaned Middle East Policy

Things are looking up as everyone starts jumping ship.
---

It is common now to hear of an American Middle East policy in shambles. And why not, given the daily mayhem that is televised from the West Bank, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the overt threats of Iranian President Ahmadinej(ih)ad?

Somewhere in the Sunni Triangle, with costs mounting in our blood and treasure, the United States lost the last vestiges of that wonderful sense of national unity that had swept the country following September 11. About every week now some administration official seems under pressure to resign or in fact does.

Tell-all books by disgruntled former CIA agents and ex-diplomats lament how the supposedly clueless people in power did not listen to their own Protean expertise. Those who leak from the CIA, an agency with analysts seemingly at war with their own government at a time of war, are hardly considered culpable — so long as their tips were to the "right" newspaper and for the "right" cause.

Former proponents of Saddam's removal and democratization are now unabashedly triangulating — scrambling to be recast as "I warned them" foreign-policy consultants, as they showcase their intellectual wares for the next generation of politicians in 2008. Their support comes and goes, as they wonder whether the good news from Iraq should rekindle guarded approval, or the bad news should reaffirm their belated opposition. Not since the up-and-down summer of 1864 has this country at war seen such equivocating and self-serving editorialists and politicians.

No one pauses to suggest what the region would now look like with Saddam reaping windfall oil profits, 15 years of no-fly zones, ongoing corruption in Oil-for-Food, the bad effects of the U.N. embargo, Libya's weapons program, and an unfettered Dr. Khan. If a newly provocative Russia is willing to sell missiles to Iran's crazy Ahmadinej(ih)ad, imagine what its current attitude would be to its old client Saddam.

Or perhaps, as in the 1980s when over a million perished, our realists, who seem fond of such good old days of order and stability, could once again encourage an unleashed Saddam, with Uday and Qusay at his side, to be played against Iran for a (nuclear) round two. How sad that those who once fallaciously argued that the fascist Saddam was the proper counterweight to the fascist Iran now ignore that the genuine corrective is a democratic and humane Iraq.

A few retired generals smell blood, want to even old scores, and have demanded Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation. They earn not the usual condemnation from liberals for intruding into the gray area around our hallowed civilian control of the military, but praise for their insight and courage — as if speaking out on in retirement is especially brave or calling for radical change at a time of war is always wise. That they are usually Army officers long furious over military transformation is left unsaid — as is the irony that Iraq will largely be saved by the skill of their brethren U.S. ground officers currently deployed.

Scholars under the rubric of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, not the American Conservative magazine, publish a pseudo-scholarly treatise about undue Jewish influence that resulted inexplicably in a disastrous tilt in American policy toward the only liberal society in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, we are faulted for "outsourcing" the problem of Iranian nuclear ambitions when we let the multilateral Europeans take the lead in talks with Tehran. And we are then condemned as itching for more "preemption" and "unilateralism" when we sigh that at some point someone may have to act to prevent Mr. Ahmadinej(ih)ad from arming his missiles. This is a psychopath, after all, who assures those on the West Bank of his love and support by promising to send a nuke soon in their general direction. I suppose Hamas thinks that 50 kilotons can distinguish east from west Jerusalem.

But if we look beneath all these self-serving contradictions, real progress amid the carnage since September 11 is undeniable. It is not just that the United States has not been attacked again. Al Qaeda's leadership has been insidiously dismantled. Even bin Laden's communiqués are increasingly pathetic, whining about lost truce opportunities for the Crusaders while warning of more welcomed genocide in Darfur. We can be sure of his war-induced attenuated stature when some on the Left are already suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were mostly the operations of just a few criminals rather than precursors to international jihad.

Some European governments that were patently anti-American — Chirac's in France or Schroeder's in Germany — are either gone or going. The European public no longer thinks that the threat of Islamic fascism was mostly something concocted by George Bush after 9/11. American supporters in Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom were returned to power. Finally a parliament is meeting in Iraq. There have been open elections in two regions of the Arab Middle East. In one place, terrorists were voted in; in the other place — the much more criticized one — terrorists are being hunted down.

Hamas wanted power; the Americans didn't interfere, and they got elected. Now they can galvanize their people for their promised war against Israel (that they will lose), or they can find a way to evolve from thuggery to governance — it's their call. It is not the decision of the United States, which, after fifteen years, is finally freed from subsidizing West Bank terrorists masquerading as statesmen.

It is a fine thing for all to see the once swaggering gunmen now on television appealing for daily cash from suddenly stingy Middle East benefactors, as Hamas whines that Fatah is in Israel's hip pocket and decries militants who shoot without government authorization. Democracy, not more autocracy, exposed that absurdity.

Middle Easterners wish that we would be humbler, that we would let more Arabs into the United States, that we would not lecture them so, that we had not used force to remove Saddam, that we did not seem so self-righteous when promoting Western democracy, that we could express our intentions in a more sympathetic and articulate fashion. It is true that at critical junctures we did not explain ourselves well, and did not apprise the public candidly here and abroad about the range of poor options that confronted this nation after September 11.

But aside from these complaints, the people of the Middle East for the first time are watching on television a voting parliament in Iraq — and what sort of killers are trying to stop it. They know that oil skyrocketed and that the petroleum of Mesopotamia was not appropriated by the United States — and that huge windfall profits in the Middle East are still not likely to trickle down their way. They also accept that China in the Middle East cares only for petroleum, Russia only to cause others trouble, and Europe mostly to talk.

Those in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, as elsewhere in the Arab world, want closer, not more distant, relations with the United States. Ever so slowly the Arab Street is grasping that the more its own governments are angry at us for prodding them, the more it is a sign that we are on the right side of history.

As for the Iranian crisis, the only peaceful solution, given Russian meddling and Western fear over oil prices, may be through the emergence of democracy in Iraq, which would then galvanize dissidents in Iran. Anyone who rules out force in dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions should support unequivocally the democratic experiment in Iraq.

For all the scrambling to disown the present policies, the irony is that they are bearing fruit and always had the best chance to end the region's genesis of terror. How sad that those who supported the costly spread of freedom are written off as illiberal, and those who resigned themselves to the easy status quo were seen as wise and sober.

So there we have it: an orphaned policy with a bright future that is being claimed by fewer and fewer — we'll see if that changes when Iraq emerges as a stable democracy.

A Footnote

I spent recent days recovering from emergency surgery for a perforated appendix in a Red Crescent clinic in Libya. I owe a great debt to the skill and confidence of a general surgeon, Dr. Ayoub, who was roused at 3 A.M., and saved me from a great deal worse, along with Dr. al Hafez who offered his medical expertise and care that allowed me to get back to California. Throughout all this, I did not experience a shred of anti-Americanism, but instead real kindness from Libyans from all walks of life. There is sometimes perhaps hurt and confusion over America's intentions — but also grudging acknowledgement that for the first time in memory there is real hope for something different, something far better in the future of the Middle East.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.


Source

Hopeful Signs in the Middle East

Weekly Column

Something extraordinary happened on March 1st: a New York Times editorial had some nice things to say about President Bush. For those who don't know, Times editorials have been reflexively hostile, the type that mumble, "Bush's fault. Volcanoes, mosquitoes, paper cuts - all Bush's fault.'

That's why it was such a surprise to open my paper and find the following:

"[T]his has so far been a year of heartening surprises - each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance. And for all the negative consequences that flowed from the American invasion of Iraq, there could have been no democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in power."

Why is there so much hope among policy makers currently? Freedom, it seems, is on the march.

Many pundits doubted that elections were possible in Iraq and called for a postponement until the security situation could be improved. But U.S. and Iraqi leaders concluded that before we could bring peace to the country and turn its security over to its own people, we would have to let the Iraqi people establish a government that they could truly call their own.

Once given the opportunity, Iraqi voters turned out in large numbers to select their leaders. So far, the sober work of the newly elected officials is refuting the notion that Arab culture is incompatible with democracy. Time will tell, but the signs are hopeful.

Due to the passing of Yasser Arafat, and during the run- up to the Iraqi elections, on January 9th the Palestinians held their first elections since 1996. The resulting parliament seems to be committed to negotiating peace with Israel, attacking corruption, and establishing a competent government.

In Lebanon, the assassination of an opposition leader brought a broad political coalition out in the streets to demand that Syria end its decades-old occupation of that country. The pressure became so intense that the Syrian- dominated government resigned. Lebanese citizens and the international community are saying clearly that it is time for Syria to get out so the upcoming Lebanese elections can be held without interference.

In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak has agreed to allow opponents to run against him in the upcoming presidential election. Previously, voters were only going to be allowed to vote "yes" or "no" to Mubarak's continued rule. Nobody expects Mubarak to change the rules enough to make it possible for him to actually lose, but growing numbers of Egyptians are looking at the elections in Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere, and are saying, "How about us?" It's a healthy development.

Under pressure from the U.S., and with the Iraqi elections as a backdrop, Saudi Arabia's feudalistic monarchy is holding a series of municipal elections. Everybody agrees that this is just a start, but one that was long overdue.

Given the relentlessly autocratic history of most of the Middle East, even tentative advances for freedom in the area are important. Once the people of the Middle East feel that they can influence their governments through peaceful means, they will be less likely to produce extremists who express themselves through bombs and bullets at home and abroad.

Source

Challenging Rest of the World With a New Order

The New York Times
THE BUSH RECORD

By ROGER COHEN, DAVID E. SANGER and STEVEN R. WEISMAN

orge Castañeda, Mexico's former foreign minister, has two distinct images of George W. Bush: the charmer intent on reinventing Mexican-American ties and the chastiser impatient with Mexico as the promise of a new relationship soured.

The change came with the Sept. 11 attacks. "My sense is that Bush lost and never regained the gift he had shown for making you feel at ease," said Mr. Castañeda, who left office last year. "He became aloof, brusque, and on occasion abrasive."

The brusqueness had a clear message: the United States is at war, it needs everybody's support and that support is not negotiable. Mexico's hesitant stance at the United Nations on the war in Iraq became a source of tension. Yet Mr. Castañeda said, "I was never asked, 'What is it you need in order to be more cooperative with us? What can we do to help?' "

It is a characterization of Mr. Bush's foreign policy style often heard around the world: bullying, unreceptive, brazen. The result, critics of this administration contend, has been a disastrous loss of international support, damage to American credibility, the sullying of America's image and a devastating war that has already taken more than 1,000 American lives. In the first presidential debate, Senator John Kerry argued that only with a change of presidents could the damage be undone.

Mr. Bush had a sharp rebuttal, just as his advisers have long told a different story. In their narrative, Mr. Bush's presidency has been an era of historic change, of new alliances bravely embraced, critical relationships solidified, rapid adaptation to a mortal threat and, above all, a bold undertaking to advance freedom in the Middle East through Iraq.

That was the best way, they argue, to confront the terrorist threat to the United States. Along the way, they say, Mr. Bush has used the North Korea crisis to deepen an American relationship with China, steered Pakistan and India away from the brink of nuclear war, and nurtured a relationship with Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, even after scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

"The charge is, 'You guys are unilateralists and it's a strategy of pre-emption,' " Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in an interview. "I just don't think it's true, but it gets repeated often enough that it starts to take on the aura of truth."

The Nov. 2 election will see if Mr. Bush's approach to foreign policy - replete with images of courage and endurance, of moral certitudes and of generational struggle to defeat a new enemy while transforming an entire region - has proved persuasive to most Americans. It has clearly divided America's friends.

Some are enthused. "Relations between Japan and America have never been better than with Bush," said Hatsuhisa Takashima, the foreign ministry spokesman in Tokyo, where spines have been stiffened by the North Korean threat and Mr. Bush's blunt approach to terrorism. "We have more than 500 troops in Iraq because we believe the American-British action prodded Libya to disarm, sent a strong message to North Korea and showed the price of noncompliance with United Nations resolutions. Failure in Iraq is unthinkable."

But as things stand, failure, with its potentially dire consequences for American world leadership, cannot be ruled out. Mr. Bush has proved to be a gambler in foreign affairs. Revolutions can bring big rewards. They can also deliver disaster.

New Attitude, New Allies

The story of the Bush foreign policy is one of startling change: from the promise of a "humble" approach in 2000 through the "dead or alive" search for the elusive Osama bin Laden to the articulation of a bold, pro-active doctrine summed up last month by Mr. Bush, when he told the United Nations:

"Our security is not merely founded in spheres of influence or some balance of power; the security of our world is found in advancing the rights of mankind."

In other words, less emphasis on containment - the policy of slow-squeeze that defeated communism - and more on the contagion of liberty installed, at least in Iraq, by force of arms. This is stirring stuff that resonates in Eastern Europe, where the wounds of oppression are still felt, as well as with Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister of Iraq, and many of his compatriots. But it is also the stuff of upheaval, and a policy on which the NATO alliance, long a cornerstone of American security, has been unable to agree.

"We have been worried by the absence of debate, the presentation of faits accomplis," said Javier Solana, a former NATO secretary-general and now the European Union's chief foreign affairs official.

In effect, a new spectrum of relations with Washington has emerged. At one end are estranged allies like France and Germany, angered by the war, convinced it is a losing struggle, alarmed by America's use of overwhelming power.

In the muddy middle are nations like Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, important allies whose leaders are sometimes supportive, but where many people believe Mr. Bush has ignited a war against Islam. Their reliability is uncertain.

It has not helped that the Mideast peace process has stalled and that Mr. Bush has appeared less engaged in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute than his recent predecessors.

At the other end are nations, including Poland, Italy, Britain and Japan, that have made the choice to fall in line with Mr. Bush after Sept. 11. Others, including Russia, China and Israel, have embraced the war on terror for reasons of their own.

These divisions get little airing when Mr. Bush campaigns for a second term. The rhetoric at his rallies is of an America unbowed and unrestrained. The day after the first presidential debate Mr. Bush said Mr. Kerry would subject decisions on national security to vetoes "by countries like France.'' The U.N. is often derided at Republican events.

This sort of talk may bring partisan crowds to their feet, but it makes the world uneasy.

"If you want to get a cheap cheer from certain quarters in America, it seems that all you have to do is bash the U.N., or the French or the very idea that allies are entitled to have their own opinions," Chris Patten, the commissioner for external relations for the European Union, said last month. "Multilateralists, we are told, want to outsource American foreign and security policy to a bunch of garlic-chewing, cheese-eating wimps."

And so the cheese-eaters ask: What would a second Bush administration look like?

Have Sept. 11 and the bitter diplomatic clashes of the past three years so changed Mr. Bush's mental map of American alliances that every nation will be measured chiefly by whether it embraces his strategy against terrorism, and sign on to the small, reluctant coalition in Iraq?

Some see small signs since the ouster of Saddam Hussein that this may not be the case. Even in western Europe, the caricature of Mr. Bush as a gunslinger has faded a bit, replaced by a more complex picture of a man who, as Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to Washington put it, "is less outlandish in his practice than his rhetoric." After all, the ambassador noted, "We have some real live diplomacy with North Korea."

In an interview in late August, Mr. Bush waved off the accusation that he had damaged alliances.

"Wait a minute, a lot of people agreed with Iraq," Mr. Bush said. "There was a diplomatic process" at the U.N., he said, "that I think the world thought was the right thing to do."

But he was unapologetic about short-circuiting that process to invade Iraq. "It became clear to me that we were never going to get a second resolution out of the United Nations," he said. He realized, he added, that it was time "for an American president to set an agenda, make it clear, not change, not get blown around because of political winds."

That, he promised, is how he will operate if re-elected next month.

A World Alienated

While many nations have criticized Mr. Bush for walking away from certain international institutions and treaties, it is doubtful that any American president would have embraced an International Criminal Court that could put American peacekeepers on trial. Even Mr. Kerry says the Kyoto protocol on global warming that Mr. Bush rejected should be renegotiated. Certainly, any American president would have used force to respond to the attacks on New York and Washington.

But the complaint often heard around the world is that from the outset the Bush administration's dismissive attitude set a pattern of take-it-or-leave-it policies that needlessly alienated friends. The Iraq war accelerated that process. Then, the acknowledgment that there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and no proven links between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda cemented the view in Paris, Berlin and elsewhere that Mr. Bush governed from ideology first, facts second.

"The United States had to react strongly to Sept. 11, a fact often forgotten in Europe," said Alexandre Adler, a French foreign policy expert generally sympathetic to America. "But Bush has given the image of a warmonger without subtleties and the result is no president since Nixon, and perhaps not even then, has been so unpopular here."

There is little question that if Europe were voting on Nov. 2, Mr. Bush would lose by a landslide. But Europe, of course, is not the world, a point driven home by Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, who listed several ways she thought the president had improved relations with foreign leaders.

"The best relationship that any administration has had with Russia," she said in an interview. "The best relationship that any administration has had with China. An outstanding relationship with India at the same time that you have a very good relationship with Pakistan. The expansion of NATO into the Baltics without destroying the U.S. relationship with Russia."

China and India, of course, account for more than a third of humanity, a point Ms. Rice underscored as she urged the administration's critics to think hard about who is complaining about alienation and who is not.

But the complaints are often vociferous. "The Bush administration started with a belief that in the past 500 years or more, no greater gap had ever existed between the No. 1 and No. 2 power in the world," said Norman Ornstein, a foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute. "Given this American domination, they believed, especially after 9/11, that it was enough to express the American national interest firmly and everyone would accommodate themselves."

They did not. While there was an outpouring of sympathy for the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks, by the end of 2002 the sympathy had vanished. When Mr. Bush arrived this summer in Ireland, he was spirited off to a castle, miles from anyone. Protests marked Mr. Bush's most recent visit to Britain, home of his most steadfast ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair. Even Mr. Blair had to apologize for the intelligence about unconventional weapons in Iraq, something Mr. Bush has resisted.

Anti-Americanism has become a winning European platform. In the most recent Spanish and German elections, opposing Mr. Bush's policies proved central to both the upset victory of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the re-election of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, respectively.

But recently, Mr. Bush has been buoyed by the overwhelming re-election of a steadfast ally, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia. For the past few days, Mr. Bush has crisscrossed Minnesota, Iowa, and Colorado celebrating Afghanistan's first free election.

Still, anti-American hostility in the Islamic world is widespread. Last year, Mr. Powell asked Edward P. Djerejian, an experienced diplomat, to travel the world to examine the failures of American public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Mr. Djerejian returned shocked at the picture of America he saw on Arab television and the absence of any effective American rebuttal. "We did not have anywhere near enough people in place with the right language skills or the right sensitivities to respond," he said.

Mr. Djerejian still believes the outcome in Iraq could be positive, but he added that a chronically unstable Iraq would "set back the key goals we said we were trying to achieve on the Arab-Israeli front, on energy security and certainly on democratizing the region."

His investigation came before the photographs of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq emerged. "The photographs shattered our reputation as the world's most admired champion of freedom and justice," said Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution. "That is grave, because without the world's trust, America cannot flourish."

So three years after Sept. 11, Mr. Bush leads a United States whose image has been tarnished, while Europeans, Asians and Latin Americans still feel far less threatened by terrorism than Americans do.

The president speaks of the threat almost daily, but leaders elsewhere do not. In Europe, terrorism is not new and so seems less menacing; in Asia, the rapid growth of China and India continues to fuel an optimism that dispels, or at least diminishes, the dark clouds from the Middle East; in Latin America, trade and economic issues seem at least as important as Al Qaeda. The shared perception of a common threat that was the cornerstone of America's cold war alliances is gone.

"This America that speaks constantly of war and designates an enemy is not really accepted here," said Nicole Bacharan, a French analyst. "Europeans have a deep desire not to feel threatened. It is sad to observe this divorce in our world views."

In Spite of Rifts, Advances

Mr. Bush is aware of the divide, and in recent months has tried to bridge it. In Istanbul in June at a NATO summit meeting where Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and terrorism were on the agenda, he dispensed with his prepared speech in favor of a direct and emotional appeal.

An American diplomat in attendance said that Mr. Bush "spoke strongly, seemed a real leader'' and pressed his case that "whatever past differences, we all have a stake in the success of an independent Iraq."

But the next day, President Jacques Chirac of France shot back that NATO would never go into Iraq. "I don't believe it's NATO's job to intervene in Iraq," he said. Mr. Bush was angry, aides say, but pushed on. This summer NATO sent a 40-person team to Baghdad and recently, after long wrangling between the United States and France, agreed to increase the team to about 300 people to train Iraqi officers.

Ms. Rice and Mr. Powell say such missions prove that any tensions with France are overblown. "The relationship's fine," Ms. Rice said, citing the French role in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Relations with France are always "better in practice than they are in theory," she added.

Perhaps, but Mr. Chirac and Mr. Bush are no closer in world views than they ever were. The French president said recently that he sought a multilateral world in which the United Nations set the laws by which all nations abide - code words for limiting American power. Mr. Bush flatly rejects this view.

Ms. Rice insisted that Iraq had not thrust all other issues to the back burner.

"You have the most comprehensive policy toward Africa that any administration has had, including trade rights and AIDS and intervention with American forces to help solve the Liberia situation,'' she said. "You have China on the front lines against the North Korean nuclear program."

Her voice began to rise. "You want me to keep going?" she asked.

Certainly, Mr. Bush can cite the democratic opening in Afghanistan and Libya's move to abandon its nuclear weapons program as achievements. An Indian-Pakistani dialogue has begun, in part because of Mr. Powell's intervention last year.

At campaign stops, Mr. Bush often mentions the six-party talks with North Korea - involving China, Russia, South Korea and Japan - as an example of his diplomatic style.

"The difference between Iraq and North Korea, for example, is 11 years," Mr. Bush said in his interview. "Diplomacy failed for 11 years in Iraq. And this new diplomatic effort is barely a year old."

But the North Korean talks have also been an example of what happens when international diplomacy gets bogged down between hawks in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, and those in the State Department urging engagement. Not until it was clear that North Korea was probably manufacturing new weapons did Mr. Bush intervene.

"I give credit to Secretary Powell, who has been a lone voice of sanity on this issue, for creating the six-party talks, which now have the possibility of a potential solution," said Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who was engaged in negotiating efforts as a member of the Clinton administration and is an active supporter of Mr. Kerry. "But we should have engaged bilaterally with North Korea sooner."

Elsewhere, the record seems mixed. In Africa, Mr. Bush followed Mr. Powell's lead to describe events in Sudan as "genocide." The United States is still working with African, Arab and European nations to make Sudan accept a large force of African peacekeeping troops to stabilize the western region of Darfur.

Pakistan's continued help against Al Qaeda appears solid, but Islamabad pardoned Abdul Qadeer Khan, the nuclear scientist who had smuggled nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran. Mr. Bush uttered not a word of criticism, even after Pakistan refused to allow the United States to interrogate him.

A Question of Consultation

It often appears to his allies that Mr. Bush offers only a veneer of consultation. To deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Bush administration has embraced the "quartet" - the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - to work on reciprocal steps by Israel and the Palestinians leading to a Palestinian state.

But Europeans, including Prime Minister Blair of Britain, remain frustrated by what they say has been Mr. Bush's failure to become actively engaged in pressing Israel to freeze the growth of settlements and to ease conditions for Palestinians living in the West Bank.

While some European states - though not France - have come around to the administration's view demanding that Yasir Arafat must step aside as the Palestinian leader, they say they are dismayed that Mr. Bush has listened to conservatives in the White House and the Pentagon on Israel policy rather than the State Department, which has always advocated more conciliatory steps.

"When Madeleine Albright spoke, you knew she spoke for the Clinton administration," said Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister. "Nowadays you never quite know."

As a result, European states no longer know how to structure their relationship with the United States. They wonder if there is enough stability in "coalitions of the willing" - Mr. Bush's favorite phrase to describe the nations that have joined the United States in Iraq.

Indeed, Iraq, many European officials say, was a costly distraction from fighting terrorism. They argue that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whose images feed extremism across the Arab world, has been neglected. Iran, a more real and imminent threat than Iraq, and a source of further European-American division, was ignored for too long.

The resulting splits - those between Europe and America and those between the Arab world and America - are clear. What remains uncertain is whether Mr. Bush's policies will let terrorists exploit those divisions or whether his determination will crush them.

Source

OUR HIJACKED FOREIGN POLICY

By Justin Raimondo

antiwar.com

Neoconservatives take Washington – Baghdad is next

Many are baffled by the Bush administration's fixation on Iraq as the next target in our perpetual "war on terrorism." After all, there's no proven link between Saddam and 9/11, or Iraq and the anthrax scare – in spite of strenuous efforts to link Baghdad to both – so why is Dubya going off on such a pronounced tangent and beating the war drums for Gulf War II? Chris Matthews, the columnist who throws a fast (some weenies would say mean) "Hardball" on MSNBC, knows and isn't shy about saying what's behind Dubya's diversion:

"Like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, a pair of rightist factions in the Bush administration are hoping to take the United States on the road to Baghdad. Unlike the beloved Hope-Crosby 'road' pictures, however, the adventure in Iraq is not going to be funny."

THE AXIS OF KRISTOL

Yes, but some will definitely be all smiles, among them what Matthews calls the "neoconservative faction" of the administration: namely, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard, who, with his sometime co-author Robert Kagan, proclaimed in a famous article that the goal of American foreign policy must be "benevolent world hegemony." Matthews dolefully notes that the two of them "write a regular column for the Washington Post pushing war with Iraq," as the rest of the neocon chorus dutifully shouts "Amen!", including Frank Gaffney, William Safire, and a host of Washington political operatives deeply embedded in the Bush administration. One widely-noted example of neocon dominance: as neocon presidential speechwriter David Frum, author of the "axis of evil" phraseology, exits the White House, neocon Joseph Shattan takes his place.

REVERSE BLACKLISTING

Dana Milbank recently pointed out in the Washington Post that a cadre of young neocons dominates the White House corps of speechwriters: Shattan once worked for Kristol, when the latter was shilling for Dan Quayle, a job history young Shattan shares with Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully and Cheney scribe John McConnell. Other Kristolian alumni: Peter Wehner, another Bush speechwriter, and National Security Council wordsmith Matthew Rees. What's odd about Shattan's ascension, however, is that he had just gotten through savaging the Bushies in National Review for not being sufficiently pro-Israel. By endorsing a Palestinian state, Bush was exhibiting "America's cowardice and corruption," averred the future White House speechwriter:

"Thanks entirely to the president and his team . . . the campaign to defeat the Islamist challenge has gotten off to a singularly inauspicious start."

After that, naturally, Shattan was vetoed for a job in the administration as a speechwriter for the Energy Department by the munchikins in the Office of Presidential Personnel – and, not so naturally, invited to work at the White House.

A NEW FRISSON

Oh, but there's no such thing as a "neocon agenda" National Review rushes to reassure us: this is an invention of "the Left." NR writer Neil Seeman, a policy analyst at the Canadian Fraser Institute, complains:

"After 9/11, terms like 'neoconservative agenda' and 'neoconservative' have acquired a new frisson in the anti-war lexicon."

Seeman goes on to attack none other than Pat Buchanan for firing "the first fusillade." Some "leftist"!

NEO VERSUS PALEO

Indeed, the first and loudest complaints against the neocons and their agenda came not from the Left but from their critics on the Right, not only Pat Buchanan but Tom Fleming of the Rockford Institute and conservative scholar Paul Gottfried: the latter's book, The Conservative Movement, chronicles what Gottfried regards as the degeneration of authentic conservatism since the neocons gained the upper hand over traditionalists and libertarians. My own book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement also tells the story of how the limited government and pro-peace conservatism of Senator Robert A. Taft was subverted by a coterie of ex-Stalinists and ex-Trotskyists and made consonant with a right-wing form of social democracy.

This is old news: the neocon-"paleocon" debate has been playing out in the pages of conservative journals for a decade. But Seeman is blissfully oblivious to all this, or pretends to be, and blithely derides the very idea of a neocon agenda as "one of those gems you might find littered in fascinating periodicals with names like the Journal of Canadian Studies." Well, uh, not exactly: try Chronicles magazine, which is to National Review what real gold is to fool's gold, if you want the real dirt on the neocons.

THE GLOBALISTS

A major target of the paleocon critique has been the globalist outlook of the neocon faction, whose foreign policy views can be summed up by simply inverting the title of Pat Buchanan's best-selling anti-interventionist tome, A Republic, Not an Empire. The paleocons, for their part, abhor war, albeit not on pacifist but on decentralist and libertarian grounds. Kristol and his fellow neo-imperialists have never seen a war they didn't support, even going so far as threatening to abandon the Republicans, during the Clinton era, if they didn't get squarely behind Clinton's rape of Serbia. Kristol called for "cracking Serb skulls" long before the Great Pantsdropper decided, three years ago today [March 24], to drop bombs on Belgrade.

KRISTOL'S ODYSSEY

Kristol and his followers did walk out of the GOP to support warhawk John McCain, who, from Day One of the Kosovo war, called for putting in American ground troops, and whose blustering bullying style perfectly reflects the neocon foreign policy. For years, Kristol and his gang have been clamoring for war not only with Iraq, but with the entire Arab Middle East. Now, in the wake of 9/11, they have seized their chance, and are taking the offensive: Kristol and a coterie of his fellow neocons recently signed an open letter to the President calling for the military occupation of not only Iraq, but also Syria, Iran, and much of the rest of the Middle East. That would leave the US with a lone ally in the region: it would be a war pitting the US and Israel against a billion-plus Muslims worldwide. What's scarier is that they may even get their way….

ISN'T DEMOCRACY WONDERFUL?

To show you how much presidential elections, or any sort of elections, mean in this country: the Kristolians are not-so-quietly infiltrating a White House whose election most of them fiercely opposed, or supported only tepidly. So now we are getting the rhetoric of "Mad John" McCain coming out of George W. "Humility" Bush's mouth. And you wondered why….

DON'T LOOK AT THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

Oh, but not to worry, says Seeman, it's not the neocons because, you see, there was this poll of "opinion leaders," and it shows that the idea of expanding the war to Iraq is real popular if that country can be shown to "support terrorism." (A big "if," but never mind….) So, you see, practically everybody – or, at least, anybody who's anybody – has forgotten all about Osam-bin-What's-his-name, and is now just as determined to see US troops take Baghdad, even if it means vicious house-to-house streetfighting, as, say, Charles Krauthammer. "Sorry folks," says Seeman,

"There's no vast right-wing conspiracy here. Curiously, though, the anti-war, anti-neocon cant continues. Neocons are 'Washington's War Party'; the neocons are implacable and blood thirsty; and so on and so forth. Not so long ago, neoconservatives were a few estranged liberals, mugged by reality. Now they're everywhere, mugging America's entire political agenda? I don't think so."

Who, us? Seeman's indignant denial may seem disingenuous to intellectual historians of the Right, who have traced the neoconservatives' promiscuous odyssey from schismatic Trotskyism to the far-right wing of Social Democracy and then into the arms of the conservative establishment. Yet it is perfectly in synch with the conceit that their predecessors on the Right – the traditionalists and the libertarians – hardly mattered. In celebrating the complete takeover of conservative institutions by "a few estranged liberals mugged by reality," Weekly Standard writer David Brooks once triumphantly declared "We're all neoconservatives now!" So, it seems, they are everywhere, mugging American's entire political agenda – and the number one item on their agenda is war.

WHAT DO NEOCONS BELIEVE?

The article by Joe Sobran that I link to above describes the neocons as essentially "pragmatists" who are, at best, "muddled centrists" with "conservative leanings," and as basically lacking any coherent ideology beyond support for the New Deal's statification of American capitalism and a general feeling that they'd "had enough of liberalism." Sobran is right about their statist inclinations, but he's wrong on the essential point. The neocons may be all over the map on domestic policy, exhibiting none of the gut-level distrust of government power that defines the traditional American Right, but on the vital question of foreign policy they have been the most consistently belligerent faction in American politics.

THE TRIUMPH OF SIDNEY HOOK

Indeed, warmongering is the very essence of neoconservatism: the first neocons (James Burnham, and Max Shachtman, two dissident Trotskyists who turned right staring in 1940) split with the Left over the question of World War II: Burnham went on to set the tone at National Review, and Shachtman had an influence on the slower-moving ex-lefists who became Reaganites in the 1970s and 80s. During the Vietnam era, the leading lights of the neocon movement left the Democratic party when the antiwar McGovernites took over. During the cold war, as Sobran correctly notes, the neocons were the most militant faction, and they came into policy positions during the Reagan administration, boring their way into the National Endowment for Democracy, and under the aegis of such ex-Democrats as Jeanne Kirkpatrick. This marriage of Right and ex-Left was consummated, symbolically, when President Ronald Reagan awarded the Medal of Freedom to Sidney Hook, a lifelong socialist and fervent anti-Communist.

To such forerunners of neoconservatism as Professor Hook, the heroes of the Old Right – Senator Robert A. Taft, Joe McCarthy, and even Barry Goldwater – were disreputable (to liberals, that is) and therefore beyond the pale. They didn't want to dismantle the Welfare-Warfare State that had grown up in the wake of the New Deal: indeed, they didn't care much about domestic policy, as most of the neocons' attention was directed abroad, at the battlefields of the cold war in Europe and Asia. With the end of the cold war, however, the neocons were temporarily in a funk. What to do?

LOOKING FOR TROUBLE

After all, their primary ideological focus had suddenly, without warning, dissolved before their very eyes, like a mirage in the desert. And what could take the place of the Kremlin in their pantheon of evil? In the neocons' never-ending wargame, a militant Good always requires an even more militant Evil. But no one was quite up to snuff: Slobodan Milosevic was supposed to be "another Hitler," but instead turned out to be a smalltime hoodlum. Saddam Hussein was only a threat to Israel and Kuwait, in spite of the propaganda campaign that tried to paint his regime as the second coming of the Third Reich. Besides, in a post-cold war world that looked forward to a "peace dividend" – remember that? – their desperate search for a suitable enemy was more than a little unseemly: it seemed to many, on the right as well as the left, that the neocons were just trying to make trouble (trouble which, in their case, always means war).

A NEW BEGINNING

9/11 breathed new life into the neocons, and animated them as never before. They immediately sprang into action, taking full advantage of the war hysteria to broaden the scope of the public's anger toward all things Arab. From the beginning, they looked beyond Afghanistan and took a position that was, as they say, more royalist than the King. As the President and his secretary of state looked to build a broad anti-terrorist coalition, including key Arab countries, the neocons accused him of selling out Israel. And here we come to yet another key element of the neocon agenda, and that is unconditional support for Israeli aggression and expansionism. As far as they are concerned, any talk of compromise or conciliation in the Middle East is "appeasement." When Ariel Sharon compared George W. Bush to Neville Chamberlain, and his own nation to poor little Czechoslovakia, neocon Bill Bennett sided with Sharon. Never mind coalition-building: the neocons want nothing less than all-out war between America and the Islamic world, and don't mind at all if Israel is the prime beneficiary.

THE NEW POPULAR FRONT

Chris Matthews is right that this administration is led by a bunch of "oil patch veterans" who have a "sense of entitlement" to the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf. He is also wise to the fact that a war on Iraq can only benefit Israel, and that the neocons are more than ready to sell American interests down the river if that is what Israel requires. It scares him that a cabal of ideologues who revel in the idea of waging World War IV has worked its way into the White House, and is being given the run of the place. As well it should.

And he's spot on in his analysis of the mechanics of the neocons' pact with Big Oil. This working alliance is a revamped version of the same right-wing Popular Front that took over the conservative movement in the late 1980s, the union of big business and neoconservative intellectuals that blossomed into lushly funded thinktanks, magazines, and front organizations which proliferated like worms after a rain. The neocons crawled up through the ranks during the Reagan era, and began to aggressively assert their dominance on the Right. Having purged most of the libertarians and anyone else in the least bit original or interesting for any number of heresies, the Right was short of intellectuals and was more than glad to welcome new recruits with open arms – especially those whose acceptability as former liberals made the New York Times and the Washington Post begin to take conservatives seriously.

A BLAST FROM THE PAST

The conservatives of, say, 1952, would find the triumphalist rot trumpeted by our bellicose neocons nothing short of crazy. Invade and conquer the Middle East? I can hear old Bob Taft, who opposed NATO, questioned the Korean war, and – like virtually all conservatives of the day – derided the Marshall Plan as "globaloney," rolling over in his grave. The conservative writer Garet Garrett – whose Saturday Evening Post salvos against the New Deal have just been issued in book form by Caxton Press – warned, in 1952, that "we have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire." But to today's "conservatives" of the neo variety, that's a good thing….

THE TRANSFORMATION

The transformation of the American Right from a bunch of crusty "anti-government" types who worry that Social Security is the last step on the road to socialism and fear the power of government into spineless suck-ups to Power is best illustrated by the antics of the new generation of neocons – exemplified in their lightweightness by National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg. We've just been treated to a dose of Goldbergian conservatism in his latest column supposedly debunking the idea that we are living in an increasingly Orwellian age: that the prophetic novel written by the man called the conscience of his generation was not prophetic at all:

"The British have had cameras in train stations for over a decade in order to combat IRA terrorism. Is the United Kingdom a police state? When you go over there and hang out in a pub, are you worried that some pockmarked dude with a black leather trench coat might be eavesdropping? Okay, maybe you are, but that's probably because he's gay and cruising for a good time (the leather coat is a dead giveaway)."

JONAH HAS ISSUES

Part of Jonah's "charm" is a constant stream of unfunny fag jokes – he seems to have a few "issues," to say the least, when it comes to queers – but what's so emblematic of the degeneration of the Right (intellectually, that is) is that Goldberg, unlike the older generation of neocons, just doesn't know much of anything about anything. Or else how do we explain this London Times story ("Distasteful Views Policed") about a squad of undercover British cops deployed in pubs, and assigned to eavesdrop on conversations?:

"Restaurant-goers who suspect the couple at the next table are eavesdropping on their conversation may not be far from the truth. Police in Gloucester have begun a crackdown on racial abuse in ethnic restaurants by going undercover to make sure that diners keep unpalatable opinions to themselves.

"Operation Napkin was started last week with four plain-clothes officers eating in pairs in Indian and Chinese restaurants. The first two days resulted in a 51-year-old man being arrested for racially aggravated harassment in an Indian restaurant. He is to appear before magistrates in Gloucester tomorrow. Another man was overheard by the plain-clothes officers as he mimicked an Indian waiter, but police decided that his behaviour was not bad enough to warrant prosecution.

"Now Gloucestershire police are warning that they will be carrying out more covert operations in ethnic restaurants. Chief Inspector Dean Walker said: 'Racist behaviour is unacceptable. The constabulary is now taking a proactive stance in relation to racist offences rather than waiting for people to report them to us.'"

That was in March of 2000, and have we any reason to doubt that things have gotten worse – much worse – since then? Tony Blair's Britain, at the eve of its amalgamation into the socialist EU, is frighteningly close to the "Airstrip One" of Orwell's imagination – which is one reason our original British columnist not only adopted this name as his logo, but wrote under the Orwellian pseudonym of "Emmanuel Goldstein." He didn't feel safe in Tony Blair's Britain, and I, for one, don't blame him. But, then, Goldstein, unlike Goldberg, is an authentic conservative (of a libertarian bent), and actually knows something about the British condition.

DEGENERATION

The intellectual level of the conservative movement, under neocon suzerainty, is abysmally low, as Goldberg's clumsy apologetics for the new authoritarian trend make all too clear. Here is someone who rose to prominence on the strength of his connection with his mother, Lucianne Goldberg, whose 15 minutes of fame occurred when she had the Clinton-Monica tapes in her hot little hands. In a post-cold war Right without any real ideology except a defunct anti-Communism, Jonah naturally slithered into place as a key figure at National Review, the fountainhead of conservative orthodoxy. In his role as chief defender of John Ashcroft – Goldberg's wife is the attorney general's speechwriter and confidante – his mushy brand of neoconnish double-talk comes in handy, as it can be used to justify any position (except, of course, the antiwar position).

THE GOLDBERG-IZATION OF CONSERVATISM

Speaking of the Goldbergs, Lucianne's site has been experiencing a bit of a clampdown, recently: strict enforcement of the rule against posting anything that isn't from a "legitimate" news site. Of course, Debkafiles.com is A-ok, but Antiwar.com is verboten. Another no-no is The New York Review of Books: when someone dared to post an article by Gary Wills on the Jesuits, the webmaster cracked the whip, and closed the thread with an officious notice:

"Lucianne.com is a NEWS site. Please post news articles, columns and comment from legitimate on-line newspapers, magazines or news sites only."

Pompous, self-important, and clever I can see: but those first two qualities combined with sheer stupidity are too much to bear. I couldn't resist the temptation to write and ask: "Are you sure you don't think the New York Review of Books is 'legitimate'?" Lucianne wrote back almost immediately and thanked me for the correction: the thread was restored. Okay, I thought, maybe they're not so dumb after all. Just the other day, however, they did it again: this time it was an article by Michael Lind in the online edition of Britain's respected Prospect magazine. Once again, that self-consciously overweening proclamation was posted for all to read:

"Lucianne.com is a NEWS site. Please post news articles, columns and comment from legitimate on-line newspapers, magazines or news sites only – THREAD CLOSED."

I wrote again, and asked the same question: Are you sure about that? This time, I got a rebuke about sending "rude emails" and, as of this writing, Lind's analysis of Israel's stranglehold on American politics – and how it might be loosened, if not undone – has yet to see the light of day on Lucianne.com. If there's anything the neocons hate, it's anyone who dares question whether Israel's interests are one with our own. On Lucianne.com, it is a hate-crime to post such materials, and its authors and those who truck in their works are banned, left and right, as not quite "legitimate" enough for Goldbergian tastes.

WINDOW ON THE FUTURE

Now, of course, Lucianne's website is her own private property, and she is perfectly entitled to post only articles from the Debkafiles or from anywhere she pleases: half her stuff is posted by paid professionals, anyway. But as an indication of the Goldbergian "conservative" temperament – of the kind of society we can expect to live under if the neocons and their allies should get much closer to the seat of Power – this censorious and hectoring regime is a window on the future. No wonder Jonah dismisses the 1984 metaphor with such airy disdain, and valorizes the authoritarian Ashcroft: this is the "new" conservatism of today's Bright Young Things, the neo-conservatism whose triumph was hailed by David Brooks – and it isn't pretty. Nor is it recognizable as conservative in any meaningful sense of the term: for just how "conservative" and stabilizing is a program of perpetual war? The "conservatives" of today – the neocons who inhabit key positions in this administration, and have just about consolidated near-complete control – are pragmatists, true, but they do hold firm to three principles which contradict the original premises of American conservatism in every respect:

THREE PRINCIPLES OF NEOCONSERVATISM

On the domestic front, far from opposing the growth of Big Government, or even seeking to slow it down, the neocons want to utilize the centralizing federal apparatus to achieve their own "conservative" ends. If "war is the health of the state," as Randolph Bourne put it, then the neocons would agree, except they would add: and a good thing, too. On the foreign policy front, the neocon policy is not only perpetual war, but, specifically, war on behalf of Israel. The one leftover from their left-wing days has been the affinity for serving the interests of a foreign power: in one of his books, Norman Podhoretz relates the gently self-mocking story of how he, as a young Commie, wrote an ode to the heroic Soviet fighters of Stalingrad. Today, he writes about the Palestinian siege of Israel with the passion he once reserved for the "workers' paradise," and the neocons run true to this same pattern. Oldtime conservatives put America first: the neocons put Israel first.

KVETCHING

The whining that the neocons are being picked on by the "liberal media" and the "Left" is a joke coming from those busy compiling lists of "unpatriotic" college professors and others whose loyalty to America is being questioned on account of their opposition to the policy of perpetual war. Here's Jonah in National Review's "blog" – oh, those Gen-Ex neocons are so trendy and cool! – kvetching about it:

"I just read the transcript of Chris Matthews' anti-neoconservative rant (I'd link to it, but I got it through Nexis, I couldn't find it at MSNBC). Good Lord, Matthews sounds like he's about to say 'I have in my hand a list of neoconservatives inside the American government.' He makes David Frum – a Canadian by birth – sound like a Soviet mole. And, most bizarre, he calls Dana Milbank's puff piece on Bill Kristol a 'very courageous piece,' as if Milbank had the guts to name names. He asks Milbank, 'Are [the neoconservatives] – are they loyal to the Kristol neoconservative movement, or to the president?' I don't like calling people McCarthyites, partly because McCarthy was right about a lot of stuff, but Matthews seems to be doing his best impersonation."

DOUBLE-STANDARD, ANYONE?

Let's see if I get this straight: it's okay for his wife's boss to say that critics of the draconian measures taken by this administration, including opponents of the "USA-PATRIOT Act," are "only aiding the terrorists," but it's not okay to discuss the political and ideological complexion of the President's staff. To give him credit where it's due, Goldberg takes the right line on McCarthy: "Tail-gunner Joe" was indeed right about the US government being riddled with Commies – and so, I would contend, is Matthews right about the neocons. The analogy of the "Soviet mole" is exactly on target, including the implication that a mole naturally pursues the interests of a foreign power. In this case, the foreign power is supposed to be "friendly" – but, as the Israeli spy scandal story underscores, that is one myth bound to die a hard death.

CAN THEY BE STOPPED?

What is clear, above all, about the new push for war with Iraq, and now even Iran, is that any such war will benefit Israel and only Israel. Saddam's missiles, which he doesn't even possess, could not reach New York, or Burbank: they could reach Tel Aviv. Iran, too, is Israel's avowed enemy, and thus its inclusion in the "axis of evil." Evil is defined, in the neocon sense, as any power that stands in the way of Israel and the current right-wing govenment's plans to ethnically cleanse Palestine of the Palestinians and solve the "Arab problem" once and for all. Under cover of a general Middle Eastern conflagration, with US troops and planes targeting Arafat's possible protectors, Israel hopes to use the US as a shield while she puts her enemies to the sword.

It's ugly, even monstrous – and it just may work. What could stop it, however, is if enough people like Matthews, and others in the media, catch on to the neocons' wargame – and decide it's time to pull the plug.

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