Free Republic

I have always liked Gary Hart, and, when I have met him, came away impressed that he was a thoughtful person. That said, he has a long diatribe against John McCain, in which he falls into the now tired condescending trope of the sinister neocons who, as quasi-neo-Nazis, took over a clueless George Bush: Historians of early 21st century American politics will remark the degree to which radical forces, usually called neoconservatives, perverted language as recommended by the National Socialist Party in 1930s Germany... Open up entire electronic networks, such as Fox, and chains of radio stations, such as Clear...

He's a Muslim. He was sworn into office on the Koran. He doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance. His pastor is an anti-Semite. He's a tool of Louis Farrakhan. He's anti-Israel. His advisers are anti-Israel. He's friends with terrorists. The terrorists want him to win. He's the Antichrist. By now you've probably seen at least some of these e-mails and articles about Barack Obama bouncing around the Internet. They distort Obama's religious faith, question his support for Israel, warp the identity and positions of his campaign advisers and defame his friends and allies from Chicago. The purpose of the smear...

IN 1972, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, was looking for a conservative columnist for his left-leaning Op-Ed page. At a charity dinner, he wound up sitting next to William Safire, the Nixon White House speechwriter who coined Spiro Agnew’s famous denunciation of the press as “nattering nabobs of negativism.” They soon had a deal. But, as described in “The Trust,” the authoritative history of the family that has controlled The Times for more than a century, Sulzberger neglected to involve John Oakes, his cousin and the editor of the editorial page, in the decision. Oakes...

Have America’s troubles in Iraq sounded the death knell of neoconservatism, the political ideology that is said to be behind our presence there? Over the past year, there has been no shortage of voices saying so, many with undisguised glee. Abroad, the Times of London heralded “the end of an ideological era in Washington,” while the Toronto Globe and Mail reported with satisfaction that neoconservatism has been “decisively wiped out.” Observers here at home have agreed. To the historian Douglas Brinkley, Democratic electoral victories in November 2006 spelled “the death of the neoconservative movement,” while at National Review Online John...

The conservative movement that for a generation has been the source of the Republican Party's strength is in the dumps. THIRTY years ago Eric Hobsbawm, the dean of Marxist historians, chose as his subject, for the Marx memorial lecture, “The forward march of labour halted?” Things turned out even worse, for his side, than he had expected, thanks in part to the rise of a very American brand of conservatism. But are we now witnessing Mr Hobsbawm's revenge: the forward march of American conservatism halted? The right has dominated American politics since at least 1980. The Republicans' electoral successes have...

Shortly after the September 11, 2001, [...] the Project for the New American Century issued a letter to the president calling for a dramatic reshaping of the Middle East as part of the "war on terror". [...] the group's remarkable string of successes has gradually given way to a steady decline [...] events in the Middle East seemed to be going their way, at least during the first few months of Bush's second term. The unexpectedly smooth Iraqi elections in January 2005, the outbreak of the "Cedar" revolution in Lebanon (and other "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan), and...

It's blocked, but here is the URL - http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612

Democrats are outraged over President Bush's new series of national security speeches. There he goes again, politicizing the war. The Democratic leadership obviously believes the president should muzzle himself so close to the November elections because what is important for national security might also help Republicans, and that must be avoided at all costs. Democrats are furious over Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's speech to the American Legion this week, in which he compared today's appeasers to those of the World War II era and warned that we mustn't turn a blind eye to today's terrorists like many did to yesterday's Nazis....

More noteworthy than Ned Lamont's defeat of Joseph Lieberman is the loony left's and Democratic leadership's puffed-up reaction to it. I say give them more rope and let them completely hang the party they've hijacked. Many are acting surprised at the Democratic Party's readiness to throw Lieberman overboard. They shouldn't be. Lieberman's 90 percent liberal voting record isn't good enough for the monomaniacal antiwar fringe. Complete obedience is required. No belligerence toward terrorists can be tolerated; all venom must be reserved for President Bush and the neoconservative cabal. While Joe Lieberman was good enough in 2000 to join Al Gore...

Karl Weiss: Bible followers mess up U.S. A letter to the editor Dear Editor: Everything Sen. Joe Lieberman says or does is for Israel. The man is a Zionist. Jews and evangelicals like Bush just love this person and it ALL goes back to that make-believe book called the Bible.Our government has been taken over by people who believe in fairy tales and mankind has been set back hundreds of years because of this. Stem cell research, birth control and cancer cures have all been stopped by these idiots. Ignorance rules in these United States. Karl Weiss Pardeeville Published: July...

European thoughts : Two point to understand why you should NEVER vote for a Liberal I want, as a 22-years-old European (from Switzerland), to convince you (with two points, there are many others but these two are important for the ongoing war) why it’s so important that you never vote for any Liberal (Democrat) in America. I have no family in America, I’ve spent all my life in an almost radical liberal Europe (while travelling to the US six times), I read every day liberal newspapers and watch liberal TV, I hear every day liberal points of views by people...

Remembering Milton Himmelfarb Milton Himmelfarb died earlier this month at age 87, and chances are you never heard of him if, like most Americans, you tend not to be a devotee of intellectual and political journals. But Milton Himmelfarb — Mendy, as he was known to his family — was, by virtue of temperament, history and family, a seminal figure in the development of neoconservatism as one of the country’s most influential political forces. Serving in various capacities at the American Jewish Committee for better than 40 years, Himmelfarb was the longtime editor of the AJC’s American Jewish Yearbook and...

PRESIDENT BUSH'S VISION OF SOUND economic policy has remained remarkably constant over the last five years--tax cuts, free trade, and a generous amount of immigration. And why not? Low taxes, free trade, and new immigrants have benefited our economy over the past quarter century, and helped produce a remarkably successful economic performance after the shock of 9/11. Yet all does not seem to be well. Americans are unhappy about the president's management of the economy and pessimistic about the future. Maybe popular sentiment is simply shortsighted, or uninformed. But there is another, more rational reason for voter discontent: Times have...

Though it has not been widely understood, among the neoconservatives’ many betrayals of their former principles and allegiances in recent years has been their betrayal of Israel—a fact that, among other things, ought to clear them of the false, vicious, and stupid charge that everything they do, they do for the sake of the Jewish state. The neoconservatives have betrayed Israel for the same reason they have betrayed other neoconservative causes such as the fight against racial preferences and the fight against cultural radicalism: they now believe in nothing except the promotion and expansion of American power under the rubric...

A new “stealth” worldview has become popular among Secularists in the United States. It is referred to as Neoconservatism[1] and has been gaining influence for over 25 years in the wake of the discord and unrest associated with the 1960’s-1970’s and the Viet Nam War.[2] The original features of neoconservatism are found below: __________ Table 1. 6 Propositions of Neoconservatism (First Generation)* 1. Theory of History- Evil exists and one must not shrink from one's duty. 2. Power- No substitute for it, especially military might. Power is Salvation. 3. America must be a Global leader- Creating a peaceful World requires...

Neoconservatism's Big TentHow distinctively neoconservative is President Bush's foreign policy? by Paul Mirengoff 07/11/2005 8:00:00 AM FOR LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE CRITICS of the Bush administration, it is an article of faith that neoconservatives have hijacked American foreign policy. The neocons accomplished this, the theory goes, by selling their half-baked ideology to a president too unschooled, dim-witted, or panicked to resist it. Yet, as Charles Krauthammer noted in his excellent essay The Neo-Conservative Convergence, none of the president's most influential foreign policy counselors--not Dick Cheney, not Donald Rumsfeld, not Condoleezza Rice--was considered a neoconservative prior to 9/11. Rice, in fact,...

The post-cold-war era has seen a remarkable ideological experiment: over the last fifteen years, each of the three major American schools of foreign policy—realism, liberal internationalism, and neoconservatism—has taken its turn at running things. (A fourth school, isolationism, has a long pedigree, but has yet to recover from Pearl Harbor and probably never will; it remains a minor source of dissidence with no chance of becoming a governing ideology.) There is much to be learned from this unusual and unplanned experiment. The era began with the senior George Bush and a classically realist approach. This was Kissingerism without Kissinger—although Brent...

Congress voted last week to give the United Nations unprecedented new authority to intervene in sovereign states, under the guise of UN “reform.” The reform bill theoretically provides for Congress to withhold 50% of US dues to the UN, but this will never happen. The bill allows the Secretary of State to make the ultimate decision about payment, and the State department strongly opposes withholding our dues in the first place. In fact, the State department is the UN’s closest ally in the entire federal government. This talk about withholding our dues is nothing but hot air designed to dupe...

Congress voted last week to give the United Nations unprecedented new authority to intervene in sovereign states, under the guise of UN “reform.”  The reform bill theoretically provides for Congress to withhold 50% of US dues to the UN, but this will never happen. The bill allows the Secretary of State to make the ultimate decision about payment, and the State department strongly opposes withholding our dues in the first place.  In fact, the State department is the UN’s closest ally in the entire federal government.  This talk about withholding our dues is nothing but hot air designed to dupe...

Pastry hit [neo]conservative commentator at Earlham College. RICHMOND, Ind. (AP) -- An Earlham College student faces a possible trial next month on criminal charges for throwing a pie at [neo]conservative commentator William Kristol as he gave a campus speech. A pretrial hearing was held Thursday for Josh Medlin, 21, who has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge. Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, was splattered by the pie during a March 29 speech about U.S. foreign policy. Members of the audience jeered, then applauded as Kristol wiped the...

The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was For some time now no navy or air force has posed a threat to the United States. Our only competition has been armies, whether conventional forces or guerrilla insurgencies. This will soon change. The Chinese navy is poised to push out into the Pacific—and when it does, it will very quickly encounter a U.S. Navy and Air Force unwilling to budge from the coastal shelf of the...

Iraq:Setting the Record Straight ContentsPreface.................................................................................................................................i I. Iraq: The Clinton Administration’s Case.……………………………...................1II. Iraq: The Perspective from Washington on March 18, 2003.................................13III. Iraq: A History of Deception, Obstruction & Failure to MeetInternational Obligations.......................................................................................17IV. Questions & Answers: Iraq’s Nuclear Weapons Program...................................32V. Questions & Answers: Iraq’s Missile and UAV Programs..................................43VI. Questions & Answers: Iraq’s Chemical/Biological Weapons Programs.............54VII. Questions and Answers: Iraq’s Ties to Terrorism and al Qaeda..........................70Appendix: “The Right War for the Right Reasons”.........................................................78  PrefaceTwo years after the invasion of Iraq, we still do not know with complete confidence what happened to all of the stockpiles of weapons and weapons precursors that Saddam’s government admitted to...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: ELLEN BORK, Deputy DirectorSUBJECT: Human Rights and the EU Arms EmbargoFrom numerous accounts, it appears that the European Union will postpone plans to lift the arms embargo it imposed on Beijing in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. According to the same accounts, Beijing’s enactment last week of a “law” authorizing the use of force against Taiwan tipped the scale against lifting the embargo before summer. Actions taken to exert even greater control over the Beijing-appointed leadership in Hong Kong reportedly also played a role, especially in London.Neither China’s intentions toward Taiwan, nor its...

Times are very good for America's least-loved foreign-policy makers. But their apotheosis may not last BILL KRISTOL tells a nice story about a chance encounter in a shopping mall. Mr Kristol is a neo-conservative prince, the son of one of the movement's founders, and a ubiquitous talking head on Fox News. But even neo-conservative princes have to go shopping. One weekend found him wandering the glitzy corridors of Tyson's Corner, in northern Virginia. A young man accosted him and confessed that he, too, was a neo-conservative. He then paused for a moment before adding that he wasn't quite sure what...

The original architects of the U.S. empire—long before its celebration by today’s neoconservatives—understood the importance of legitimacy in the neo-colonialist enterprise. In order to achieve some degree of legitimacy, it was important to create a native stooge—what some call a “comprador”—heavily dependent upon American power to govern in the interests of the U.S. government. In Iraq we have had the proverbial “Three Stooges,” as in the movies, often beating up on each other. The first of these was Saddam Hussein, who was essential in helping evict the British from control in Iraq and then in attacking Iran, but who became...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS FROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Robin Wright is WrongYesterday, Washington Post senior foreign policy reporter Robin Wright’s analysis of the recent elections in Iraq (“Iraq Winners Allied with Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision”) ran on the Post’s front page. As the title to the piece suggests, Wright’s claim is that Iraqis “went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base – and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door.” But about the only thing right in that sentence is that the Iraqis “went to the polls.”First, the United Iraqi Alliance,...

I'm surprised more Christians and others of deep religious conviction here in America aren't at least slightly put off by the philosophy of the Neoconservatives who are at the top of the current administration -- not Bush himself, who I believe is a man of genuine faith, but Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. -- and in particular the view formulated by their mentor Leo Strauss that religion is a useful illusion which should be encouraged among the common people because it promotes social order and mitigates the corrupting influences of selfishness and materialism. (The leaders themselves don't need to believe in...

Washington, D.C.): Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith's announcement Wednesday that he would return to private life brings to a close four distinguished, but grueling, years at the forefront of the War on Terror. It offers an occasion both to salute this outstanding public servant and to castigate his ever-voluble critics. Most of the reportage on Secretary Feith's departure this summer has dredged up various unsubstantiated charges that have been made against Mr. Feith and/or his subordinates. The fact that no credible evidence has yet been offered to back up any of these transparent attempts at character assassination for political...

Does it Exist? A leading intellectual figure and stalwart fighter in America's confrontation with radical Islam, Daniel Pipes is perhaps best known for his idea that "radical Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution." As Pipes argues, radical Islam, though currently the dominant political force in the Muslim world, is supported by only 10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide, while moderate Islam represents the great, though so far mostly silent, majority of Muslims. He further points out that radical Islam, also known as militant Islam or Islamism, is a very recent phenomenon, having more in common with...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: DANIEL MCKIVERGAN, Deputy DirectorSUBJECT: Duelfer, the UN, and the New York Times Yesterday, the Washington Post reported ("Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month") that the conclusions reached in Charles Duelfer's September 2004 report on Iraq's weapons programs will be the "final word" on the subject. The New York Times editorial board weighed in today. The Times notes that what the "Iraqi invasion has actually proved is that the weapons inspection worked, that international sanctions - deeply, deeply messy as they turned out to be - worked, and that in the case of Saddam...

Neoconservatives’ endeavors to create a market economy version of Islam – bereft of its basic tenets - got a boost recently when Reverend James Schall, Professor of government at Georgetown University and a Jesuit priest, vigorously defended their efforts. In an article entitled “When War Must Be the Answer” published in the December/January issue of Policy Review, Schall writes about “making Islam over into politically acceptable forms.” This is the main neoconservative project and Schall argues that this program can be defended because no one, including the churches, is willing to examine in a serious way the truth claims of...

WASHINGTON - The most curious turn of the worm this season is the attack by the neo-conservatives on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the failures in Iraq. It should be noted that until now Rumsfeld was the darling of that same bunch. He hired a batch of them as his most trusted aides and assistants in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Paul Wolfowitz as his undersecretary. Douglas Feith as his chief of planning. He installed the dean of the pack, Richard Perle, as chairman of the Defense Policy Board for a time. The doyenne and room mother...

12/24/2004 Clip No. 441 Rafsanjani in a Tehran University Friday Sermon: The American Neo-Conservatives Are Abusing the Spirit of Christ, Whose Real Essence Is in Islam The following are excerpts from a Friday sermon at Tehran University. The preacher is Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, head of the Iranian Expediency council: Rafsanjani: Regarding what is going on is the Christian World, one must distinguish between most of the people, who are deprived of rights, oppressed, the people of the Third World, and another part of the people – such as the Americans. The American Neo-Conservatives, who are, in fact, the Zionists of...

A tip of the hat to Charles Krauthammer, the Jewish neo-conservative (not necessarily a redundancy, despite what many neo-cons claim) who last week lobbed a much-merited smack at the face of the anti-Christmas lobby. "The attempts to de-Christianize Christmas are as absurd as they are relentless," he writes, and he's perfectly correct. Well, actually, he's not perfectly correct. Despite his defense of the most important traditional (and official) American and Christian holiday, it's not quite clear from Krauthammer's column exactly why we should keep Christmas at all. The reason it's not entirely clear: Krauthammer is a neo-conservative, and this is...

The trouble is that the world is divided over the future of the UN, which is nothing more than a burden for the neo-conservative team of US President George Bush. It must be sustained, but it is virtually useless when urgent and resolute actions are needed, as in the case of Yugoslavia and Iraq. Why should the world's sole superpower confine itself to acting within the international legal framework stipulated by the UN Charter, if it can attain its goals with the help of regional blocs (NATO) or by creating ad hoc international coalitions?

THE American defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, should be sacked, according to a growing chorus of conservative commentators who want him replaced by a figure with wider appeal. In a seemingly innocuous Thanksgiving message to readers last week, William Kristol, the neoconservative editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, slipped in a surprise demand for Rumsfeld’s dismissal. “What remains to be done is to announce new leadership for the department of defence,” wrote Kristol. “This, surely, would be an important opportunity for a strong, Bush-doctrine-supporting outsider, someone who of course would be a team player, but someone who could also work with...

BERLIN, Nov. 19 - European leaders have reacted to the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state with public optimism and private skepticism about the possibilities of a new start after the difficult days leading up to the war in Iraq. "Here's a prediction," Josef Joffe, co-editor of the weekly Die Zeit wrote in an editorial on Thursday, "relations with Europe will get better," adding that they couldn't get worse than they were in 2002 and 2003. But as Mr. Joffe's slightly barbed prediction suggests, for close and easy relations to develop between the United States and much of...

HEADLINE: CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; How Books Have Shaped U.S. Policy BYLINE: By MICHIKO KAKUTANI BODY: President Bush has never been known as a bookworm. An instinctive politician who goes with his gut, he has usually left the heavy reading in the family to his wife, Laura, a former librarian. He is "often uncurious and as a result ill informed," his former speechwriter, David Frum, wrote in a memoir this year, adding that "conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House." It is curious then that books by historians, philosophers and policy analysts have played a significant role in shaping...

October 27, 2004 Kosovo: a neoconservative victory Brendan Simms The Balkans show military intervention can be just and effective WITH ALL the world focused on the American elections in November and the Iraqi elections that are scheduled for January next year, Saturday’s poll in Kosovo, only the second since the liberation of the province in 1999, passed almost unnoticed. Perhaps this is because the situation in Kosovo is not promising. Most of the Serb population boycotted the elections: Serbs were subjected to an orchestrated pogrom in March this year, which destroyed years of patient ethnic bridge-building in a few days....

A few weeks ago I was having lunch with a friend of mine and his wife. She was pressuring me about when *I* was going to get married, and the conversation turned to what I thought was important to make a successful match. There are the three qualifications I gave her, but the only one she balked at was "Conservative." At first she thought I meant a member of the Conservative stream of Judaism, but I clarified that as conservative politically. She said, "Well, if that's something you think is important. I mean, I think that [her husband, my friend]...

As citizens of the Euro-Atlantic community of democracies, we wish to express our sympathy and solidarity with the people of the Russian Federation in their struggle against terrorism. The mass murderers who seized School No. 1 in Beslan committed a heinous act of terrorism for which there can be no rationale or excuse. While other mass murderers have killed children and unarmed civilians, the calculated targeting of so many innocent children at school is an unprecedented act of barbarism that violates the values and norms of our community and which all civilized nations must condemn.At the same time, we are...

The election is not yet won. In fact, it is far too premature to conclude with any certainty the outcome. The reason is staring the country in the face: Iraq. The debate over the conduct of the war is just starting to gain intensity.

Blame It on Neo: Don't call me a "neocon" unless you are a friend. Last week Pat Buchanan appeared on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," and liberal host Jon Stewart bonded with his paleoconservative guest over their mutual opposition to the liberation of Iraq. Mr. Stewart smiled and nodded while Mr. Buchanan derided "neoconservatives" four times in the course of the six-minute interview. In his efforts to promote his and his guest's common agenda, Mr. Stewart didn't ask Mr. Buchanan what he meant by "neoconservatives." It was clear that the Jewish Mr. Stewart didn't realize that Mr. Buchanan was using...

The Chechens' American friends The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own John Laughland Wednesday September 8, 2004 The Guardian An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: WILLIAM KRISTOLSUBJECT: CFR Report on IranOne has to hand it to the Council on Foreign Relations. Just as Iran has spent the last several months reconfirming why it was a charter member of the "axis of evil," a CFR taskforce, led by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and former DCI Robert Gates, has concluded that the time is now ripe for a policy of "engagement" with Iran. This, in spite of the fact that: Iran continues to tell the International Atomic Energy Agency - along with the British, Germans and French - to stuff it...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Iraq's Attempts to Acquire Uranium from NigerIn his 2003 State of the Union speech, President Bush said "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Since then, this statement has been criticized by Former Ambassador Joe Wilson and others as relying on flimsy or non-existent intelligence. Today, however, the British government released a report titled "Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction,"* which, on page 125 (paragraph 503), states: "From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from...

As some states see red, others feel blue. As we head into this year's presidential contest, we're told that the U.S. electoral map remains split down the middle. That may be--but most new political books address the "red" or Republican side, whether in praise or censure. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's "The Right Nation" does a little of both on the way to explaining why conservative ideas resonate so deeply in our society, driving left-liberals around the bend. Combining statistics, witty anecdotes and useful summaries of the work of other writers, "The Right Nation" is a kind of anthropology of...

Neocon 101 Some basic questions answered. What do neoconservatives believe? "Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action. Most neocons believe that the US has allowed dangers to gather by not spending enough on defense and not confronting threats aggressively enough. One such threat, they contend, was...

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/quiz/neoconQuiz.html

--snip-- “There is a self-hatred in the West that can be considered only as something pathological. The West attempts in a praiseworthy manner to open itself completely to the comprehension of external values, but it no longer loves itself; it now sees only what is despicable and destructive in its own history, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure there. If it really wants to survive, Europe needs a new – critical and humble, of course – acceptance of itself. “Multiculturalism, which is continually and passionately encouraged and favored, is sometimes mostly the abandonment...