Neocons Converge Around Giuliani Campaign

Newsweek Magazine ^ | October 15, 2007 | Michael Hirsh

[america4vr]

Neocons can't help but slink around Washington, D.C. The Iraq War has given the neoconservatives—who favor the assertive use of American power abroad to spread American values—something of a bad name, and several of the Republican candidates seem less than eager to hire them as advisers. But Rudy Giuliani apparently never got that memo. One of the top foreign-policy consultants to the leading GOP candidate is Norman Podhoretz, a founding father of the neocon movement.

Podhoretz is in favor of bombing Iran because of the country's unwillingness to suspend its uranium-enrichment program. He also believes America is engaged in a "world war" with "Islamofascism" and that Giuliani is the only man who can win it. "I decided to join Giuliani's team because his view of the war—what I call World War IV—is very close to my own," Podhoretz tells NEWSWEEK. (World War III, in his view, was the cold war.) "And also because he has the qualities of a wartime leader, including a fighting spirit and a determination to win."

Giuliani clearly hopes this image, born of his heroic performance on 9/11, can carry him to the GOP nomination and to the White House. But is he really the candidate who will "keep Americans safer" if his primary tactic is to go "on offense" in the "long war," as he often puts it in his campaign stump speech? Critics will say that the neocons already tried that—in Iraq. Still, what's left of the neocon movement does seem to be converging around the Giuliani campaign, to some degree, because he embraces their common themes: a willingness to use military power, a tendency to group all radical Islamist groups together as a common enemy, strong support for Israel and an aggressive posture toward Iran.

[familyop]

"They're just positioning themselves to hijack another government.

Almost as often as he splutters Israel. Ironically all the R candidates, Paul excepted, being equally pro-Israel."

I'm starting to see your light on that. Some are "pro-" to some ostensible extents, and others are "pro-" but a little ignorant on some matters of religion.

[familyop]

The real “neo-cons” are those who call themselves “paleo-cons”—the once-Kennedy wing within our Party and descendants of the incoming, European, romanticist hordes during the late 1800s and early 1900s. ...Buchananites and the like.

[familyop]

...related. ;-)

Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1908951/posts

[Badeye]

Some use the term ‘neocon’ in a manner very similiar to trailer trash inserting the ‘F’ word into any given sentence, in any given context.

I thnk the term is meaningless at this point.

[Enchante]

Excellent overview — this is what we need many more people to understand! Most of the MSM and Demagogues are continually working to weaken our resolve in the face of the worldwide jihad threat, and so they want to undermine respect for the accomplishments of our great military and persuade the public via propaganda that we should embrace the “Peace Now!” kind of weakness. The cowering spirit of spineless liberalism is the greatest internal threat we face.

[Clemenza]

Of course they do. The neocons have always been a cosmopolitan bunch, largely interested in foreign policy above all other issues. They love Rudy's belief in "crusading for democracy" as well.

I've always believed that we should tell the Neos to go back to the Dem party. We need REALISM in our foreign policy, NOT the Wilsonian idealism espoused by the neocons and America's Self Proclaimed Mayor.

[Earthdweller]

"Neocons Converge Around Giuliani Campaign"

And this is surprising because....?

The lion's share of entertainers, artists, writers, news outlets and global money are in NY. This was to be expected.

Let's kick their butts.

[jmc813]

From my liberal dictionary: Neocons = Joooos

I always understood neocons to be liberals who are not wusses on foreign policy. It doesn't surprise me that they would also be Giulianites.

[HockeyPop]

“But with these people, a compromise, an accommodation of the sort the NeoCons, the US hopes to attain can never come to fruition because it’s one thing to compromise with the physical, it’s another to have these people seek an accommodation with their God, and even more so with their very own immortality.”

One day when we (our grandchildren and their children’s children) look back they will see that what we did was to plant the seeds of freedom and the beginnings of the Islamic reformation. Evil has always consumed itself.

[vetsvette]

“I always understood neocons to be liberals who are not wusses on foreign policy.”

Actually, Neocon was a term invented by leftists to avoid using their antisemitism, it’s code for Jewish, pro-Israel, former liberals who saw the wisdom of conservatism when the left turned against Israel and determined to support Arab terrorists.