Neo-Con

=primary on fail --> cascadesee vulcanssee chickenhawks<div>=</div><div> 7 22neo-con is // neo-libtard [Gt Recession] Bush 43; BOTH MUY MACHO, REDUCTIONISTIC?aha  GULF WAR 2 POSTER CHILD FOR CASCADE OF FAILS:JRNLISM FAILset off refugee surge --> brexit  [CAMBRIDGE anal ] , alt rt, authoritarian [eu la penn] ; wolfie neo-cons wanted it for decades , cooked the intel, hunted the whistleblowers PlameSEE WMD BS YELLOWCAKE CHENEYde-Bathification --? al queda, CNP fail ministry of oilpvtization blackwater halliburton? tigerswan<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">=</div></div><div>=</div><div>spencer Abraham Elliott Abrams Ken Adelman Roger Ailes Lamar Alexander George Felix Allen Richard Keith "Dick" Armey John Ashcroft Harvey Leroy "Lee" Atwater Haley Reeves Barbour Bob Barr Roscoe Bartlett Robert Leroy Bartley Joseph Linus "Joe" Barton Charles Foster "Charlie" Bass Gary Lee Bauer Glenn Lee Beck William Bennett Richard B. Berman Wolf Isaac Blitzer Richard Blumenthal Roy Blunt John Andrew Boehner Clint Bolick John Bolton Pat Boone Neal Boortz Max Boot James Paul David "Jim" Bunning George Walker Bush John Ellis "Jeb" Bush Carl Cameron Kirk Thomas Cameron Andrew "Andy" Card Gerald Posner Carmen Clarence Saxby Chambliss John P.H. "Pecker Head" Chandler Richard Bruce "Still Dick" Cheney Thomas Leo Clancy Thomas Allen "Tom" Coburn Roy Cohn Norman Bertram "Norm" Coleman John Cornyn III Ann Hart Coulter Toby Keith Covel Larry "Wide Stance" Craig Dinesh D'Souza Thomas Dale "Tom," "The Hammer" DeLay Steven James Doocy Charles Gwynne "Chuck" Douglas III John Mathias Engler Donald Louis Evans Jerry Lamon Falwell Don Feder Douglas J. Feith Jim Finnegan Bryan Fischer Malcolm Stevenson "Steve" Forbes Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama Frank Gaffney Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich Rudolph Wiliam Louis "Rudy" Giuliani Alan Gottlieb William Franklin "Billy" Graham William Franklin Graham William Phillip "Phil" Gramm Lee Greenwood Judd Gregg Sean Hannity Paul Harvey Dennis Hastert John Edgar Hoover Brit Hume Asa Hutchinson Young Timothy Hutchinson David R. Ignatius Laura Anne Ingraham Frederick Walter Kagan Robert Kagan Joyce Kaufman Francis Anthony Keating Ronald Kessler Alan Lee Keyes Brian Kilmeade Charles De Ganahl Koch David Koch William "Bill" Kristol Jon Llewellyn Kyle Wayne LaPierre Michael Arthur Ledeen Irve Lewis "Scooter" Libby Joseph Isidore "Joe" Lieberman David Limbaugh Rush Hudson Limbaugh III William "Bill" Loeb III Chester Trent Lott, Sr. Frank I. Luntz David Martin McIntosh Joseph "Joe" McQuaid Gerald McRaney Michael Medved John Luigi Mica Don Nickles Grover Glenn Norquist Theodore Anthony "Ted" Nugent William "Bill" O'Reilly Patrick Jake "PJ" O'Rourke Marvin Olasky John M. Olin Ted Olson Richard Norman Perle James Danforth "Dan" Quayle Michael Reagan Ralph Eugene Reed, Jr. Robert James "Kid Rock" Ritchie Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson Willard Mitt Romney Karl Christian Rove Marco Antonio Rubio Antonin Gregory Scalia Charles Joseph "Joe" Scarborough Todd Andrew Schnitt Melvin Floyd "Mel" Sembler Richard Craig Shelby Alan Kooi Simpson Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra Willard Cleon Skousen Robert Anthony "Tony" Snow Britney Jean Spears Sylvester Gardenzio "Sly" Stallone Kenneth Winston Starr Michael Stephen Steele Benjamin Jeremy "Ben" Stein Mark Steyn David Alan Stockman Roger Stone Thomas Gerard "Tom" Tancredo James Taranto Clarence Thomas Fred Thompson Meldrim "Mel" Thomson Donn Tibbetts Clyde Anderson Tolson Robert Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Jon Vincent Voight Christopher "Chris" Wallace John P. Walters John "Duke" Wayne John Vincent "Vin" Weber Michael Alan "Michael Savage" Weiner William Floyd "Bill" Weld George Frederick Will Walter Winchell Paul Dundes Wolfowitz</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>neocons</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-clinton-neoconservatives-220151">https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-clinton-neoconservatives-220151</a></div><div>
</div><div>... interviews with POLITICO, leading GOP foreign-policy hands — many of whom promoted the Iraq War, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable — said Trump would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy and vowed never to support him. So deep is their revulsion that several even say they could vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump in November.</div><div>
</div>“Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin,” said Eliot Cohen, a former top State Department official under George W. Bush and a strategic theorist who argues for a muscular U.S. role abroad. Trump's election would be “an unmitigated disaster for American foreign policy," Cohen said, adding that "he has already damaged it considerably.”Cohen, an Iraq war backer who is often called a neoconservative but said he does not identify himself that way, said he would "strongly prefer a third party candidate" to Trump, but added: "Probably if absolutely no alternative: Hillary."In a March 1 <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11141308/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-max-boot" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">interview</a> with Vox, Max Boot, a military historian at the Council on Foreign Relations who backed the Iraq War and often advocates a hawkish foreign policy, said that he, too, would vote for Clinton over Trump. "I'm literally losing sleep over Donald Trump," he said. "She would be vastly preferable to Trump."Cohen helped to organize an open letter signed by several dozen GOP foreign policy insiders — many of whom are not considered neocons — that <a href="http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/open-letter-on-donald-trump-from-gop-national-security-leaders/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">was published</a> Wednesday night by War on the Rocks, a defense and foreign policy website . “[W]e are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head,” the letter declared. It cited everything from Trump’s "admiration for foreign dictators” to his “inexcusable” support for “the expansive use of torture."The letter was signed by dozens of Republican foreign policy experts, including Boot; Peter Feaver, a former senior national security aide in George W. Bush's White House; Robert Zoellick, a former deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Dov Zakheim, a former Bush Pentagon official; and Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former Bush State Department official.Several other neocons said they find themselves in an impossible position, constitutionally incapable of voting for Clinton but repelled by a Republican whose foreign policy views they consider somewhere between nonexistent and dangerous — and disconnected from their views about American power and values abroad."1972 was the first time I was old enough to vote for president, and I did not vote. Couldn't vote for McGovern for foreign policy reasons, nor for Nixon because of Watergate," said Elliott Abrams, a former national security council aide to George W. Bush who specializes in democracy and the Middle East. "I may be in the same boat in 2016, unable to vote for Trump or Clinton."Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, something of a dean of Washington neoconservatives, said he would seek out a third option before choosing between Trump and Clinton.“If it's Trump-Clinton, I'd work with others to recruit a strong conservative third party candidate, and do my best to help him win (which by the way would be more possible than people think, especially when people — finally — realize Trump shouldn't be president and Hillary is indicted),” Kristol wrote in an email.Kristol and Abrams have advised Florida senator Marco Rubio, the preferred choice of several neoconservatives, who admire his call for "moral clarity" in foreign policy and strong emphasis on human rights and democracy.Alarm brewing for months in GOP foreign policy circles burst into public view last week, when Robert Kagan, a key backer of the Iraq War and American global might, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-the-gops-frankenstein-monster-now-hes-strong-enough-to-destroy-the-party/2016/02/25/3e443f28-dbc1-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">wrote</a> in the Washington Post that a Trump nomination would force him to cross party lines.“The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton,” Kagan warned. “The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.”In an interview, Kagan said his opposition to Trump "has nothing to do with foreign policy.""What it has to do with is the health and safety of American democracy," he added. "I don't even know what Donald Trump's foreign policy is. I don't think anybody does."Though Trump's foreign policy views don't fit any familiar category, he has outlined several clear positions at odds with neoconservative doctrine.While neoconservatives believe America plays a unique role in defending global order and Western values, Trump has <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/donald-trump-first-campaign-speech-new-hampshire-1987-213595" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">long</a> complained about America's military presence abroad and the protection the U.S. provides to prosperous allies like Saudi Arabia, Japan and South Korea.Neocons depict Russian President Vladimir Putin as a sinister tyrant challenging America; Trump calls Putin a strong leader with whom he'd "get along very well" and proposes a more cooperative relationship with Moscow.Neocons believe the U.S. must forcefully defend Israel. But while Trump insists his presidency would be "the best thing that could ever happen to Israel," he has alarmed pro-Israel Republicans with his pledge to be a "neutral" arbiter in talks between Israel and the Palestinians.Trump has shown little interest in the neoconservative cause of an interventionist foreign policy guided by principles like democracy and human rights. And he says the neocon project of invading Iraq may have been "the worst decision" in presidential history.Some conservative foreign policy insiders opposed to Trump stop short of saying they would vote for Clinton, despite elements of her foreign policy record, such as her 2002 Senate vote to authorize force against Iraq, that they find appealing.“I could never vote for Clinton under any circumstances,” said Abrams.“I would ask Bob [Kagan] what job he thinks Sidney Blumenthal will have at the NSC before pulling the lever for Clinton,” he added — a reference to the longtime Clinton adviser and bete noir of the right.Danielle Pletka, a defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute said she, too, would seek some alternative to Trump and Clinton.<aside class="story-related" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-right: 344.859px; border-top: 1px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 0.625em 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; overflow: hidden;"><article class="story-frag format-sm" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: table; width: 658px; table-layout: fixed;"><figure class="thumb" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: table-cell; margin: 0px; vertical-align: top; width: 5.625em;"><div class="fig-graphic" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/the-day-the-republican-party-ruptured-220108" target="top" data-tracking="mpos=inside body&mid=ParentheticalModule&lindex=Unknown&lcol=Unknown" class="js-tealium-tracking" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">
</a></div></figure><div class="summary" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 1.2; display: table-cell; vertical-align: top; padding-left: 0.625em;" /></article></aside>"[W]hile I will never vote for a Democrat in wolf’s clothing like Trump, I will also never vote for a candidate as dishonest, as rapacious, as Hillary Clinton," she wrote in an email. "My vote is a precious thing, and while I will certainly go to the polls, if those are my choices, I will write someone in. And no, it won’t be Bloomberg. :)"The word "neoconservative" is subject to interpretation, and some conservatives consider it pejorative. Originally used to describe Democrats who adopted hard-line anti-Communist views during the Cold War, the word's colloquial meaning roughly amounts to “hawkish GOP foreign policy intellectual.”Neocons have shown little enthusiasm for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has singled them out for scorn. Speaking to Iowa voters in December, Cruz bashed what he called the "crazy neocon invade-every-country-on-earth and send our kids to die in the Middle East” element of his party.Cruz has also attacked Rubio in debates for supporting military action to topple Middle Eastern dictators in Libya and Syria, and has said the world was better off with former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in power.But the neocons reserve special scorn for Trump."A Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America as a great power," Boot <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/selling-america-short/article/2001271" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">writes</a> in the March 7 issue of the Weekly Standard, along with Council on Foreign Relations economist Benn Steill.Steill and Boot — who also has advised Rubio — call Trump "singularly ill-equipped to manage the resulting turmoil" from his policies. They recall the September radio interview in which Trump <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/trump-terror-hewitt-213333" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">confused</a> the Kurds with Iran's elite military Quds force and admitted he was unfamiliar with the leaders of major Islamist terror groups.Cohen also added that he doesn't oppose Trump solely on foreign policy grounds, calling the Manhattan mogul “the most dangerous demagogue in American politics in my lifetime.”Several other prominent neoconservatives, including former Bush Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz and Liz Cheney, daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, did not respond to requests for comment.<div></div>--https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/2020-democrats-dont-only-have-to-face-trump-they-must-say-how-theyll-take-on-the-blob/=If a Democrat is elected president in November 2020, he or she will have two challenges: one global and one municipal.<div class="p1_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The first challenge will be how to run the worldwide <a href="https://www.iiss.org/-/media/files/publications/military-balance-2019/mb2019-defence-budgets-branded.ashx?la=en&hash=C560EFFEC61FA0816B61B8A005215F0510F449EC" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">$643 billion a year</a> military empire of the United States, which surveils the planet while fighting four undeclared wars. The second challenge is much smaller but still formidable: what to do about “the Blob” in Washington, D.C.<div class="p2_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">No, this isn’t a science fiction joke. The Blob is the nickname that Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s speechwriter, gave to America’s foreign policymaking elite in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">May 2016 interview</a>. According to Rhodes, the Blob included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other supporters of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.<div class="p3_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">More generally, Rhodes was referring the coterie of operatives who have made U.S. foreign policy under every president from Truman to Trump. With his unkind epithet, Rhodes suggested these men and women responsible for the U.S. foreign policy record are a shapeless mass lacking a coherent identity yet somehow ominous.<div class="p4_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">While Rhodes was <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/28/a-stunning-profile-of-ben-rhodes-the-asshole-who-is-the-presidents-foreign-policy-guru-4/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reviled</a> inside the Beltway, his coinage has stuck. The Blob is useful shorthand for a recognizable and powerful group: the former officials, analysts, diplomats, writers and military officers who espouse orthodox U.S. foreign policy views.<div class="p5_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">They are not a secret cabal. They work at think tanks and elite universities and consulting firms. They talk to reporters. They opine on cable TV talk shows. And they rotate in and out of government positions. They range from multilateral liberals to hawkish neoconservatives. While they have had deep differences, they have collectively promoted a broadly consistent set of policies that has defined the United States in the world over the last 30 years.<div class="p6_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Right now, they favor a hard line on Russia, intervention in Syria and Venezuela, bolstering NATO, and promoting free-trade agreements. They oppose defense spending cuts, rapid denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and a jobs-driven foreign policy.<div class="p7_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">At its best, the Blob gave us the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, Cuba normalization, the Millennium Challenge to address global poverty, and the now-abandoned treaty on nuclear weapons in Europe.<div class="p8_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">At its worst, the Blob gave us proxy wars (leading to failed states) in Central America; expansion of NATO (to the fury of Russia); free-trade agreements (which did little for Americans living inside the East and West Coasts); invasion of Iraq (on false pretenses); the (unsuccessful) occupation of Afghanistan; the implementation of a torture regime (and its removal); the furtive implementation of mass surveillance (since abandoned); the illusory “two-state solution” in Israel/Palestine; and unauthorized wars in Libya, Somalia, Niger, and Yemen, the last with catastrophic human consequences.<div class="p9_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">What should President Sanders (or Warren or Biden or Buttigieg or Gabbard) do upon taking office on January 21, 2021? Should they follow the Obama strategy of implementing incremental course corrections in the trajectory of current policies? Or force a fundamental change of direction on issues of war and peace?<div class="p10_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The answer depends, in large part, on how she or he thinks about the Blob.<div class="p11_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Blob Today<div class="p12_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Trump has marginalized the Blob. He has abandoned the orderly policymaking process they revere. He ignores their briefings. He scorns their expertise. He demonizes their concept of a (neo)liberal world order. Instead, he uses the U.S. foreign policy apparatus for his own ends: to feed the family business, withdraw from land wars, collaborate with like-minded autocrats, stimulate arms sales, demonstrate belligerence, and dominate the news cycle.<div class="p13_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Blob fears Trump, for good reasons and bad ones.<div class="p14_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This is the Democrats’ dilemma. Trump’s successor cannot run, much less reorient, America’s global empire without a policymaking elite. Yet the existing elite—the Blob—is wedded to the status quo ante Trump, and adamant in defense of its unimpressive-to-awful record since 9/11.<div class="p15_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Exhibit A: Robert Kagan, liberal-minded neoconservative, adviser to both George Bush and Hillary Clinton. He is using the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2019/03/14/feature/the-strongmen-strike-back/?utm_term=.6c28fba9c0b5" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">platform of the Washington Post</a> to offer an alternative to Trump’s foreign policy. Since Trump has no use for the Blob, Kagan is appealing to Democrats and post-Trump Republicans to return to the foreign policies of the Clinton-Bush-Obama era. He wants America to face the challenge of the populist authoritarianism.<div class="p16_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Kagan doesn’t spend much time defending the Blob’s record on Iraq’s non-existent WMD, torture, mass surveillance, election-meddling, Libya, or Yemen. He doesn’t spend any time addressing what Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have said about the roots of today’s authoritarianism.<div class="p17_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Kagan’s eloquent disquisition on the course of world history ends with the argument that to oppose his policy prescriptions is to oppose democracy itself:<div class="p18_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“A broad alliance of strange bedfellows stretching from the far right to self-described ‘<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/30/the-world-wants-you-to-think-like-a-realist/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">realists</a>’ to the progressive left wants the United States to abandon resistance to rising authoritarian power. They would grant Russia and China the spheres of influence they demand in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. They would acquiesce in the world’s new ideological ‘diversity.’ And they would consign the democracies living in the shadow of the authoritarian great powers to their hegemonic control.”<div class="p19_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">One could describe the same reality by saying the repeated failures of the U.S. foreign policy elite—two unsuccessful trillion-dollar wars, the use of torture and mass surveillance, and near-total indifference to the impact of foreign policy on the U.S. economy have generated widespread opposition to the pretensions of the foreign policy elite. It is a “broad alliance” indeed.<div class="p20_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The idea that post-Trump U.S. policymakers will act in defense of democracy is belied by the failures of democracy that have occurred on their watch. Kagan’s rhetoric of democracy is about as convincing as when Hillary Clinton tweeted <a href="https://twitter.com/hillaryclinton/status/758501814945869824?lang=en" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“America is already great.”</a><div class="p21_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">What Is to Be Done?<div class="p22_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The position of the three leading Democratic candidates on the Blob are pretty clear.<div class="p23_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Joe Biden, who has not yet announced, was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/us/politics/25biden.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">among the most dovish</a> of Obama’s advisers, but he seems comfortable with the national security status quo. He might invite Kagan for an interview but not give him a job.<div class="p24_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Bernie Sanders, gruff socialist, is an outsider. Along with his foreign policy adviser <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/matt-duss-bernie-sanders-foreign-policy-blob/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Matt Duss,</a> he insists on a fundamental change from Blob policies. Sanders wouldn’t return Kagan’s phone calls.<div class="p25_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">(See David Klion’s <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/matt-duss-bernie-sanders-foreign-policy-blob/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“Who Is Matt Duss, and Can He Take On Washington’s ‘Blob’?” on the Nation</a>.)<div class="p26_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Elizabeth Warren, impassioned Harvard professor, is a policymaking insider par excellence (she almost single-handedly created the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Financial_Protection_Bureau" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Consumer Financial Protection Bureau</a>). She too wants to break with the Blob. Warren would return Kagan’s phone call—and tell him to hold her beer.<div class="p27_37" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In short, Biden would most likely embrace the Blob, Sanders would purge it, and Warren would bend it to her will.<div class="p28_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Another Democratic aspirant who has signaled their independence from Blob thinking is Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who served <a href="https://gabbard.house.gov/about" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">two tours in Iraq</a> as a medical specialist. She is an outspoken anti-interventionist, who has flouted liberal sensibilities with her willingness to take meetings with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a brutal dictator. She <a href="https://deepstateblog.org/2019/03/05/rep-tulsi-gabbard-advises-a-koch-funded-university-center/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">serves on the board</a> of a foreign policy group funded by the Koch Brothers. She’s a Blob-buster.<div class="p29_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Beto O’Rourke, the El Paso congressman, has shown an independent streak. According to <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2018/12/beto-orourke-president-2020-senate-race" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Jacobin</a><a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2018/12/beto-orourke-president-2020-senate-race" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">’s Branko Marcetic</a>, O’Rourke “bucked Obama on several important issues, <a href="https://www.fcnl.org/updates/congressional-progressive-caucus-calls-on-president-obama-to-close-guantanamo-535" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">pressuring him</a> to close Guantanamo, <a href="https://votesmart.org/public-statement/793365/rep-yoho-co-sponsors-bipartisan-libert-e-act#.XJPrsxNKjBJ" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">supporting</a> <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y6gxbjtw" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">legislation</a> to curtail NSA spying, opposing war in Syria and arming the country’s rebels, and demanding Obama get congressional authorization for his continued war on ISIS.” O’Rourke looks like a Blob skeptic.<div class="p30_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, served as naval intelligence officer in Afghanistan, but has not focused on foreign policy or national security issues. He did <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/19/how-democrats-can-defeat-trump-his-ugly-ideas-according-pete-buttigieg/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">endorse the suggestion</a> of Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent that all Democratic presidential candidates pledge to abide by the War Powers Act. The oft-ignored 1975 law requires the president to get congressional approval for U.S. military action lasting longer than 90 days. That’s the kind of useful reform the Blob would never propose but could probably live with.<div class="p31_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Jay Inslee, governor of Washington state, is running <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-inslee-president-election-201900301-story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">a one-issue campaign</a>: climate change, which implies a U.S. foreign policy agenda very different than the Blob consensus. He’s a Blob skeptic.<div class="p32_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The foreign policy views of John Delaney, a Maryland congressman and former businessman, flow from his belief in free trade, long a staple of semi-official Washington thinking. He’s Blob-friendly.<div class="p33_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The other declared candidates—Sen. Cory Booker, former HUD secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Sen. Kamala Harris, Senator Amy Klobuchar and entrepreneur Andrew Yang—have said little about issues of war and peace beyond platitudes. What they have (or have not) said <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/venezuela-juan-guaido-donald-trump-2020-democrats_us_5c520bd0e4b04f8645c745f4" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">about Venezuela</a> indicates they are Blob-friendly.<div class="p34_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Of course, the 2020 campaign has just begun, and voters are notoriously uninterested in foreign policy issues, at least until they become issues of war and peace. The candidates have just begun to face questions about how they would administer the American empire after Trump. And those questions begin with: What do you think of the Blob?<div class="p35_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Jefferson Morley is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of the <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/projects-programs/the-deep-state" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Deep State</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., since 1980. He spent 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He was a staff writer at Arms Control Today and Washington editor of Salon. He is the editor and co-founder of JFK Facts, a blog about the assassination of JFK. His latest book is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Secret-Spymaster-James-Angleton/dp/1250080614/?tag=alternorg08-20" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton</a>.<div class="p36_37" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This article was produced by the <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/projects-programs/the-deep-state" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Deep State</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/theyre-back-heres-how-the-neocons-are-regaining-power-in-trumps-america/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/theyre-back-heres-how-the-neocons-are-regaining-power-in-trumps-america/</a>In December, after a 23-year run that saw it perpetuate the Bush administration lie that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction and breathlessly champion the ensuing war in Iraq, The Weekly Standard <a href="https://www.apnews.com/d2f8ea9fb442455f8062470c9654c597" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">released its final issue</a>. Two years removed from Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, one might be forgiven for concluding the publication’s demise sounded the final death knell of neoconservatism—an ideology that has been soundly defeated at the polls and appears to lack even a constituency, the ubiquity of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Kristol" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Bill Kristol</a> on cable news notwithstanding.<div class="p0_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">If only. As Stephen Wertheim argues in <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/01/02/return-of-the-neocons/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The New York Review of Books</a>, the neoconservatives are ascendant in Trump’s America, reasserting themselves within GOP and, more troublingly, renewing their ties to the Democratic Party. Together they constitute the “neo-neoconservatives” or “post-neoconservatives,” as he’s dubbed them.“Today, neoconservatives are riding high once more, in the White House, on Capitol Hill, in the most prominent organs of opinion,” Wertheim writes. “The Weekly Standard may have shuttered, but anti-Trump neocons enjoy increasing influence in the center of the Republican and Democratic parties and in publications like The Atlantic and The Washington Post.”<div class="p2_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In his essay, Wertheim traces the history of the movement from World War II through the Cold War and up to 9/11, which allowed Kristol and Commentary’s Norman Podhoretz, among others, to forge an existential threat in the form of “Islamofascism.” Indeed, neoconservatism draws from the philosophical tradition of Leo Strauss, who wrote in the <a href="https://isistatic.org/journal-archive/pr/08_01/benardete.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“The City and Man”</a> that “the crisis of the West consists in the West’s having become uncertain of its purpose.” For the Straussians and their intellectual descendants, military conflict offered that sense of purpose, whether the enemy was Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia or Al-Qaeda.<div class="p3_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Trump’s presidency has proved a clarifying moment. “[He] has forced neoconservatives to decide, for the first time, whether they are more against ‘totalitarianism’ or ‘globalism,’” continues Wertheim. “If anti-totalitarians take Trump to be perverting what they hold dear, anti-globalist neocons have found in Trump a kindred spirit and vehicle for power. Yet, even as they are fracturing, neocons are flourishing. They have bypassed the political wilderness and vaulted themselves to the vanguard on either side of the Trump divide.”<div class="p4_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Within Trump’s cabinet, neoconservatism remains represented by national security adviser John Bolton, who has served in every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan. Wertheim contends that while right-wing non-interventionism is typically attributed to paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan, neoconservatives have also historically taken aim at global institutions, if not globalism itself. Few have embodied this notion more than Bolton, who has made a career of bashing both the United Nations and its Security Council. During the Obama administration, Wertheim notes, he regularly sounded the alarm that “leftists like Obama were attempting to give away American sovereignty, bit by bit, to international bodies.”<div class="p5_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“For Bolton and company, Donald Trump turned out to be a deliverance,” he observes. “Trump elevated ‘globalism’ from a marginal slur to the central foil of American foreign policy and Republican politics.”<div class="p6_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Which brings us to neoconservatives’ suddenly lofty perch outside of the Trump administration. For Republican apostates like Jennifer Rubin, David Frum and Max Boot, Wertheim contends, the president has offered the “next best thing” to a foreign dictator: “an enemy within.” His personal degeneracy and unabashed corruption have allowed them to “reclaim their preferred role as the moral truth-tellers in America.”<div class="p7_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“More surprising, perhaps, is that Democrats and outlets of the anti-Trump resistance have welcomed these neocons into their fold,” Wertheim observes. “Boot, Kristol, Rubin, and former advisers of George W. Bush and Senator John McCain appear daily on MSNBC to excoriate Trump and Trumpism. David Frum, who coined the ‘axis of evil’ as George W. Bush’s speechwriter, earns resistance retweets by <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/the-case-for-liberal-republicanism/570790/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">warning</a> of ‘this hour of liberal peril’ in The Atlantic. In 2017, The New York Times hired Bret Stephens from The Wall Street Journal in an <a href="https://www.nytco.com/bret-stephens-joins-nyt-opinion/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">effort</a> to ‘broaden the range of Times debate about consequential questions,’ a curious rationale given that Stephens represented just the kind of Never Trump pundit repudiated by GOP voters and did nothing to change the op-ed page’s lack of a single Trump-supporting columnist.”<div class="p8_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ultimately, this embrace extends beyond pundits like Boot offering <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/19/democrats-need-new-foreign-policy-one-that-doesnt-sound-like-trumpism-left/?utm_term=.cb9ba2d457da" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">foreign policy advice</a>to the party’s leadership. Even purportedly liberal think tanks like the Center for American Progress are <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/12/why-is-the-center-for-american-progress-betraying-the-left" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">partnering</a> with the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. The question is why, decades removed from Sen. Henry Martin “Scoop” Jackson and the fall of the Berlin Wall, neoconservatives once again feel at home within the Democratic Party? Wertheim’s conclusions are as credible as they are dispiriting.<div class="p9_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“What best explains centrist Democrats’ rapprochement with neoconservatives isn’t an anti-Trump strategy but rather a genuine affinity with their current political objectives and style,” he writes. “Neocons have spent decades reducing politics to an all-encompassing crisis, a Manichean struggle between an imperiled liberal democracy and a pervasive totalitarian menace. Now certain liberals see things in much the same way. Lionizing the neocons indulges these Democrats’ fantasy that respectable Republicans will rise up to sweep Trump and all he stands for onto the ash heap of history.”new left red diaper baby origins?defectors?<a href="https://www.alternet.org/here-are-3-bush-era-neocons-who-are-siding-liberals-and-progressives-under-trump">https://www.alternet.org/here-are-3-bush-era-neocons-who-are-siding-liberals-and-progressives-under-trump</a>
During the George W. Bush era, “neocon” (short for “neoconservative”) is a word that inspired feelings of contempt among liberals and progressives as well as the libertarian right (Ron Paul, Gary Johnson) and paleoconservatives (Patrick Buchanan). Neocons, during Bush’s presidency, became synonymous with the Iraq War, an abrasive foreign policy and huge federal deficits. But politics make strange bedfellows, and in the Donald Trump era—with the alt-right occupying the White House—liberals and progressives have been commiserating with prominent Bush-era neocons like Bill Kristol, Max Boot and David Frum.Liberals and progressives frequently butted heads with Kristol, Boot and Frum during Bush’s presidency, but these days, they often show up as welcome guests on liberal-leaning MSNBC—and they share the left’s disdain for Donald Trump’s presidency. In 2018, it isn’t uncommon to find Rachel Maddow or another liberal at MSNBC engaging in some friendly Trump-bashing with a neocon from the Bush era.Here are three Bush-era neocons who liberals and progressives often find themselves commiserating with during the Trump years.1. Bill KristolNative New Yorker Bill Kristol is the son of the late Irving Kristol—who has been called the Godfather of Neoconservatism—and the founder of the Weekly Standard. Irving Kristol was a Trotskyist during his youth but later abandoned communism, became a right-wing Republican and championed an extremely interventionist foreign policy. And Bill Kristol was greatly influenced by his father, whose neoconservative ideology went way beyond believing in a strong military and peace through strength—neocons believe in nation-building, unlike libertarians such as Ron Paul and Gary Johnson or paleoconservatives like Patrick Buchanan (whose isolationist and protectionist views were a <a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trumps-presidency-has-helped-buchananism-achieve-prominence-gop-politics" style="text-decoration-line: none;">major influence</a> on President Trump).The neocon obsession with nation-building was very much at work when, after 9/11, Bill Kristol was encouraging the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein. The Iraq War turned out to be one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history, and many liberal and progressive critics of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s foreign policy found common ground with anti-interventionist right-wingers ranging from Buchanan to Paul to Justin Raimondo (the libertarian/paleoconservative known for serving as editorial director of Antiwar.com and suffering a landslide defeat of 72% when he ran for a House of Representatives seat against Rep. Nancy Pelosi in 1996).But in 2018, the liberals, progressives and centrists at MSNBC often find themselves bonding with Kristol in opposition to Trump’s presidency. Kristol hasn’t moved to the left politically; he is as right-wing as ever, but he views Trump as a foreign-policy disaster—and MSNBC’s hosts, from liberal Rachel Maddow to centrist Chris Matthews—agree. Whenever Trump attacks the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Kristol is happy to appear on MSNBC and defend NATO. And Kristol is so fiercely anti-Trump that his nonprofit Defending Democracy Together is seeking a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/14/bill-kristol-prepares-2020-primary-juggernaut-to-take-on-trump.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Republican candidate</a> to challenge Trump in a GOP presidential primary in 2020.2. Max BootJournalist Max Boot has written so many anti-Trump commentaries and spent so much time bashing Trump in the presence of liberals and progressives on MSNBC and CNN that it is easy to forget how conservative he is. But Boot has a very right-wing background. Boot was a foreign policy advisor for Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential run as well as a strong supporter of George W. Bush’s presidency and the failed Iraq War—and even though President Barack Obama was a war hawk who <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dougbandow/2014/10/28/suffering-through-the-neocon-moment-warmongering-and-nation-building-dont-work/#1fee9365336a" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ramped up</a> the U.S.’ military presence in Afghanistan considerably, Boot insisted that Obama wasn’t interventionist enough.These days, however, Boot is way more critical of Trump than he was of Obama. Boot expressed his disgust for Trump by leaving the GOP and asserting that Trump has been so terrible for the GOP brand that he was hoping for a Democratic tsunami on Election Day. On November 7, Boot told NPR’s Noel King that while he was glad to see Democrats obtain a majority in the House of Representatives, the midterms still weren’t the “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/11/07/665165403/midterms-were-a-rebuke-of-trumpism-commentator-max-boot-says" style="text-decoration-line: none;">complete repudiation</a>” of Trumpism he was hoping for. Boot wanted to see Democrats retake the Senate as well.3. David FrumToronto-born David Frum is a rarity: a Canadian neocon. But he has been a U.S. citizen since 2007 (he holds dual citizenship), and he has been heavily involved in Republican politics for many years. Frum has a very right-wing resumé: he was a speechwriter for President Bush, he aggressively supported the Iraq War (which he now admits was a mistake), he endorsed Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential run, and he became a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (a neocon think tank). But Frum is not the type of Republican who is afraid to buck his party. Although he voted for McCain, he asserted that Sarah Palin was a terrible choice for a running mate. And in 2016, Frum <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/303984-david-frum-i-voted-for-clinton" style="text-decoration-line: none;">voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton</a> and made it clear that he was a NeverTrump Republican. <interaction data-token="5b96855f8198b4e625350260" data-context="true" data-tags="" data-fallback="true" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" />Frum hasn’t warmed up to Trump’s presidency one bit. He detests the alt-right’s isolationism and considers Trump to be a train wreck on foreign policy. And when Rachel Maddow needs a conservative to join her in some Trump-bashing, Frum is often available for an MSNBC appearance.=can't lose for losing:6/18 neo-cons geo shultz and yoo are back sd pundits b/c of contrast with disaster djt==they're baaaaackOnce upon a time there were hopes that Donald Trump as president might pursue a different kind of American foreign policy; call it non-interventionist, or isolationist, or transactional.He certainly broke with conventional Washington discourse. When the foreign policy establishment of Washington almost unanimously urged President Obama in September 2013 to punish the Syrian government for a chemical gas attack, Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/375577511473983488" style="text-decoration-line: none;">tweeted</a>, “Do not attack Syria” three times in two days.<div id="TeadsNative" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump denounced previous administrations, Democratic and Republican, for casting America as the "policeman of the world.” He criticized President George W. Bush even more harshly than many liberal critics did.

...No longer. For the first year of his presidency, Trump <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/29/how-donald-trump-learned-to-love-war-in-2017/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">intensified U.S. military action</a> in every war theater he inherited from Obama. He sent more troops to Afghanistan. He dropped more bombs on Somalia than Obama and Bush combined. He loosened the rules of engagement in Syria. And he supplied Saudi Arabia with the bombs to besiege the civilians of Yemen.  Only on the issue of Iran did Trump exercise a degree of restraint. While he repeatedly disparaged the 2015 international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, he deferred to the triumvirate of his national security advisers: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.They all told Trump that international inspectors confirm Iran is abiding by the terms of the deal, and the results serve American security interests by blocking Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon at least until 2025.But Tillerson’s "<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/08/tillerson-iran-jcpoa/535602/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">differences</a>" with Trump on Iran chafed the president and finally cost Tillerson his job.Neo-Continuity"When you look at the Iran deal, I thought it was terrible,” Trump said of Tillerson Tuesday. “He thought it was okay. I wanted to either break it or do something, he felt a little differently.”Trump is now moving toward renouncing the deal in May, a move Pompeo has long advocated. Along the way, Trump is adopting the worldview of the neoconservatives he once scorned.“For anybody who thought that Trump was bluffing about his May 12 deadline to fix the deal or nix it, the appointment of Mike Pompeo as secretary of state should be a wake-up call,” said Mark Dubowitz, an executive at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which has close ties to the Trump administration.The foundation, created in 2001, embodies the continuity between the neoconservative policies of the Bush administration and the Trump administration. Founded by a “group of visionary philanthropists and policymakers who understood the threat facing America, Israel and the West,” the foundation's advisers include former Sen. Joe Lieberman, columnists Bret Stephens and Charles Krauthammer, and neoconservative guru William Kristol.The personnel has changed—Kristol is now a Never Trump conservative—but the song of “regime change” in Iran remains the same.Even before the invasion of Iraq, the foundation’s ideologues were dreaming of invading Iran. “Everyone talks about going to Baghdad,” said one British official of the neoconservatives. "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/18/opinion/things-to-come.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Real men talk about going to Tehran</a>."“The potential for a democratic transition exists in Iran, where such aspirations have been growing for over 100 years,” Reuel Marc Gerecht, senior fellow at the foundation, wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal. “As regime-shaking street protests have repeatedly revealed, the country is a volcano. We want it to erupt. For the U.S. and the Middle East, sooner is better than later.”The ostensible goal of reaching a better agreement with Iran cannot conceal a larger ambition. In 2016, Pompeo said, “Congress must act to change Iranian behavior, and ultimately, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/mike-pompeo-said-all-muslims-are-potentially-complicit-terrorism-he-ncna856531" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the Iranian regime</a>."Pompeo, much more than Tillerson, identifies with Israel, which has sought to kill the Iran agreement even while it was being negotiated. He was much more energetic than Tillerson in cultivating the Persian Gulf oil states that feel most threatened by Iran.Jim Lobe notes that Pompeo <a href="https://www.thenational.ae/world/gcc/saudi-s-king-salman-discusses-relations-with-cia-chief-pompeo-1.688905" style="text-decoration-line: none;">met</a> with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia in December to promote an anti-Iran coalition of Israel and the Gulf Arab states. The Jerusalem-Riyadh axis wants to enlist the United States in their campaign to confront and disrupt Iran.“We absolutely need Sunni partners,” Pompeo said <a href="https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/180123-AEI-Intelligence-Beyond-2018.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">in a talk</a> at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. “This administration has broadly reached out to Sunni countries all throughout the Middle East to form coalitions… not only against ISIS, but against Iran as well.”Enter Bolton?“Tillerson’s dismissal has also deepened speculation about the departure of the national-security adviser, General H. R. McMaster,” <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/with-mike-pompeo-at-the-state-department-are-the-uber-hawks-winning" style="text-decoration-line: none;">says</a> Robin Wright of the New Yorker. “The former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, an über-hawk on foreign policy, visited the White House last week; Republicans in previous administrations told me that he is an increasingly likely candidate to replace McMaster, whose long-winded lectures Trump has grumbled about.”Bolton's policy goals are not subtle. In a 2015 New York Times opinion column, he advocated <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">bombing Iran</a> immediately.Trump’s firing of Tillerson and his chumminess with Bolton is a reminder that the president once harbored the belief that instigating war with Iran would be a good move for a president in need of a boost at the polls.      In 2011 and 2012, Trump tweeted six times that Obama was going to attack Iran in order to win the election....[tweets]<a href="https://www.alternet.org/return-neoconservatives-trump-administration">https://www.alternet.org/return-neoconservatives-trump-administration</a>=<a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/neoconservatives-kristol-podhoretz-hartman-culture-war/">https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/neoconservatives-kristol-podhoretz-hartman-culture-war/</a>...Neoconservatism was the New Left’s chief ideological opponent. In assuming such a duty, neoconservatives set themselves up for a hostile response. Fortunately for them, their prior experiences had prepared them well for the task.Many of the early neoconservatives were members of “the family,” Murray Kempton’s apt designation for that disputatious tribe otherwise known as the New York intellectuals. They had come of age in the 1930s at the City College of New York (CCNY), a common destination for smart working-class Jews who otherwise might have attended Ivy League schools, where quotas prohibited much Jewish enrollment until after World War II.<a href="http://biography.yourdictionary.com/gertrude-himmelfarb" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: transparent; cursor: pointer; border: none;">Gertrude Himmelfarb</a>, <a href="http://irvingkristol.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: transparent; cursor: pointer; border: none;">Irving Kristol</a>, and their milieu learned the art of polemics during years spent in the CCNY cafeteria’s celebrated Alcove No. 1, where young Trotskyists waged ideological warfare against the Communist students who occupied Alcove No. 2. During their flirtations with Trotskyism in the 1930s, when tussles with other radical students seemed like a matter of life and death, future neoconservatives developed habits of mind that never atrophied.They held on to their combative spirits, their fondness for sweeping declarations, and their suspicion of leftist dogma. Such an epistemological background endowed neoconservatives with what seemed like an intuitive capacity for critiquing New Left arguments. They were uniquely qualified for the job of translating New Left discourses for a conservative movement fervent in its desire to know its enemy.In 1965 Kristol started a new journal along with his fellow New York intellectual and former Alcove No. 1 comrade, the sociologist <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/59595/Daniel-Bell" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: transparent; cursor: pointer; border: none;">Daniel Bell</a>. Originally Kristol and Bell sought to position their journal above the ideological fray. This was made clear by its title, <a href="http://www.nationalaffairs.com/archive/public_interest/default.asp" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: transparent; cursor: pointer; border: none;"><cite style="box-sizing: border-box; background-repeat: no-repeat;">The Public Interest</cite></a>, which derived from a telling Walter Lippmann passage: “The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.”...also moynihan=somewhat neglectedodd strain of nepotism?Relatives of the administration were also given jobs, such as Ari Fleischer’s brother Michael, and Simone Ledeen, the daughter of Michael Ledeen. Cheney’s daughter Liz, also did a short stint. However, it should be noted that none of them lounged around for too long in what soon became a hellhole in Iraq.

rt nation neocons tightly linked [more than he knows] wolfie wrote ~iraq paper in carter admin (worked for every pres ex BC)  92 2x (so out there his boss dc had to rewrite)  domiant at AEI, hudsom and Manhatan (urban), run Bradly and Olin; media rupurt and hblack ;perle stff for scoop jackson, dod for RR; bc pol out, noe "Wld West posse" 207  overreached, lost cred when no WMD

=wiki<div id="mw-content-text" lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); direction: ltr; line-height: 17.92px;">The Vulcans is a nickname used to refer to Republican Presidential candidate <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">George W. Bush</a>'s foreign policy advisory team assembled to brief him prior to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,2000" title="United States presidential election, 2000" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">2000 U.S. presidential election</a>. The Vulcans were led by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice" title="Condoleezza Rice" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Condoleezza Rice</a> and included <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage(politician)" title="Richard Armitage (politician)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Richard Armitage</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Blackwill" title="Robert Blackwill" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Robert Blackwill</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hadley" title="Stephen Hadley" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Stephen Hadley</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Perle" title="Richard Perle" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Richard Perle</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_S.Zakheim" title="Dov S. Zakheim" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Dov S. Zakheim</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zoellick" title="Robert Zoellick" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Robert Zoellick</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz" title="Paul Wolfowitz" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Paul Wolfowitz</a>, and Wolfowitz protégé, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Libby" title="Scooter Libby" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Scooter Libby</a>. Other key campaign figures including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney" title="Dick Cheney" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Dick Cheney</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P.Shultz" title="George P. Shultz" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">George P. Shultz</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell" title="Colin Powell" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Colin Powell</a> were also closely associated with the group but were never actually members. During the campaign, Bush sought to deflect questions about his own lack of foreign policy experience by pointing to this group of experienced advisers. After the election, all the members of the team received key positions within the new Bush administration.The name "The Vulcans" alludes to a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_statue" title="Vulcan statue" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">huge statue</a> of Vulcan, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan(mythology)" title="Vulcan (mythology)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Roman god of fire and metalworking</a>, in Rice’s home town of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham,Alabama" title="Birmingham, Alabama" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Birmingham</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama" title="Alabama" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Alabama</a>.<div id="toc" class="toc" style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 7px; display: table; zoom: 1;"><div id="toctitle" style="direction: ltr; text-align: center;">
</div><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#Origin" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">1Origin</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#Campaign" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">2Campaign</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#Legacy" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">3Legacy</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#Further_reading" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">4Further reading</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#References" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">5References</a></li></ul></div><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Origin[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Vulcans&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Origin" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">edit</a>]</h2>
In early 1999, a team largely drawn from the middle echelons of the first Bush administration began to act as foreign policy advisors to George W. Bush.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[2]</a>During the summer of 1998, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">George W. Bush</a> met with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice" title="Condoleezza Rice" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Condoleezza Rice</a> at the behest of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H.W.Bush" title="George H.W. Bush" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">George H.W. Bush</a> at the Bush estate in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennebunkport" title="Kennebunkport" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Kennebunkport</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine" title="Maine" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Maine</a>. Rice had been director for Soviet and East European Affairs of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Security_Council" title="United States National Security Council" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">National Security Council</a>under <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Scowcroft" title="Brent Scowcroft" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Brent Scowcroft</a> during <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H.W.Bush" title="George H. W. Bush" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">George H. W. Bush</a>'s administration and Scowcroft had been guiding her career ever since, ensuring she came to the attention of Bush Sr. "Eventually he was quite taken with her," Scowcroft recalled in an interview by<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mann(writer)" title="James Mann (writer)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">James Mann</a> for his book Rise of the Vulcans (2004). According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coit_D.Blacker" title="Coit D. Blacker" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Coit D. Blacker</a>, Rice and George W. Bush also "bonded at Kennebunkport" in August 1998.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[1]</a> The several days of discussions that followed resulted in Rice agreeing to take charge of foreign policy for George W. Bush’s upcoming presidential campaign. Later that year <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz" title="Paul Wolfowitz" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Paul Wolfowitz</a>, a former protégé of<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Shultz" title="George Shultz" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">George Shultz</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney" title="Dick Cheney" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Dick Cheney</a>, was taken on as well. Wolfowitz had also served as foreign policy advisor to Bob Dole during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,1996" title="United States presidential election, 1996" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">1996 U.S. presidential election</a>.<ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%0A%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20version%3D%221.1%22%20width%3D%225%22%20height%3D%2213%22%3E%0A%3Ccircle%20cx%3D%222.5%22%20cy%3D%229.5%22%20r%3D%222.5%22%20fill%3D%22%2300528c%22%2F%3E%0A%3C%2Fsvg%3E%0A);"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage(politician)" title="Richard Armitage (politician)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Richard Armitage</a>, former <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistant_Secretary_of_Defense_for_International_Security_Affairs" title="Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Blackwill" title="Robert Blackwill" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Robert Blackwill</a>, former member of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Security_Council" title="United States National Security Council" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">United States National Security Council</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hadley" title="Stephen Hadley" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Stephen Hadley</a>, former <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistant_Secretary_of_Defense_for_Global_Strategic_Affairs" title="Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Libby" title="Scooter Libby" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Scooter Libby</a>, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Perle" title="Richard Perle" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Richard Perle</a>, former <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistant_Secretary_of_Defense_for_Global_Strategic_Affairs" title="Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice" title="Condoleezza Rice" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Condoleezza Rice</a>, former member of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Security_Council" title="United States National Security Council" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">United States National Security Council</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz" title="Paul Wolfowitz" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Paul Wolfowitz</a>, former <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Secretary_of_Defense_for_Policy" title="Under Secretary of Defense for Policy" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Under Secretary of Defense for Policy</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_Zakheim" title="Dov Zakheim" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Dov Zakheim</a>, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, & Forces.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zoellick" title="Robert Zoellick" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Robert Zoellick</a>, former <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counselor_of_the_United_States_Department_of_State" title="Counselor of the United States Department of State" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Counselor of the United States Department of State</a>.</li></ul>In early 1999, the Vulcans held their first meeting in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin,Texas" title="Austin, Texas" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Austin, Texas</a>, which was attended by Cheney and Shultz. The group communicated regularly afterward.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[3]</a>During 1999 and 2000, a second group was formed under the leadership of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld" title="Donald Rumsfeld" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Donald Rumsfeld</a> to deal specifically with the subject of missile defence. While distinct from the Vulcans, it did include Rice, Wolfowitz, Hadley and Perle alongside Shultz and various scientists, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Anderson" title="Martin Anderson" class="mw-disambig" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Martin Anderson</a>[<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://dispenser.homenet.org/_{dispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py?page=The_Vulcans&editintro=Template:Disambiguation_needed/editintro&client=Template:Dn}" style="text-decoration: none; padding: 0px !important; background-image: none !important; background-attachment: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important;">disambiguation needed</a>] of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University" title="Stanford University" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Stanford University</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Wood" title="Lowell Wood" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Lowell Wood</a> of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Livermore_National_Laboratory" title="Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[4]</a><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Campaign[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Vulcans&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: Campaign" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">edit</a>]</h2><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">George W. Bush</a> laid out his foreign policy plans on October 11, 2000, at the second Gore-Bush presidential debate against his Democratic rival <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_President_of_the_United_States" title="Vice President of the United States" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Vice President</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore" title="Al Gore" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Al Gore</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[5]</a><dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em;"><dd style="margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">"If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us. If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us. Our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and that's why we have to be humble, and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom."<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2000b.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent), url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20width%3D%2210%22%20height%3D%2210%22%3E%3Cg%20transform%3D%22translate%28-826.429%20-698.791%29%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%225.982%22%20height%3D%225.982%22%20x%3D%22826.929%22%20y%3D%22702.309%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%20stroke%3D%22%2306c%22%2F%3E%3Cg%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M831.194%20698.791h5.234v5.391l-1.571%201.545-1.31-1.31-2.725%202.725-2.689-2.689%202.808-2.808-1.311-1.311z%22%20fill%3D%22%2306f%22%2F%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M835.424%20699.795l.022%204.885-1.817-1.817-2.881%202.881-1.228-1.228%202.881-2.881-1.851-1.851z%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E); background-attachment: initial, initial; background-size: initial, initial; background-origin: initial, initial; background-clip: initial, initial; background-position: 100% 50%, 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat, repeat;">[1]</a></dd></dl>“The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops,” Bush announced. “He believes in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_building" title="Nation building" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">nation building</a>. I would be very careful about using troops as nation builders,” he clarified, expressing particular concerns about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Administration" title="Clinton Administration" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Clinton Administration’s</a> recent involvement in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia" title="Somalia" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Somalia</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti" title="Haiti" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Haiti</a>, by telling Gore:<dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em;"><dd style="margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">“I'm not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say this is the way it's got to be. We can help. And maybe it's just our difference in government, the way we view government. I want to empower the people. I want to help people help themselves, not have government tell people what to do. I just don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, we do it this way, so should you.”</dd></dl>“I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war,” Bush went on to explain, “I don’t want to try to put our troops in all places at all times. I don’t want to be the world’s policeman.”During the campaign Bush promised to increase the defense budget, stating that “America’s armed forces need better equipment, better training and better pay.” However Bush did not promise as much of an increase as Gore even going as far as to state “If this is a race to see who can spend the most money, I’m going to lose.” Analyst <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_D.Hartung" title="William D. Hartung" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">William D. Hartung</a> of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Policy_Institute" title="World Policy Institute" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">World Policy Institute</a> points out that Gore promised $100 billion over 10 years while Bush promised $50 billion over the same period. However, according to Hartung, “the $50 billion referred to specific projects,” and that “[i]t could not possibly have referred to their entire proposed increase”.Bush, at the advice of Hadley, also proposed greater nuclear arms reductions than Gore. Hadley’s plan proposed unilaterally reducing the number of proposed long-range nuclear missiles to around 1,500-2,000 from the then 6,500-7,500, but caveats to this included the abandonment of attempts to get the Senate to ratify the 1996<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Test_Ban_Treaty" title="Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty</a> and the development of new low-yield <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_bunker_buster" title="Nuclear bunker buster" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">bunker-busting mini-nukes</a> for actual battle-field use. Hartung feared that these steps would “re-start the nuclear arms race” as the U.S. arsenal was upgraded.At the advice of Rumsfeld’s missile defense group, Bush committed himself to building a strong <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Missile_Defense" title="National Missile Defense" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">National Missile Defense</a>. Stating that "[n]ow is not the time to defend outdated treaties but to defend the American people," he made it clear that he was willing to abandon the 1972 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty" title="Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty</a> in order to do this. A member of the group had told the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Post" title="Washington Post" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Washington Post</a> that "All of us to a greater or lesser extent were uncomfortable with the treaty, but Bush said 'My concern isn’t the treaty. My concern is missile defense, and I don’t want anything to stand in the way of it.'"Bush’s plans for NMD went far beyond the limited options endorsed by the Clinton Administration. As Hartung points out, “Bush’s advisers suggested that if elected, would not limit the system to land-based options, but would move full speed ahead to develop interceptors based at sea, lasers based on aircraft and perhaps lasers or rockets based in space as well.” Hartung estimated that this would cost a minimum of $100–200 billion, far in excess of Bush's promised defense budget increase.<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Legacy[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Vulcans&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: Legacy" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">edit</a>]</h2><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage(politician)" title="Richard Armitage (politician)" style="line-height: 17.92px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">
Richard Armitage</a> was appointed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Deputy_Secretary_of_State" title="United States Deputy Secretary of State" style="line-height: 17.92px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">U.S. Deputy Secretary of State</a> under <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell" title="Colin Powell" style="line-height: 17.92px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Colin Powell</a>.Following the election of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">George W. Bush</a> as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_United_States" title="President of the United States" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">President of the United States</a>, the Vulcans all received key positions within the new administration.<ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%0A%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20version%3D%221.1%22%20width%3D%225%22%20height%3D%2213%22%3E%0A%3Ccircle%20cx%3D%222.5%22%20cy%3D%229.5%22%20r%3D%222.5%22%20fill%3D%22%2300528c%22%2F%3E%0A%3C%2Fsvg%3E%0A);"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Blackwill" title="Robert Blackwill" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Robert Blackwill</a> was appointed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.Ambassador_to_India" title="U.S. Ambassador to India" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">U.S. Ambassador to India</a> and later to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Security_Council" title="United States National Security Council" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">United States National Security Council</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hadley" title="Stephen Hadley" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Stephen Hadley</a> was appointed U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor under Rice and later <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.National_Security_Advisor" title="U.S. National Security Advisor" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">U.S. National Security Advisor</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Libby" title="Scooter Libby" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Scooter Libby</a> became <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_of_Staff_to_the_Vice_President_of_the_United_States" title="Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Perle" title="Richard Perle" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Richard Perle</a> was appointed chairman of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Policy_Board_Advisory_Committee" title="Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">U.S. Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice" title="Condoleezza Rice" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Condoleezza Rice</a> was appointed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.National_Security_Advisor" title="U.S. National Security Advisor" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">U.S. National Security Advisor</a> and later <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.Secretary_of_State" title="U.S. Secretary of State" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">U.S. Secretary of State</a> in Bush's Second Administration.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz" title="Paul Wolfowitz" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Paul Wolfowitz</a> was appointed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Deputy_Secretary_of_Defense" title="United States Deputy Secretary of Defense" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense</a> under <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld" title="Donald Rumsfeld" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Donald Rumsfeld</a> and later president of the World Bank in 2005.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_Zakheim" title="Dov Zakheim" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Dov Zakheim</a> was appointed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Secretary_of_Defense(Comptroller)" title="Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zoellick" title="Robert Zoellick" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Robert Zoellick</a> was appointed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.Trade_Representative" title="U.S. Trade Representative" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">U.S. Trade Representative</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Deputy_Secretary_of_State" title="United States Deputy Secretary of State" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">United States Deputy Secretary of State</a> and nominated as World Bank president in 2007.</li></ul>On December 13, 2001, in accordance with his campaign promises on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Missile_Defense" title="National Missile Defense" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">National Missile Defense</a>, Bush gave <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia" title="Russia" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Russia</a> six months notice of the United States' withdrawal from the 1972 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty" title="Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty</a>. This was the first time in recent history the United States had withdrawn from a major international arms treaty.The humble foreign policy outlined by Bush during his campaign, however, was quickly dropped after the terrorist attacks of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11" title="9/11" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">9/11</a> in favor of a more aggressive policy that has been dubbed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine" title="Bush Doctrine" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Bush Doctrine</a>.<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Further reading[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Vulcans&action=edit&section=4" title="Edit section: Further reading" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">edit</a>]</h2><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%0A%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20version%3D%221.1%22%20width%3D%225%22%20height%3D%2213%22%3E%0A%3Ccircle%20cx%3D%222.5%22%20cy%3D%229.5%22%20r%3D%222.5%22%20fill%3D%22%2300528c%22%2F%3E%0A%3C%2Fsvg%3E%0A);"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zalmay_Khalilzad" title="Zalmay Khalilzad" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Zalmay Khalilzad</a> (1994) From Containment to Global Leadership?: America & the World After the Cold War, RAND Corporation <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0833016202" class="internal mw-magiclink-isbn" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">ISBN 0-8330-1620-2</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mann(writer)" title="James Mann (writer)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">James Mann</a> (2004) Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet. Viking <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0670032999" class="internal mw-magiclink-isbn" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">ISBN 0-670-03299-9</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_D.Hartung" title="William D. Hartung" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">William D. Hartung</a> (2003) How Much Are You Making On The War, Daddy? Bantum <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1863254331" class="internal mw-magiclink-isbn" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">ISBN 1-86325-433-1</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz" title="Paul Wolfowitz" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Paul Wolfowitz</a> (1997) "The United States and Iraq," in The Future of Iraq, ed. John Calabrese, Middle East Institute</li></ul><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">References[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Vulcans&action=edit&section=5" title="Edit section: References" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">edit</a>]</h2><div class="reflist columns references-column-count references-column-count-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.3em; -webkit-column-count: 2; list-style-type: decimal;"><ol class="references" style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em 3.2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: inherit;"><li id="cite_note-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; -webkit-column-break-inside: avoid; page-break-inside: avoid;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#cite_ref-1" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important; -webkit-user-select: none;">Jump up^{</a> }Mann, James. 2004. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet. p. 250.</li><li id="cite_note-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; -webkit-column-break-inside: avoid; page-break-inside: avoid;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#cite_ref-2" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important; -webkit-user-select: none;">Jump up^{</a> }Mann, James. 2004. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet. p. 251-252.</li><li id="cite_note-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; -webkit-column-break-inside: avoid; page-break-inside: avoid;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#cite_ref-3" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important; -webkit-user-select: none;">Jump up^{</a> }Mann, James. 2004. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet. p. 252.</li><li id="cite_note-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; -webkit-column-break-inside: avoid; page-break-inside: avoid;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#cite_ref-4" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important; -webkit-user-select: none;">Jump up^{</a> }Mann, James. 2004. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet. p. 253.</li><li id="cite_note-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; -webkit-column-break-inside: avoid; page-break-inside: avoid;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulcans#cite_ref-5" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="cite-accessibility-label" style="top: -99999px; clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; padding: 0px !important; border: 0px !important; height: 1px !important; width: 1px !important; -webkit-user-select: none;">Jump up^{</a> }Second Presidential Debate, October 11, 2000: <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2000b.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent), url(data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml%20version%3D%221.0%22%20encoding%3D%22UTF-8%22%3F%3E%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20width%3D%2210%22%20height%3D%2210%22%3E%3Cg%20transform%3D%22translate%28-826.429%20-698.791%29%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%225.982%22%20height%3D%225.982%22%20x%3D%22826.929%22%20y%3D%22702.309%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%20stroke%3D%22%2306c%22%2F%3E%3Cg%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M831.194%20698.791h5.234v5.391l-1.571%201.545-1.31-1.31-2.725%202.725-2.689-2.689%202.808-2.808-1.311-1.311z%22%20fill%3D%22%2306f%22%2F%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M835.424%20699.795l.022%204.885-1.817-1.817-2.881%202.881-1.228-1.228%202.881-2.881-1.851-1.851z%22%20fill%3D%22%23fff%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E); background-attachment: initial, initial; background-size: initial, initial; background-origin: initial, initial; background-clip: initial, initial; background-position: 100% 50%, 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat, repeat;">transcript.</a></li></ol></div></div><div id="catlinks" class="catlinks" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 5px; margin-top: 1em; clear: both; line-height: 17.92px;"><div id="mw-normal-catlinks" class="mw-normal-catlinks"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Category" title="Help:Category" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Categories</a>: <ul style="list-style: none none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><li style="margin: 0.125em 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.25em; border-left-style: none; padding: 0px 0.5em 0px 0.25em; zoom: 1;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:George_W.Bush_presidential_campaign,2000" title="Category:George W. Bush presidential campaign, 2000" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">George W. Bush presidential campaign, 2000</a></li></ul></div></div><ol style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 25px;"><li>George W. Bush: The president who invaded Iraq has apparently learned nothing from the experience, <a href="http://www.rt.com/usa/253593-bush-obama-iran-sanctions/" style="text-decoration: none;">arguing in April </a>that Obama negotiating with Iran was “naive.”</li><li>Bill Kristol: Kristol, a long-time GOP apparatchik who today is a <a href="http://www.committeeforisrael.com/board" style="text-decoration: none;">board member</a> of the anti-deal Emergency Committee for Israel, was one of the <a href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/flashback-republicans-iraq-cheney-wolfowitz-kristol" style="text-decoration: none;">biggest proponents</a> of the Iraq war. “We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators,” he said in March 2003. From his perch at The Weekly Standard, Kristol has <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/special-editorial-kill-deal_908909.html" style="text-decoration: none;">asked</a> lawmakers to “kill the deal.”</li><li>David Frum: Frum was a Bush administration speechwriter who <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/28/usa.iran" style="text-decoration: none;">coined the term</a> “Axis of Evil” to describe the governments of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, in order to justify the war push. Today, Frum not only opposes the Iran deal but has <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-jewish-group-slams-dual-loyalty-smears-on-iran-deal/" style="text-decoration: none;">suggested</a> that Obama is engaged in antisemitic rhetoric for calling out lobbyists who are trying to sink the agreement.</li><li>Lindsey Graham: Graham <a href="https://votesmart.org/public-statement/14702/statement-from-lindsey-graham-on-war-with-iraq#.VdzA8vZVgk0" style="text-decoration: none;">said</a> war with Iraq was the “only reasonable option”; today he says the deal is like throwing a “<a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/sen.-lindsey-graham-to-seek-authorization-for-u.s.-attack-on-iran/article/2536040" style="text-decoration: none;">can of gasoline</a>” on a fire.</li><li>John McCain: Graham's fellow senator McCain <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/12/opinion/12MCCA.html" style="text-decoration: none;">said Iraq</a> was “the right war for the right reasons” as he offered full-throated backing to the adventure. McCain mocks Obama's diplomatic effort, saying the Iran agreement is an attempt by the Obama administration to seek “<a href="http://thehill.com/policy/international/240119-mccain-obama-administration-pursuing-nirvana-with-iran-deal" style="text-decoration: none;">nirvana</a>."</li><li>Dick Cheney: Cheney, who represents the warmongering arm of the warmongering Republican Party, was a mastermind of the Iraq war. He has <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/dick-cheney-speak-out-against-iran-nuclear-deal-121674.html" style="text-decoration: none;">claimed</a> the deal would put us closer to nuclear war than at any time since World War II, and plans to give an address against the agreement next month.</li><li>Joe Lieberman: The former Democratic vice presidential candidate who <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2011/01/top-ten-horrible-things-done-to-us-by-outgoing-sen-joe-lieberman.html" style="text-decoration: none;">turned</a> against his own party over the Iraq war has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/12/world/middleeast/head-of-group-opposing-iran-accord-quits-post-saying-he-backs-deal.html" style="text-decoration: none;">stepped up to lead</a> so-called United Against Nuclear Iran, after the last chairman of the group stepped down because he decided to support the deal.</li><li>Benjamin Netanyahu: The Prime Minister of Israel was outside the government in 2002, but he was still called to testify, <a href="https://youtu.be/fpQdg4D78Jc" style="text-decoration: none;">telling lawmakers he had no doubts</a> about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He is now claiming <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/jose-diaz-balart/watch/netanyahu--iran-deal--not-good-for-any-of-us--484672067526" style="text-decoration: none;">diplomacy with Iran threatens the entire world</a>.</li><li>Eli Lake: Lake was a reporter for UPI, <a href="http://fortressamerica.gawker.com/daily-beast-reporter-was-for-illegal-iraq-war-before-he-1635479882" style="text-decoration: none;">arguing</a> about the threat of fantasy Iraqi WMD. Today, Lake is a one-man propaganda operation at Bloomberg View, claiming that Obama is practicing the “<a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-03/obama-plays-politics-of-fear-to-get-his-iran-deal" style="text-decoration: none;">politics of fear</a>” in order to achieve peace, rather than the war Lake supported.</li><li>AIPAC: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the main pro-Israel lobbying group, <a href="http://www.lobelog.com/aipac-bristles-at-obamas-reminder-of-iraq-war-lobbying/" style="text-decoration: none;">lobbied on behalf</a> of the Iraq war. Today, it is engaged in a no-holds-barred fight to kill the Iran deal, with the donors it has arrayed into an outside group pledging to <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/spending-estimated-million" style="text-decoration: none;">spend as much as $40 million</a>.</li></ol>The irony of all this is that the <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-14/blame-george-w-bush-for-iran-deal" style="text-decoration: none;">Iraq war set up</a> the diplomatic arrangements we are finalizing today. The war in Iraq expanded Iranian influence, and the West's negotiations with Iran are partly a result of a nuclear program that was ramped up in the wake of U.S. wars with Iran's neighbors. There is also added pressure to deal with Iran on the mutual interest of containing ISIS, which would likely never have emerged but for the Iraq war. The nuclear deal is simply an attempt to clean up the mess made by the Iraq war architects themselves.http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/10-disgraced-iraq-war-supporters-who-are-desperately-trying-undo-obamas-iran-dealsrcwtch:<div id="mw-content-text" lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); direction: ltr; line-height: 22.4px;">Neo-conservatives/list also known as Neo-consSee the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Neo-conservative" title="Neo-conservative" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">neo-conservative</a> entry for background information.<ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" f="F" e="E" a="A" csvg="Csvg" http="http" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="cx" cy="cy" r="r" fill="fill" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Elliott_Abrams" title="Elliott Abrams" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Elliott Abrams</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ken_Adelman" title="Ken Adelman" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Ken Adelman</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Richard_Armitage" title="Richard Armitage" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Richard Armitage</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_David_Ashcroft" title="John David Ashcroft" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">John David Ashcroft</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fred_Barnes" title="Fred Barnes" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Fred Barnes</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gary_Bauer" title="Gary Bauer" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Gary Bauer</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/William_J.Bennett" title="William J. Bennett" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">William J. Bennett</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jeffrey_Bergner" title="Jeffrey Bergner" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jeffrey Bergner</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_Bolton" title="John Bolton" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">John Bolton</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Max_Boot" title="Max Boot" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Max Boot</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ellen_Bork" title="Ellen Bork" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Ellen Bork</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Paul_Bremer" title="Paul Bremer" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Paul Bremer</a> Lewis Paul "Jerry" Bremer III</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/David_Brooks" title="David Brooks" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">David Brooks</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Shoshana_Bryen" title="Shoshana Bryen" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Shoshana Bryen</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Stephen_D.Bryen" title="Stephen D. Bryen" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Stephen D. Bryen</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Zbigniew_Brzezinski" title="Zbigniew Brzezinski" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Zbigniew Brzezinski</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Stephen_A.Cambone" title="Stephen A. Cambone" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Stephen A. Cambone</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Eliot_A.Cohen" title="Eliot A. Cohen" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Eliot A. Cohen</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Midge_Decter" title="Midge Decter" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Midge Decter</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Paula_J.Dobriansky" title="Paula J. Dobriansky" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Paula J. Dobriansky</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Thomas_Donnelly" title="Thomas Donnelly" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Thomas Donnelly</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_Doolittle" title="John Doolittle" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">John Doolittle</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Douglas_Jay_Feith" title="Douglas Jay Feith" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Douglas Jay Feith</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/David_Frum" title="David Frum" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">David Frum</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Francis_Fukuyama" title="Francis Fukuyama" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Francis Fukuyama</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Frank_J.Gaffney,Jr." title="Frank J. Gaffney, Jr." style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Reuel_Marc_Gerecht" title="Reuel Marc Gerecht" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Reuel Marc Gerecht</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Newt_Gingrich" title="Newt Gingrich" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Newt Gingrich</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Joshua_Goldberg&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Joshua Goldberg (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Joshua Goldberg</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Owen_Harries" title="Owen Harries" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Owen Harries</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bruce_P.Jackson" title="Bruce P. Jackson" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Bruce P. Jackson</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Michael_Johns" title="Michael Johns" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Michael Johns</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Robert_Kagan" title="Robert Kagan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Robert Kagan</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Zalmay_Khalilzad" title="Zalmay Khalilzad" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Zalmay Khalilzad</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jeane_Kirkpatrick" title="Jeane Kirkpatrick" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Jeane Kirkpatrick</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Henry_Kissinger" title="Henry Kissinger" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Henry Kissinger</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Neal_Kozodoy&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Neal Kozodoy (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Neal Kozodoy</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Charles_Krauthammer" title="Charles Krauthammer" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Charles Krauthammer</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Irving_Kristol" title="Irving Kristol" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Irving Kristol</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/William_Kristol" title="William Kristol" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">William Kristol</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Michael_Arthur_Ledeen" title="Michael Arthur Ledeen" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Michael Arthur Ledeen</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jay_Lefkowitz" title="Jay Lefkowitz" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jay Lefkowitz</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/I.Lewis_Libby" title="I. Lewis Libby" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">I. Lewis Libby</a> a.k.a. "Scooter"</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Michael_H.Mobbs" title="Michael H. Mobbs" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Michael H. Mobbs</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Joshua_Muravchik" title="Joshua Muravchik" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Joshua Muravchik</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Rupert_Murdoch" title="Rupert Murdoch" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Rupert Murdoch</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Richard_J.Neuhaus" title="Richard J. Neuhaus" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Richard J. Neuhaus</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Michael_Novak" title="Michael Novak" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Michael Novak</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Martin_Peretz" title="Martin Peretz" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Martin Peretz</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Richard_N.Perle" title="Richard N. Perle" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Richard N. Perle</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Daniel_Pipes" title="Daniel Pipes" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Daniel Pipes</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Norman_Podhoretz" title="Norman Podhoretz" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Norman Podhoretz</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Howard_Raines" title="Howard Raines" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Howard Raines</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peter_W.Rodman" title="Peter W. Rodman" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Peter W. Rodman</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Karl_Rove" title="Karl Rove" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Karl Rove</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Donald_H.Rumsfeld" title="Donald H. Rumsfeld" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Donald H. Rumsfeld</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Richard_Mellon_Scaife" title="Richard Mellon Scaife" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Richard Mellon Scaife</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gary_J.Schmitt" title="Gary J. Schmitt" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Gary J. Schmitt</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/William_Schneider,Jr." title="William Schneider, Jr." style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">William Schneider, Jr.</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Abram_N.Shulsky" title="Abram N. Shulsky" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Abram N. Shulsky</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Robert_W.Tucker" title="Robert W. Tucker" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Robert W. Tucker</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Harlan_Ullman" title="Harlan Ullman" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Harlan Ullman</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Vin_Weber" title="Vin Weber" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Vin Weber</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Paul_Dundes_Wolfowitz" title="Paul Dundes Wolfowitz" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Paul Dundes Wolfowitz</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/R.James_Woolsey,Jr." title="R. James Woolsey, Jr." style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">R. James Woolsey, Jr.</a> (PNAC)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/David_Wurmser" title="David Wurmser" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">David Wurmser</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Meyrav_Wurmser" title="Meyrav Wurmser" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Meyrav Wurmser</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Dov_Zakheim" title="Dov Zakheim" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Dov Zakheim</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Karl_Zinsmeister" title="Karl Zinsmeister" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Karl Zinsmeister</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Robert_B.Zoellick" title="Robert B. Zoellick" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Robert B. Zoellick</a></li></ul></div><div id="catlinks" class="catlinks" style="background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 5px; margin-top: 1em; clear: both; line-height: 22.4px;"><div id="mw-normal-catlinks" class="mw-normal-catlinks"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Special:Categories" title="Special:Categories" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Category</a>: <ul style="list-style: none none; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><li style="margin: 0.125em 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.25em; border-left-style: none; padding: 0px 0.5em 0px 0.25em; zoom: 1;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Category:Lists" title="Category:Lists" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Lists</a></li></ul></div></div><div class="headline" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px;"><h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title" style="line-height: 52px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; clear: both;">A Fraternity of Failure: Paul Krugman On How Neocon Ideology Rewards Being Wrong</h1></div><div class="teaser" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 15px; line-height: 32px;"><div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden" style=""><div class="field-items" style=""><div class="field-item even" style="">The only “experts” left standing are those who made all the approved mistakes.</div></div></div></div><div class="byline story" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0px; max-width: 350px; float: left; line-height: 32px;">By <a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/adam-johnson-0" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Adam Johnson</a> / <a href="http://alternet.org/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">AlterNet</a></div><div class="story-date" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); float: left; margin-left: 20px; padding-left: 15px; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); line-height: 32px;">May 15, 2015</div><div class="authors_signup" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: both; line-height: 32px;"><div class="item-list"><ul style="list-style-type: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><li class="first last" /></ul></div></div><div class="top-tools" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: both; padding-top: 15px; line-height: 32px;">Friday morning, Paul Krugman looked past the 24-hour 2016 media cycle to<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/opinion/paul-krugman-fraternity-of-failure.html&assetType=opinion?gwh=1B396A4252A95D7ECAFD0AE7112A42B0&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion&r=0" style="text-decoration: none;">examine the true mechanisms</a> behind Jeb Bush's week of backtracking and Iraq War revisionism. Krugman argues, quite convincingly, that Bush's inability to articulate a coherent position on Iraq - or the economy - is due to the fact that the GOP establishment, still held captive by the neoconservative clergy class, are constantly trying to fit a rigid ideological square peg into the round hole of reality.</div><div class="clear-divider" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: both; border-top: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); height: 1px; margin: 15px 0px; line-height: 32px;"><div class="the_body body_story clearfix" style="line-height: 25px;">W's Iraq War was a categorical and unquestionable failure in every sense. Moral, strategic, legal, political: the wrongheadedness of the 2003 invasion is<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/not-worth-it-huge-majority-regret-iraq-war-exclusive-poll-n139686" style="text-decoration: none;">broadly seen</a> as one of the few black and whites in contemporary politics, despite recent <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/03/20/politics-counts-george-w-bushs-quiet-comeback/" style="text-decoration: none;">attempts to "rebrand" the Bush presidency</a> as anything other than a total disaster. Nevertheless, here we are. Little brother must at once acknowledge that the Iraq War was a bad idea while simultaneously not rejecting the American Enterprise Institute orthodoxy that makes up his inner circle and their entire foreign policy ethos. Krugman would call it what it was, total sleaze:<blockquote>Then he tried to walk it back. He “interpreted the question wrong,” and isn’t interested in engaging “hypotheticals.” Anyway, “going back in time” is a “disservice” to those who served in the war.Take a moment to savor the cowardice and vileness of that last remark. And, no, that’s not hyperbole. Mr. Bush is trying to hide behind the troops, pretending that any criticism of political leaders — especially, of course, his brother, the commander in chief — is an attack on the courage and patriotism of those who paid the price for their superiors’ mistakes. That’s sinking very low, and it tells us a lot more about the candidate’s character than any number of up-close-and-personal interviews.Wait, there’s more: Incredibly, Mr. Bush resorted to the old passive-voice dodge, admitting only that “mistakes were made.” Indeed. By whom? Well, earlier this year Mr. Bush released a list of his chief advisers on foreign policy, and it was a who’s-who of mistake-makers, people who played essential roles in the Iraq disaster and other debacles.Seriously, consider that list, which includes such luminaries as Paul Wolfowitz, who insisted that we would be welcomed as liberators and that the war would cost almost nothing, and Michael Chertoff, who as director of the Department of Homeland Security during Hurricane Katrina was unaware of the thousands of people stranded at the New Orleans convention center without food and water.</blockquote>But this unchecked hubris wouldn't be limited to just foreign policy. As Krugman would explain:<blockquote>Take my usual focus, economic policy. If you look at the list of economists who appear to have significant influence on Republican leaders, including the likely presidential candidates, you find that nearly all of them agreed, back during the “Bush boom,” that there was no housing bubble and the American economic future was bright; that nearly all of them predicted that the Federal Reserve’s efforts to fight the economic crisis that developed when that nonexistent bubble popped would lead to severe inflation; and that nearly all of them predicted that Obamacare, which went fully into effect in 2014, would be a huge job-killer.Given how badly these predictions turned out — we had the biggest housing bust in history, inflation paranoia has been wrong for six years and counting, and 2014 delivered the best job growth since 1999 — you might think that there would be some room in the G.O.P. for economists who didn’t get everything wrong. But there isn’t. Having been completely wrong about the economy, like having been completely wrong about Iraq, seems to be a required credential.</blockquote>The craven team that made up W's White House sits in waiting. Backed by the same toxic mix of free-market ideologues, religious extremists, and pseudo-centrist apologists, Jeb is trying the same lay low strategy his brother did in 2000. The only problem, politically, is that he must carry the baggage of a Presidency so inept and corrupt it's become shorthand for what one doesn't want in a President. Americans notoriously have short memories, but, as Bush is finding out, there are limits to our collective amnesia. As Krugman would note:<blockquote>What’s going on here? My best explanation is that we’re witnessing the effects of extreme tribalism. On the modern right, everything is a political litmus test. Anyone who tried to think through the pros and cons of the Iraq war was, by definition, an enemy of President George W. Bush and probably hated America; anyone who questioned whether the Federal Reserve was really debasing the currency was surely an enemy of capitalism and freedom.It doesn’t matter that the skeptics have been proved right. Simply raising questions about the orthodoxies of the moment leads to excommunication, from which there is no coming back. So the only “experts” left standing are those who made all the approved mistakes. It’s kind of a fraternity of failure: men and women united by a shared history of getting everything wrong, and refusing to admit it. Will they get the chance to add more chapters to their reign of error?</blockquote>Krugman hits the nail right on the head. The same arrogance and rigidity that refused for years to change course when it was clear Iraq was a lost cause are plaguing Jeb's campaign, already. How to acknowledge you're wrong without ever doing so? How to acknowledge you've made a mistake when you're surrounded by people who think their brand of colonial adventurism is, quite literally, handed down by God? You can't. The scars of Iraq are too deep. The pieces still being picked up. The PR strategists behind the Bush family's latest attempt at the White House were counting on the American public to be ignorant of history. But with the ever-present war against ISIS that resulted from a chaos they helped create, it appears Bush's team may have underestimated how deep the wounds they inflicted upon the body politic really are.[plus anyone who call themon wrongs is lamestream press?]</div>omg5/15<div><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://convio.motherjones.com/site/R?i=ajOIrJ6louiZF3sJAimCWw" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1431702984047_46370" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; outline: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The Jeb Bush Adviser Who Should Scare You</a>By David CornLast week, Jeb Bush, the all-but-announced GOP presidential candidate, stirred up a fuss when he privately <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://convio.motherjones.com/site/R?i=2aO0gmYBQdYOMND7uqK0qA" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; outline: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">told</a> a group of Manhattan financiers that his top adviser on US-Israeli policy is George W. Bush. Given that Jeb has tried mightily to distance himself from his brother, whose administration used false assertions to launch the still highly unpopular Iraq War, this touting of W.—even at a behind-closed-doors session of Republican donors—seemed odd. But perhaps more noteworthy is that Jeb Bush has embraced much of his brother's White House foreign policy team. In February, his campaign <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://convio.motherjones.com/site/R?i=6Ti0CSDOqCsSSfU2AMrWHw" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; outline: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">released a list</a> of 21 foreign policy advisers; 17 of them served in the George W. Bush administration. And one name stood out: Paul Wolfowitz, a top policy architect of the Iraq War—for the prospect of Wolfowitz whispering into Jeb's ear ought to scare the bejeezus out of anyone who yearns for a rational national security policy. <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://convio.motherjones.com/site/R?i=jbW4zYi1_JuvBlU_3N6Khw" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1431702984047_46369" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; outline: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[READ MORE]</a></div><div></div>===

power of nightmares

ladeen fooled by novel; cia told casey it was their own black prop

O: To persuade the President, the neoconservatives set out to prove that the Soviet threat was far greater than anyone, even Team B, had previously shown. They would demonstrate that the majority of terrorism and revolutionary movements around the world were actually part of a secret network, coordinated by Moscow, to take over the world. The main proponent of this theory was a leading neoconservative who was the special adviser to the Secretary of State. His name was Michael Ledeen, and he had been influenced by a best-selling book called The Terror Network. It alleged that terrorism was not the fragmented phenomenon that it appeared to be. In reality, all terrorist groups, from the PLO to the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, and the Provisional IRA, all of them were a part of a coordinated strategy of terror run by the Soviet Union. But the CIA completely disagreed. They said this was just another neoconservative fantasy.

MICHAEL LEDEEN , Special Adviser to the US Secretary of State 1981-1982: The CIA denied it. They tried to convince people that we were really crazy. I mean, they never believed that the Soviet Union was a driving force in the international terror network. They always wanted to believe that terrorist organizations were just what they said they were: local groups trying to avenge terrible evils done to them, or trying to rectify terrible social conditions, and things like that. And the CIA really did buy into the rhetoric. I don't know what their motive was. I mean, I don't know what people's motives are, hardly ever. And I don't much worry about motives.

VO: But the neoconservatives had a powerful ally. He was William Casey, and he was the new head of the CIA. Casey was sympathetic to the neoconservative view. And when he read the Terror Network book, he was convinced. He called a meeting of the CIA's Soviet analysts at their headquarters, and told them to produce a report for the President that proved this hidden network existed. But the analysts told him that this would be impossible, because much of the information in the book came from black propaganda the CIA themselves had invented to smear the Soviet Union. They knew that the terror network didn't exist, because they themselves had made it up.

MELVIN GOODMAN , Head of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-87: And when we looked through the book, we found very clear episodes where CIA black propaganda—clandestine information that was designed under a covert action plan to be planted in European newspapers—were picked up and put in this book. A lot of it was made up. It was made up out of whole cloth.

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): You told him this?

GOODMAN : We told him that, point blank. And we even had the operations people to tell Bill Casey this. I thought maybe this might have an impact, but all of us were dismissed. Casey had made up his mind. He knew the Soviets were involved in terrorism, so there was nothing we could tell him to disabuse him. Lies became reality.

VO: In the end, Casey found a university professor who described himself as a terror expert, and he produced a dossier that confirmed that the hidden terror network did, in fact, exist. Under such intense lobbying, Reagan agreed to give the neoconservatives what they wanted, and in 1983 he signed a secret document that fundamentally changed American foreign policy. The country would now fund covert wars to push back the hidden Soviet threat around the world.

President RONALD REAGAN : The specter of Marxist-Leninist controlled governments with ideological and political loyalties to the Soviet Union proves that there's a direct challenge to which we must respond. They are the focus of evil in the modern world.

VO: It was a triumph for the neoconservatives. America was now setting out to do battle against the forces of evil in the world. But what had started out as the kind of myth that Leo Strauss had said was necessary for the American people increasingly came to be seen as the truth by the neoconservatives. They began to believe their own fiction. They had become what they called "democratic revolutionaries," who were going to use force to change the world.

LEDEEN : We were aiming for an expansion of the zone of freedom in the world. And in part that had to do with fighting Communism, and in part that had to do with fighting other kinds of tyrannies. But that's what we were about, and that's what we're still about.

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): When you say you were democratic revolutionaries, what do you mean?

LEDEEN : It meant that we wanted to support the people who wanted to carry out revolutions against tyrannical regimes in the name of democracy, in order to install a democratic system.

INTERVIEWER : As simple as that.

LEDEEN : Yeah. It's not nuclear physics, you know. I mean, freedom is a fairly simple thing to get....

View All Three Parts of the BBC Documentary Power of Nightmares

Each episode is one hour. Part 3 is the most revealing. A 22-minute summary is also available.

For 22 minutes of the best excerpts from this three-hour documentary, <a href="http://personalgrowthcourses.net/video/power_of_nightmares_bbc" target="_blank">click here</a>.

For a high quality version of the most revealing third part of Power of Nightmares, <a href="http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/power_of_nightmares_politics_of_fear" target="_blank">click here</a>.

<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares" target="_blank"> Click here</a> to watch all three parts and read reviews of Power of Nightmares on archive.org.

For an excellent review of Power of Nightmares in the Los Angeles Times, <a href="http://www.WantToKnow.info/050111latimes" target="_blank">click here</a>.

For a full written transcript of each part of Power of Nightmares: <a href="http://www.wanttoknow.info/war/power_of_nightmares_transcript_1" target="blank">Part 1</a>  <a href="http://www.wanttoknow.info/war/power_of_nightmares_transcript_2" target="blank">Part 2</a>  <a href="http://www.wanttoknow.info/war/power_of_nightmares_transcript_3" target="_blank">Part 3</a>

For transcripts, audio and video downloads, and other excellent information on the series, <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/The_Power_of_Nightmares:The_Rise_of_the_Politics_of_Fear" target="blank"> click here</a>.

To order all three parts of Power of Nightmares on one DVD, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Power-Nightmares-Adam-Curtis/dp/B000ZI3G30?tag=wanttinfo-20" target="_blank">click here</a>.

Another excellent, revealing BBC/Adam Curtis documentary, Century of the Self, delves into the history of mass propaganda and its power to shape public perception. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Century-Self-2-DVD-Set/dp/B000VA5Z9A?tag=wanttinfo-20" target="blank">Click here</a> to purchase. <a href="http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=century%20of%20the%20self" target="blank">Click here</a> to watch it free. <a id="unconstitutional" name="unconstitutional"> </a>

Unconstitutional by Robert Greenwald

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5 neo-cons advise romney on for pol alternet

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Kimberly Kagan is founder and president of the <a href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/institute_for_the_study_of_war">Institute for the Study of War</a>. A military historian, Kagan has authored—sometimes in tandem with her husband <a href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Kagan_Frederick">Frederick Kagan</a>, a fellow at the neoconservative <a href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/American_Enterprise_Institute">American Enterprise Institute</a>—several books, essays, and op-eds that look favorably upon long-term U.S. engagements in the “war on terror,” particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to her ISW biography, she has taught courses at West Point, Yale, Georgetown, and American University, and has served in a civilian advisory capacity to Gens. Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus in Afghanistan.<a id="ednref1" href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/kagan_kimberly#edn1" name="_ednref1" title="">[1]</a>

Kagan was an avid backer of the troop “surge” in Iraq (which was formulated in part by her husband) and has fervently criticized the Obama administration for its drawdown of U.S. military forces there.

After President Obama announced that U.S. troops would exit the country by the end of 2011, the Kagans co-wrote a series of op-eds lambasting the decision. “The president has enunciated the Obama Doctrine: American retreat,” they wrote in the <a href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Weekly_Standard">Weekly Standard</a>.<a id="ednref2" href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/kagan_kimberly#edn2" name="ednref2" title="">[2]</a> In the Los Angeles Times, they declared: “The American withdrawal, which comes after the administration's failure to secure a new agreement that would have allowed troops to remain in Iraq, won't be good for ordinary Iraqis or for the region. But it will unquestionably benefit Iran.”<a id="ednref3" href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/kagan_kimberly#edn3" name="ednref3" title="">[3]</a>

Kimberly Kagan was also an early and vocal advocate the “surge” strategy in Afghanistan. For a 2009 Veterans’ Day column in the right-wing Washington Examiner, where she is a monthly columnist, Kagan argued explicitly for tailoring the Iraq surge model to Afghanistan. “The quickest path to success is a decisive campaign to defeat the enemy, protect the population, and to partner with the security forces so that they can in time take on the reduced challenge of maintaining order in their country,” she wrote. “That is what [Gen. Stanley] McChyrstal is proposing to try. Our experience in Iraq suggests that it is feasible.”<a id="ednref4" href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/kagan_kimberly#edn4" name="_ednref4" title="">[4]</a>

Kagan lambasted the Obama administration for its eventual goal of withdrawing from Afghanistan. “Gone is any language about conditions, objectives, goals, American interests, or any of the fundamental principles that Americans have fought so hard to achieve in these wars and throughout our history,” she wrote with her husband. “American strategy is simply to go home.”<a id="ednref5" href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/kagan_kimberly#edn5" name="_ednref5" title="">[5]</a>

Kagan has also written on U.S. policy in Iran. In February 2008, she coauthored a report published by the American Enterprise Institute that discussed the extent of Iranian influence across the Middle East. "Much as America might desire to avoid war with Iran,” the report warns, “continued Iranian interventions ... might ultimately make that option less repulsive than the alternatives."

The report also reflected on the part of the authors an evolution away from “openly beating the war drums,” as journalist Khody Akhavi writes, “toward an attempt to highlight the extent of Iranian influence in the region. The conclusion to be drawn is that, even without the nuclear issue at the forefront, Iran continues to exert a negative impact on U.S. interests.”<a id="ednref6" href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/kagan_kimberly#edn6" name="_ednref6" title="">[6]</a>

Kagan also published a report in 2007 that concludes that U.S. diplomatic engagement with Iran would be counterproductive, supporting a speech made by then-President Bush alleging that Iran was supporting the arming of “Shia extremists.”<a id="ednref7" href="http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/kagan_kimberly#edn7" name="_ednref7" title="">[7]</a>

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fabricate gulf2 plamed intel:<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/sunk/2012/08/21/96209788-cebd-11e1-aa14-708bac2c7ee9_print.html"> http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/sunk/2012/08/21/96209788-cebd-11e1-aa14-708bac2c7ee9_print.html</a>

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<a href="http://janinewedel.info/shadowelite.html">http://janinewedel.info/shadowelite.html</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiXGcEpI-sI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiXGcEpI-sI</a>  tedx berlin

janine wedell GMU

gov't mtg w/ all contractors

xe split so harder to track; c wright mills classic three sep: mil, gov't and corps

3/4 of all ppl who do gov;t work are PVT?!

mil in afgan? used RS and CTT to crit BO?

drivers: pvtization RR, 2) end of cold war   3? ?  4) truthiness is ethos

power resides in network (ctt, gov, media) ability to shapeshift?

1st noticed in poland after fall of comm, C&C

network/clique had b2 admin jobs, but circumvented constraints by making new ones?

created chalabi who mfg misinfo, so the blessed and spread it

rubin summers (--> harvard pres flamout --> BO admin; failed upwards) greenspan BC admin  pushed dereg and excluded opponents

Flexions: serve own agenda, not nec those of the orgs they are in; also flexnets

invest jrnl declines, so no ctr to

q: wd the action happen w/o players?

2) branding action? other voices suppresed?

30 who funds?

4) is the border between public-pvt clear?

neocon: no conflict of interest b/c we define the interest"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiXGcEpI-sI

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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism</a>

Podheretz sp, Perle, <a title="Elliott Abrams" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Abrams">Elliott Abrams</a>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.James_Woolsey,Jr.

<h5>Bush Doctrine</h5>

The <a title="Bush Doctrine" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine">Bush Doctrine</a> of preventive war was explicitly stated in the <a title="United States National Security Council" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Security_Council">National Security Council</a> text "National Security Strategy of the United States", published September 20, 2002. "We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed... even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack... The United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-NSC-40">[41]</a> Policy analysts noted that the Bush Doctrine as stated in the 2002 NSC document bore a strong resemblance to recommendations originally presented in a controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft written in 1992 by <a title="Paul Wolfowitz" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz">Paul Wolfowitz</a> under the first Bush administration.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-41">[42]</a>

The Bush Doctrine was greeted with accolades by many neoconservatives. When asked whether he agreed with the Bush Doctrine, <a title="Max Boot" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Boot">Max Boot</a> said he did, and that "I think [Bush is] exactly right to say we can't sit back and wait for the next terrorist strike on Manhattan. We have to go out and stop the terrorists overseas. We have to play the role of the global policeman... But I also argue that we ought to go further."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-42">[43]</a> Discussing the significance of the Bush Doctrine, neoconservative writer <a title="William Kristol" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kristol" class="mw-redirect">William Kristol</a> claimed: "The world is a mess. And, I think, it's very much to Bush's credit that he's gotten serious about dealing with it... The danger is not that we're going to do too much. The danger is that we're going to do too little."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-43">[44]</a>

<h2>History and origins</h2>

<h3>[<a title="Edit section: Great Depression and World War II" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neoconservatism&action=edit&section=2">edit</a>] Great Depression and World War II</h3>

"New" conservatives initially approached this view from the <a title="Left-wing politics" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics">political left</a>. The forerunners of neoconservatism were most often socialists or sometimes liberals who strongly supported the Allied cause in World War II, and who were influenced by the <a title="Great Depression" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression">Great Depression</a>-era ideas of the <a title="New Deal" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal">New Deal</a>, <a title="Trade union" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union">trade unionism</a>, and <a title="Trotskyism" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyism">Trotskyism</a>, particularly those who followed the political ideas of <a title="Max Shachtman" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Shachtman">Max Shachtman</a>.[<a title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed">citation needed</a>] A number of future neoconservatives, such as <a title="Jeane Kirkpatrick" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeane_Kirkpatrick">Jeane Kirkpatrick</a>,[<a title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed">citation needed</a>] were <a title="Shachtmanism" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shachtmanism">Shachtmanites</a> in their youth; some were later involved with <a title="Social Democrats USA" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democrats_USA">Social Democrats USA</a>.

Some members of the mid-20th century literary group, <a title="The New York Intellectuals" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Intellectuals">The New York Intellectuals</a> were forebears of neoconservatism<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-14">[15]</a>. The most notable was literary critic <a title="Lionel Trilling" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Trilling">Lionel Trilling</a>, who wrote, "In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition." It was this liberal vital center, a term coined by the historian and liberal theorist <a title="Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr." href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_M.Schlesinger,Jr.">Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.</a>, that the neoconservatives would see as threatened by New Left extremism. But the majority of vital center liberals remained affiliated with the Democratic Party,[<a title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed">citation needed</a>] retained left-of-center viewpoints, and opposed Republican politicians such as Richard Nixon, who first attracted neoconservative support.[<a title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed">citation needed</a>]

Initially, the neoconservatives were less concerned with foreign policy than with domestic policy. Irving Kristol's journal, <a title="The Public Interest" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Public_Interest">The Public Interest</a>, focused on ways that government planning in the liberal state had produced unintended harmful consequences. Norman Podhoretz's magazine Commentary, formerly a journal of the liberal left, had more of a cultural focus, criticizing excesses in the movements for black equality and women's rights, and in the academic left.[<a title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed">citation needed</a>] Through the 1950s and early 1960s the future neoconservatives had been socialists or liberals strongly supportive of the <a title="American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Rights_Movement%281955-1968%29" class="mw-redirect">American Civil Rights Movement</a>, <a title="Racial integration" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_integration">integration</a>, and <a title="Martin Luther King, Jr." href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,Jr.">Martin Luther King, Jr.</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-Nuechterlein-15">[16]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-Gerson_PR_quote-16">[</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-Gerson_PR_quote-16">17]</a>

The neoconservatives, arising from the <a title="Anti-Stalinist left" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Stalinist_left">anti-Stalinist left</a> of the 1950s, opposed the <a title="Anti-capitalism" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-capitalism">anti-capitalism</a> of the <a title="New Left" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Left">New Left</a> of the 1960s. They broke from the liberal consensus of the early post-World War II years in foreign policy, and opposed <a title="Détente" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9tente">Détente</a> with the Soviet Union in the late 1960s and 1970s.

<a title="George Orwell" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell">George Orwell</a> has been said by some[<a title="Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words" class="mw-redirect">who?</a>] to have anticipated neoconservatism, but this claim has been challenged.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-17">[18]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-18">[</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-18">19]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-19">[</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-19">20]</a>

Senator <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_M._%22Scoop%22_Jackson" class="mw-redirect" title="Henry M. " scoop="scoop" jackson="jackson">Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson</a>, influential neoconservative forerunner.</div>

</div>

<h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neoconservatism&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: Drift away from New Left and Great Society">edit</a>] Drift away from New Left and Great Society</h3>

Neoconservatives came to dislike the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture" title="Counterculture">counterculture</a> of the 1960s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers" class="mw-redirect" title="Baby boomers">baby boomers</a>, and what they saw as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Americanism" title="Anti-Americanism">anti-Americanism</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-interventionism" title="Non-interventionism">non-interventionism</a> of the movement against the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War" title="Vietnam War">Vietnam War</a>.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed">citation needed</a>]

As the policies of the New Left pushed these intellectuals farther to the right, they moved toward a more aggressive <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarism" title="Militarism">militarism</a>, while becoming disillusioned with President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson" title="Lyndon B. Johnson">Lyndon B. Johnson</a>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society" title="Great Society">Great Society</a> domestic programs. Academics in these circles, many still Democrats, rejected the Democratic Party's foreign policy in the 1970s, especially after the nomination of anti-war candidate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McGovern" title="George McGovern">George McGovern</a> for president in 1972. The influential 1970 bestseller <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Majority" title="The Real Majority">The Real Majority</a> by future television commentator and neoconservative <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Wattenberg" class="mw-redirect" title="Ben Wattenberg">Ben Wattenberg</a> expressed that the "real majority" of the electorate supported economic liberalism but social conservatism, and warned Democrats it could be disastrous to take liberal stances on certain social and crime issues.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-mason-20">[21]</a>

Many supported Democratic Senator <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_M._Jackson" title="Henry M. Jackson">Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson</a>, derisively known as the Senator from Boeing, during his 1972 and 1976 campaigns for president. Among those who worked for Jackson were future neoconservatives <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz" title="Paul Wolfowitz">Paul Wolfowitz</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Feith" class="mw-redirect" title="Doug Feith">Doug Feith</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Perle" title="Richard Perle">Richard Perle</a>. In the late 1970s neoconservative support moved to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan" title="Ronald Reagan">Ronald Reagan</a> and the Republicans, who promised to confront Soviet expansionism.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lind" title="Michael Lind">Michael Lind</a>, a self-described former neoconservative, explained:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-lind-21">[22]</a>

<div>Neoconservatism... originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Truman" class="mw-redirect" title="Harry Truman">Truman</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F.Kennedy" title="John F. Kennedy">Kennedy</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B.Johnson" title="Lyndon B. Johnson">Johnson</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Humphrey" title="Hubert Humphrey">Humphrey</a> and Henry ('Scoop') Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves 'paleoliberals.' [After the end of the Cold War]... many 'paleoliberals' drifted back to the Democratic center... Today's neocons are a shrunken remnant of the original broad neocon coalition. Nevertheless, the origins of their ideology on the left are still apparent. The fact that most of the younger neocons were never on the left is irrelevant; they are the intellectual (and, in the case of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kristol" class="mw-redirect" title="William Kristol">William Kristol</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Podhoretz" title="John Podhoretz">John Podhoretz</a>, the literal) heirs of older ex-leftists.</div>

</blockquote>

In his semi-autobiographical book, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, Irving Kristol cited a number of influences on his own thought, including not only Max Shachtman and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss" title="Leo Strauss">Leo Strauss</a> but also the skeptical liberal literary critic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Trilling" title="Lionel Trilling">Lionel Trilling</a>. The influence of Leo Strauss and his disciples on neoconservatism has generated some controversy, with Lind asserting:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-22">[23]</a>

<div>For the neoconservatives, religion is an instrument of promoting morality. Religion becomes what Plato called a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie" title="Noble lie">noble lie</a>. It is a myth which is told to the majority of the society by the philosophical elite in order to ensure social order... In being a kind of secretive elitist approach, Straussianism does resemble Marxism. These ex-Marxists, or in some cases ex-liberal Straussians, could see themselves as a kind of Leninist group, you know, who have this covert vision which they want to use to effect change in history, while concealing parts of it from people incapable of understanding it.</div>

</blockquote>

William Kristol defends his father by noting that the criticism of an instrumental view of politics misses the point. When the context is a discussion of religion in the public sphere in a secular nation, religion is inevitably dealt with instrumentally. Apart from that, it should be born in mind that the majority of neoconservatives believe in the truth, as well as the utility, of religion.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-23">[24]</a>

As the 1980s wore on, younger second-generation neoconservatives, such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Abrams" title="Elliott Abrams">Elliott Abrams</a>, pushed for a clear policy of supporting democracy against both left and right wing dictators, who were at that time increasingly engaged in human rights abuses worldwide.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed">citation needed</a>] This debate led to a policy shift in 1986, when the Reagan administration (after initially dithering and then with Paul Wolfowitz's demands that he be let go) the administration urged urged <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines" title="Philippines">Philippines</a> dictator <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Marcos" title="Ferdinand Marcos">Ferdinand Marcos</a> to step down amid turmoil over a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigged_election" class="mw-redirect" title="Rigged election">rigged election</a>. Abrams also supported the 1988 Chilean plebiscite that resulted in the restoration of democratic rule and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet" title="Augusto Pinochet">Augusto Pinochet</a>'s eventual removal from office.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed">citation needed</a>] Through the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy" title="National Endowment for Democracy">National Endowment for Democracy</a>, led by another neoconservative, Carl Gershman,[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed">citation needed</a>] funds were directed to the anti-Pinochet opposition in order to ensure a fair election.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed">citation needed</a>]

The election of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher" title="Margaret Thatcher">Margaret Thatcher</a> as Prime Minister in the United Kingdom brought new impetus to neoconservative ideas, with Thatcher representing the triumph of neoconservatism over the 'socialist' ideals of the European post-war consensus, built around union representation and the Welfare State (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_neoconservatism" title="British neoconservatism">British Neoconservatism</a>). She also had a very neoconservative foreign policy – favouring strong actions and favouring democracy – she dispatched a fleet and overthrew Gen. Galtieri in Argentina[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed">citation needed</a>] when he <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War" title="Falklands War">invaded the Falkland islands</a>,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-24">[25]</a> she was in support not just of rolling back <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein" title="Saddam Hussein">Saddam Hussein</a>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Desert_Storm" class="mw-redirect" title="Operation Desert Storm">aggression against Kuwait</a> but of going on to Baghdad and having done with his hideous regime in 1991 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-25">[26]</a> (the origins of the neoconservative argument over Iraq - that our[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words" class="mw-redirect" title="Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words">who?</a>] action was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Invasion_of_Iraq" class="mw-redirect" title="2003 Invasion of Iraq">too late in 2003</a>, not to rushed - they definitely supported the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq" title="1991 uprisings in Iraq">Shi'ite & Kurdish rebellions in 1991</a> but people like Paul Wolfowitz were arguing of the dangers posed by a totalitarian and expansionist Iraq as early as 1978 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-26">[27]</a>) and she was also in favour of the humanitarian intervention that rescued Bosnia and was calling for it in 1992.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-27">[28]</a> She also had a strong sense of getting people away from welfare dependency, which forms a central basis of neoconservative thinking on domestic policy.

During the 1990s, neoconservatives were once again in the opposition side of the foreign policy establishment, both under the Republican Administration of President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H.W.Bush" title="George H. W. Bush">George H. W. Bush</a> and that of his Democratic successor, President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton" title="Bill Clinton">Bill Clinton</a>. Many critics charged that the neoconservatives lost their <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/raison_d%27%C3%AAtre" class="extiw" title="wiktionary:raison d'être">raison d'être</a> and influence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-28">[29]</a>

Neoconservative writers were critical of the post-Cold War foreign policy of both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, which they criticized for reducing military expenditures and lacking a sense of idealism in the promotion of American interests. They accused these Administrations of lacking both <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_clarity" title="Moral clarity">moral clarity</a> and the conviction to pursue unilaterally America's international strategic interests.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-29">[30]</a>

The movement was galvanized by the decision of George H. W. Bush and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairman_of_the_Joint_Chiefs_of_Staff" title="Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff">Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff</a> General <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell" title="Colin Powell">Colin Powell</a> to leave <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein" title="Saddam Hussein">Saddam Hussein</a> in power after the first <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War" title="Gulf War">Gulf War</a> in 1991. Some neoconservatives viewed this policy, and the decision not to support indigenous dissident groups such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds" class="mw-redirect" title="Kurds">Kurds</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiites" class="mw-redirect" title="Shiites">Shiites</a> in their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq" title="1991 uprisings in Iraq">1991-1992 resistance</a> to Hussein, as a betrayal of democratic principles.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed">citation needed</a>]

Ironically, some of those same targets of criticism would later become fierce advocates of neoconservative policies. In 1992, referring to the first <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War" title="Gulf War">Gulf War</a>, then <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secretary_of_Defense" title="United States Secretary of Defense">United States Secretary of Defense</a> and future <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_President_of_the_United_States" title="Vice President of the United States">Vice President</a> Dick Cheney, said:

<div>I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home....

And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam [Hussein] worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-30">[31]</a>

</div>

</blockquote>

Within a few years of the Gulf War in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq" title="Iraq">Iraq</a>, many neoconservatives were pushing to oust Saddam Hussein. On February 19, 1998, an open letter to President Clinton appeared, signed by dozens of pundits, many identified with neoconservatism and, later, related groups such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNAC" class="mw-redirect" title="PNAC">PNAC</a>, urging decisive action to remove Saddam from power.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-31">[32]</a>

Neoconservatives were also members of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_team" class="mw-redirect" title="Blue team">blue team</a>, which argued for a confrontational policy toward the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_China" title="People's Republic of China">People's Republic of China</a> and strong military and diplomatic support for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China" title="Republic of China">Taiwan</a>.

In the late 1990s Irving Kristol and other writers in neoconservative magazines began touting anti-Darwinist views, in support of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design" title="Intelligent design">intelligent design</a>. Since these neoconservatives were largely of secular backgrounds, a few commentators have speculated that this – along with support for religion generally – may have been a case of a "noble lie", intended to protect public morality, or even <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_politics" title="Tactical politics">tactical politics</a>, to attract religious supporters.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-32">[33]</a>

<h4>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neoconservatism&action=edit&section=7" title="Edit section: Administration of George W. Bush">edit</a>] Administration of George W. Bush</h4>

<table class="metadata mbox-small plainlinks" style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial;"><tbody><tr><td class="mbox-image"><a href="http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:Search/Neoconservatism" title="Search Wikinews"><img src="/f6cbb1a5-4fc4-5d72-9083-1763f72949af.png"/></a></td><td class="mbox-text">Wikinews has related news: <a href="http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Vanity_Fair_editor_Craig_Unger_on_the_Bush_family_feud,_neoconservatives_and_the_Christian_right" class="extiw" title="wikinews:Vanity Fair editor Craig Unger on the Bush family feud, neoconservatives and the Christian right">Vanity Fair editor Craig Unger on the Bush family feud, neoconservatives and the Christian right</a></td></tr></tbody></table>

The Bush campaign and the early Bush Administration did not exhibit strong support for neoconservative principles. As a candidate Bush argued for a restrained foreign policy, stating his opposition to the idea of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation-building" title="Nation-building">nation-building</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-33">[34]</a> and an early foreign policy confrontation with China was handled without the vociferousness suggested by some neoconservatives.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-34">[35]</a> Also early in the Administration, some neoconservatives criticized Bush's Administration as insufficiently supportive of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel" title="Israel">Israel</a>, and suggested Bush's foreign policies were not substantially different from those of President Clinton.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-35">[36]</a>

Bush's policies changed dramatically immediately after the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11,_2001_attacks" class="mw-redirect" title="September 11, 2001 attacks">September 11, 2001 attacks</a>. According to columnist Gerard Baker,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-36">[37]</a>

<div>It took, improbably, the arrival of George Bush in the White House and September 11, 2001, to catapult [neoconservatism] into the public consciousness. When Mr Bush cited its most simplified tenet – that the US should seek to promote liberal democracy around the world – as a key case for invading Iraq, neoconservatism was suddenly everywhere. It was, to its many critics, a unified ideology that justified military adventurism, sanctioned torture and promoted aggressive Zionism.</div>

</blockquote>

Bush laid out his vision of the future in his State of the Union speech in January 2002, following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The speech, written by (now) neoconservative <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Frum" title="David Frum">David Frum</a>, named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as states that "constitute an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil" title="Axis of evil">axis of evil</a>" and "pose a grave and growing danger." Bush suggested the possibility of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preemptive_war" title="Preemptive war">preemptive war</a>: "I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-37">[38]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-38">[</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-38">39]</a>

Some prominent defense and national security personalities have been quite critical of what they believed was Neoconservative influence in getting the United States to war with Iraq. Retired <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Eldridge_Odom" title="William Eldridge Odom">General William Odom</a>, who had once served as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA" class="mw-redirect" title="NSA">NSA</a> Chief under <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan" title="Ronald Reagan">Ronald Reagan</a>, was openly critical of Neoconservative influence in the decision to go to war, having said "It's pretty hard to imagine us going into Iraq without the strong lobbying efforts from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIPAC" class="mw-redirect" title="AIPAC">AIPAC</a> and the neocons, who think they know what's good for Israel more than Israel knows."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-39">[40]</a>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska" title="Nebraska">Nebraska</a> Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel, who has been critical of the Bush Administration's adoption of neoconservative ideology in his book America: Our Next Chapter, writes, "So why did we invade Iraq? I believe it was the triumph of the so-called neo-conservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence that took America into this war of choice ... They obviously made a convincing case to a president with very limited national security and foreign policy experience, who keenly felt the burden of leading the nation in the wake of the deadliest terrorist attack ever on American soil."

<h5>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neoconservatism&action=edit&section=8" title="Edit section: Bush Doctrine">edit</a>] Bush Doctrine</h5>

The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine" title="Bush Doctrine">Bush Doctrine</a> of preventive war was explicitly stated in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Security_Council" title="United States National Security Council">National Security Council</a> text "National Security Strategy of the United States", published September 20, 2002. "We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed... even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack... The United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-NSC-40">[41]</a> Policy analysts noted that the Bush Doctrine as stated in the 2002 NSC document bore a strong resemblance to recommendations originally presented in a controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft written in 1992 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz" title="Paul Wolfowitz">Paul Wolfowitz</a> under the first Bush administration.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-41">[42]</a>

The Bush Doctrine was greeted with accolades by many neoconservatives. When asked whether he agreed with the Bush Doctrine, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Boot" title="Max Boot">Max Boot</a> said he did, and that "I think [Bush is] exactly right to say we can't sit back and wait for the next terrorist strike on Manhattan. We have to go out and stop the terrorists overseas. We have to play the role of the global policeman... But I also argue that we ought to go further."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-42">[43]</a> Discussing the significance of the Bush Doctrine, neoconservative writer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kristol" class="mw-redirect" title="William Kristol">William Kristol</a> claimed: "The world is a mess. And, I think, it's very much to Bush's credit that he's gotten serious about dealing with it... The danger is not that we're going to do too much. The danger is that we're going to do too little."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-43">[44]</a>

<h4>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neoconservatism&action=edit&section=9" title="Edit section: 2008 Presidential election and aftermath">edit</a>] 2008 Presidential election and aftermath</h4>

<table class="metadata plainlinks ambox mbox-small-left ambox-notice"><tbody><tr><td class="mbox-image"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w.svg" class="image"><img src="/7baf3eff-5c51-55e0-8a08-ea6cda0120c4.png"/></a></td><td class="mbox-text">This section requires <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neoconservatism&action=edit" rel="nofollow" class="external text">expansion</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain" title="John McCain">John McCain</a>, who was the Republican candidate for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Presidential_election,_2008" class="mw-redirect" title="United States Presidential election, 2008">2008 United States Presidential election</a>, supported continuing the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War" title="Iraq War">Iraq War</a>, "the issue that is most clearly identified with the neoconservatives." The New York Times further reports that his foreign policy views combine elements of neoconservative and the main competing view in conservative circles, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_realism" title="Political realism">pragmatism</a>, also called realism:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-44">[45]</a>

<div>Among [McCain's advisors] are several prominent neoconservatives, including <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan" title="Robert Kagan">Robert Kagan</a>... <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Boot" title="Max Boot">Max Boot</a>... <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Bolton" title="John R. Bolton">John R. Bolton</a>... [and] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Scheunemann" title="Randy Scheunemann">Randy Scheunemann</a>.

"It may be too strong a term to say a fight is going on over John McCain's soul", said <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Eagleburger" title="Lawrence Eagleburger">Lawrence Eagleburger</a>... who is a member of the pragmatist camp... [but he] said, "there is no question that a lot of my far right friends have now decided that since you can’t beat him, let's persuade him to slide over as best we can on these critical issues."

Mr. McCain, who is aware of the concerns, told reporters on his campaign plane early this week that he took foreign policy advice from a wide variety of people... Mr. McCain has always promoted his reputation for departing from ideological orthodoxy in both foreign and domestic policy... he talks to realists like... <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger" title="Henry Kissinger">Henry A. Kissinger</a> and... <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Shultz" title="George P. Shultz">George P. Shultz</a>.

</div>

</blockquote>

Following the election, Jonathan Clarke, a senior fellow at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Council_for_Ethics_in_International_Affairs" title="Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs">Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs</a>, expressed the view that:

<div>"[i]n many ways, the 2008 election represented a direct repudiation of the neocon style of foreign policy based on military-centred, unilateralist overreaching. At first sight, the incoming Obama administration appears to be the polar opposite of neoconservatism. Its instincts are multilateralist, being committed, for example, to adhering to the Kyoto Protocol and to international agreements like the Geneva Convention. It places a high priority on diplomacy, with President-elect Obama being open to direct talks with long-ignored countries like Iran and Cuba. Defense Secretary Gates, who is remaining in office, has made it clear that he regards military intervention as the genuinely last option. Furthermore, the financial meltdown and the drains of the Iraq and Afghan wars have chipped away at the pre-eminence of US power. It is difficult to argue today that the US enjoys a unipolar advantage. The safest bet, therefore, is that we can bid adieu to the neocons and leave their role to be adjudicated by history. They themselves argue that they form part of the mainstream of American history. It seems more likely that they will come to be seen as an aberration."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#cite_note-news.bbc.co.uk-45">[46]</a></div>

</blockquote>

<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neoconservatism&action=edit&section=10" title="Edit section: Evolution of views">edit</a>] Evolution of views</h2>

...

<h3>Institutions</h3>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Israel_Public_Affairs_Committee" title="American Israel Public Affairs Committee">American Israel Public Affairs Committee</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Foundation" title="Bradley Foundation">Bradley Foundation</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_and_Public_Policy_Center" title="Ethics and Public Policy Center">Ethics and Public Policy Center</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Defense_of_Democracies" title="Foundation for Defense of Democracies">Foundation for Defense of Democracies</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Jackson_Society" title="Henry Jackson Society">Henry Jackson Society</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Institute" title="Hudson Institute">Hudson Institute</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Institute_for_National_Security_Affairs" title="Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs">Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century" title="Project for the New American Century">Project for the New American Century</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute" title="American Enterprise Institute">American Enterprise Institute</a></li>

</ul>

<h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neoconservatism&action=edit&section=24" title="Edit section: Publications">edit</a>] Publications</h3>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentary_%28magazine%29" title="Commentary (magazine)">Commentary</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_Page_Magazine" class="mw-redirect" title="Front Page Magazine">Front Page Magazine</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_Review" title="Policy Review">Policy Review</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Interest" title="The National Interest">The National Interest</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Public_Interest" title="The Public Interest">The Public Interest</a></li>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weekly_Standard" title="The Weekly Standard">The Weekly Standard</a></li>

</ul>

<h2><a href="http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a1985neoconschalabi#a1985neoconschalabi" title="View in context">1985: Neoconservatives Meet Iraqi Exile Chalabi</a></h2>

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Eminent academic, foreign policy analyst, and neoconservative Albert Wohlstetter (see <a onmouseout="return nd()" href="http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=paul_wolfowitz#a0965wohlstetterrand" onmouseover="return OL('1965: Former RAND Analyst Gathers Young, Nascent Neoconservatives')">1965</a>) introduces his proteges Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz to Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi (see <a onmouseout="return nd()" href="http://www.historycommons.org/item.jsp?item=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq_3200" onmouseover="return OL('1992-1996: CIA Provides Support to the Iraqi National Congress; INC Misuses Funds')">1992-1996</a>), who is already plotting to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Wolfowitz and Perle will become key players in the run-up to the US’s 2003 invasion of Iraq (see <a onmouseout="return nd()" href="http://www.historycommons.org/item.jsp?item=alate120101neocontransitions" onmouseover="return OL('Late December 2000 and Early January 2001: Bush Transition Teams Install Neoconservatives in Key Offices')">Late December 2000 and Early January 2001</a>). <cite>[<a target="blank" onmouseout="return nd()" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/978-0743280754/centerforcoop-20" onmouseover="return OL('Craig Unger, ">The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America\'s Future (New York City: Scribner, 2007)., 44.')">Unger, 2007, pp. 44</a>]</cite><cite>
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</div><div>NeoCon: University of Chicago, PNAC, CFR, & Hudson Institute<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td colspan="2" valign="top" align="left">CONTRIBUTED MAP

<table cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td class="key" style="text-align: right; vertical-align: middle;"> AUTHOR:</td><td class="value" style="vertical-align: middle;">Anonymous</td></tr><tr><td class="key" style="text-align: right; vertical-align: middle;"> CREATED:</td><td class="value" style="vertical-align: middle;">20-Jun-2008</td></tr><tr><td class="key" style="text-align: right; vertical-align: middle;"> TAGS:</td><td class="value" style="vertical-align: middle;">neocon newtwork chicago pnac cfr hudson institute</td></tr><tr><td class="key" style="text-align: right; vertical-align: middle;"> CATEGORY:</td><td class="value" style="vertical-align: middle;">Government, Organizations</td></tr></tbody></table><tt>NeoCon Newtwork: U of Chicago, PNAC, CFR, & Hudson Institute</tt>    PEOPLE
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/326/000024254/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Elliott Abrams</a> Asst. Secy. of State involved in Iran-Contra
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/416/000045281/" target="blank">Lewis Libby</a> Cheney's former Chief of Staff
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/880/000129493/" target="blank">Vin Weber</a> Congressman from Minnesota, 1981-93
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/426/000048282/" target="blank">John Podhoretz</a> Conservative columnist
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/598/000022532/" target="blank">Dick Cheney</a> Dubya's VP, ex-CEO of Halliburton
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/401/000048257/" target="blank">Bill Kristol</a> Editor of The Weekly Standard
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/046/000164551/" target="blank">George Weigel</a> Ethics and Public Policy Center
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/932/000031839/" target="blank">Gary Bauer</a> Family Research Council
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/201/000023132/" target="blank">Robert Bork</a> Fired Archibald Cox, later got himself borked
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/493/000022427/" target="blank">William Bennett</a> Former Drug Czar and gambling man
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/646/000022580/" target="blank">Jeb Bush</a> Governor of Florida, 1999-2007
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/376/000052220/" target="blank">Midge Decter</a> Neoconservative maven
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/452/000024380/" target="blank">Steve Forbes</a> Owner and publisher of Forbes magazine
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/423/000048279/" target="blank">Leo Strauss</a> Patron saint of Neoconservatism
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/870/000048726/" target="blank">Frank Gaffney</a> Prominent neocon
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/402/000048258/" target="blank">Norman Podhoretz</a> Prominent neocon author
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/427/000129040/" target="blank">Eliot A. Cohen</a> Prominent neoconservative
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/920/000116572/" target="blank">Francis Fukuyama</a> The End of History and the Last Man
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/937/000159460/" target="blank">Donald Kagan</a> The Great Dialogue
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/327/000049180/" target="blank">John Yoo</a> Thinks Geneva Conventions are obsolete
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/059/000120696/" target="blank">Zalmay Khalilzad</a> US Ambassador to the UN
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/634/000023565/" target="blank">Donald Rumsfeld</a> US Secretary of Defense, 2001-06
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/906/000024834/" target="blank">Clarence Thomas</a> US Supreme Court Justice
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/273/000044141/" target="blank">Viet Dinh</a> USA PATRIOT Act mastermind
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/781/000024709/" target="blank">Dan Quayle</a> Vice President under George H.W. Bush
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/290/000023221/" target="blank">Paul Wolfowitz</a> World Bank president, 2005-07

    
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/031/000010001/" target="blank">

    ORGANIZATION
    </a><a href="http://www.nndb.com/org/339/000048195/" target="blank">American Enterprise Institute</a> 
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/org/514/000042388/" target="blank">Bilderberg Group</a> 
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/org/505/000042379/" target="blank">Council on Foreign Relations</a> 
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/org/689/000051536/" target="blank">Hudson Institute</a> 
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/org/207/000134802/" target="blank">Pilgrims Society</a> 
    <a href="http://www.nndb.com/org/821/000043692/" target="blank">Project for the New American Century</a> 
<div></div><div> =http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2003/08/2008410151856461833.htmlARCHIVE10 AUGUST 2003The war on Iraq: justifications and motivesThe Bush administration has justified its war against Iraq on three grounds: Saddam Hussein's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, his links to so-called terrorists, and liberating Iraqis from oppression and tyranny.
Najib Ghadban |
Dr Najib Ghadban is professor of politics at Arkansas University in the United States. He specialises in Middle Eastern and Arab Gulf studies.Advocates of war in the US administration claimed that Iraq had continued to develop WMDs, and with Saddam Hussein capable of making them available to organisations such as al-Qaida, it put the US at imminent risk.However, a closer analysis of US behaviour, as well as the thinking of the pro-war camp inside the Bush administration, reveals that the justifications were convenient excuses for mobilising US public opinion.The war on Iraq was planned over several years, promoted by an influential group of neo-conservatives, made possible by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and marketed by the right-wing pundits and media.
From containment to changeThe idea of removing Saddam Hussein dates back to the second Gulf War in 1991. One of its prime advocates was Paul Wolfowitz who argued for regime change by supporting the Iraqi opposition.Nonetheless, the dominant view within the first Bush Administration was that Saddam would be toppled within six months after suffering a humiliating defeat. 
When that didn’t happen, Bush senior decided that the best course of action was to contain Saddam, and allow him to be strong enough to maintain order domestically, and weak enough not to threaten his neighbours. 
Economic sanctions and the disarmament of Iraq became the twin pillars of the new policy which would be inherited by the Clinton Administration under the new heading of "Dual Containment".
Both the first Bush and Clinton administrations relied on the UN to carry out the task of disarming Iraq. The UN mandate required that sanctions would not be lifted until Iraq was fully disarmed. 
Frustrated by the lack of cooperation on the part of Saddam Hussein, the US resorted to force several times to compel him to change his behavior.
In spite of Iraq’s lack of cooperation, two points deserve mentioning.Firstly, Saddam Hussein's government was given every reason not to cooperate, particularly after the US made it clear that sanctions would not be lifted as long as Saddam remained in power. Second, even with the lack of full Iraqi compliance, the UN achieved remarkable results. 
According to Scott Ritter, the former head of the United Nations weapons inspections in Iraq from 1991 until 1998, UNSCOM accounted for and dismantled 94 percent of Iraq's WMDs.
Before the UN pulled its inspectors from Iraq, which preceded Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, a group of conservative officials and intellectuals associated with the New American Century wrote a letter to President Clinton suggesting that the policy of containing Iraq was failing and proposed a new strategy based on confrontation.
'what these unelected officials have in common is their strong association with energy and defence industries and their fervent support of Israel'. 
According to that suggestion, the US strategy should entail “removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.”Among the signatories to this letter were Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and R. James Woolsey.
Nucleus of neocons
Almost all of the signatories were given senior posts in the new Bush Administration or were appointed to the newly established Defence Policy Board.In addition to the influential Vice President Dick Cheney, this group constituted the nucleus of the neo-conservatives, known inside the Beltway as the neocons. Beside their advocacy of regime change in Iraq, what these unelected officials have in common is their strong association with energy and defence industries and their fervent support of Israel.
When George Bush assumed office in early 2000, Saddam Hussein was little more than a nuisance for the new administration. 
This is mainly because he was still in power and he had succeeded in breaking the unity of the international campaign to isolate him through sanctions.
Then came the attacks of 11 September 2001. While no connection has ever been uncovered between Bin Ladin and the regime of Saddam Hussein, the neocons seized the opportunity to make the hypothetical scenario of a potential connection between Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden.
Such a scenario was based on two erroneous assumptions: One is that Iraq had massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons, and the other that Saddam would be willing to supply such weapons to al-Qaida in the fight against a common enemy.
After the events of 11 September 2001 the change of focus onto Iraq was a natural progression for the neocons. 
No sooner had they gone to war on Afghanistan than they shifted their focus from Bin Ladin and Afghanistan onto Iraq as the next phase in their so-called war on terror. 
To justify targeting Iraq and to dress up their motives in the language of terrorism prevention, the Bush Administration devised the principle of "pre-emptive strike".
According to the National Security Strategy published in September 2002, the US should strike against hostile states and terrorist groups, acting “against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.”
Selling the war
The next step was to market the war on Iraq. The Bush  administration needed a message and a messenger. The message was framed as following: Saddam continues to develop a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, he used chemical weapons against his own people, Iraq has something to do with 9/11, and Saddam has ties to al-Qaida.9/11 gave the neocons the excusethey needed to turn on Iraq
The neocons found in the right-wing media and in pundits such as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, eager allies willing to publicise and magnify the Iraqi threat. Furthermore, the mainstream media, such as CNN, failed to critically examine the rationale for going to war.
The climate of fear in the aftermath of 9/11 and the apathy and/or lack of knowledge about the Middle East among most Americans, constituted the context for the steady support for the war on Iraq inside the US.
The military campaign to invade Iraq lost some momentum when President Bush acceded to Collin Powell and Tony Blair’s request to seek UN support against Iraq. 
The neocons went along with the proposal counting on Saddam’s intransigence and stupidity, to provide the necessary justification for the US to pursue the military option.
However, Iraq’s acceptance of UN Resolution 1441 and the opposition to the war worldwide complicated the administration’s war plan.
By the time the military preparations were complete, and with each passing day failing to yield weapons of mass destruction, the hawks in the US administration were ready to go it alone. 
'the neocons' real objectives have less to do with Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and more with their vision of a new Middle East devoid of figures like Saddam Hussein.' 
The reason why the Bush administration was adamant not to give the UN inspectors more time and resources was because of the risks associated with either not finding illegal weapons or disarming Iraq peacefully. In both cases the UN would have no choice but to call for a lifting of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. 
Such a scenario would have prevented the neocons from achieving their real objectives.  These have less to do with Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and more with the neocons’ vision of a new Middle East devoid of figures like Saddam Hussein.
From the vantage point of the neocons, taking out Saddam and occupying Iraq would achieve several aims.
Firstly, in the aftermath of 9/11, many hawks in the US government wanted to send a strong message to the enemies of the US that the administration was willing to destroy any threat before it materialised.
Secondly, an American military presence in Iraq would allow the US to thwart the emergence of any potential alliance between two members of the axis of evil, Iran and Iraq, and Syria.
Thirdly, it would allow the US to withdraw its forces from Saudi Arabia in order to defuse the rising opposition to the US military presence in that country. 
Fourthly, a combination of US direct control of Iraqi oil and a long-term military presence in Iraq, in addition to the US bases in the surrounding countries, would enable the US to have more control over world oil supplies and policies.
Finally, the neocons believed that toppling Saddam and dismantling his military capability would close off once and for all the ability of any Arab country to challenge the Israeli military and its strategic supremacy. 
Furthermore, Iraq would be added to the growing list of Arab countries to make peace and normalise relations with the Jewish state.
There was no doubt about the military outcome of any confrontation between the US and the demoralised and outdated Iraqi army. However, the neocons’ assumption that Iraqis would welcome the “liberating army” with flowers turned out to be a major blunder. 
There is growing evidence that intelligence information was manipulated to support a political decision already taken.
Furthermore, the over-reliance on Iraqi opposition sources might explain some of the difficulties currently facing the US occupying forces in Iraq.
Together, with an arrogance of power demonstrated by the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq the policies amount to a recipe for disaster for the Iraqi people, and the future of US relations with the Arab and Muslim world.
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