Desperate Neoconservatives Rats Abandon Ship
How the mighty have fallen.
Back in 2000 the neoconservative "Cabal" of "The Project for a New American Century" and similar think tanks had decided their time had finally come. They had their puppet in the White House with two of their leading figures, Rumsfeld and Cheney, assisted by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, jerking his strings. Now, they thought, was the time to put their doctrine of American global hegemony via military might and economic weight into practice. They had been clamoring for a military assault on Iraq for over a decade and now all they needed was a suitable catalyst, and their clueless figurehead would then deliver their dream of US power imposed on the world by force, whether the world liked it or not.
Then, on September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden gave them the "Pearl Harbour event" they were waiting for. They harnessed the American public's desire for revenge, diverted the War on Terror away from its real targets, cooked up "evidence" regarding a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda and carefully manipulated intelligence to make it seem there was "no doubt" Saddam had WMDs and was close to getting atomic weapons as well.
Karl Rove cranked up his propaganda engine and any and all who objected to these ideas as misguided folly that would end in disaster were smeared, ridiculed and decried as "traitors". The war was going to be "a cakewalk", the WMDs were a dire threat and the grateful people of Iraq would welcome their kind and altruistic liberators and happily let Halliburton et al set up shop to use Iraqi oil revenues to rebuild Iraq (and make an honest profit on the side).
It was all going to be so easy.
Colin Powell and those lily-livered diplomats in the State Department were over-ridden and side-lined. Rumsfeld, backed by Cheney, also over-rode those stupid generals and insisted that the PNAC ideals of smaller, more agile, high-tech forces would do the job without the need for vast numbers of troops. Experts and academics who pointed to things like the ugly reality of asymmetrical insurgent warfare, or the sectarian divisions in Iraq ("There are two types of Muslims?" asked the utterly clueless Bush, just weeks before the invasion) or the dangers of Iraq becoming a breeding ground for Jihadists were dismissed and ridiculed as peaceniks and "liberals". This was going to be a neoconservative triumph.
Unfortunately, in March 2003, neocon fantasies, text book strategies cooked up in thinktanks by rich guys who had carefully avoided military service and purely theoretical ideological ideals met harsh and ugly reality on the ground in Iraq.
And we all know what happened next.
One by one, every single neocon fantasy was shown to be a sick joke - jokes with expensive, bloody and tragic consequences, for the US people, for ordinary Iraqis and for the world at large. The dire WMDs threat simply didn't exist. Neither did the Saddam-Al Qaeda links. The US armed forces proved effective at rapid conquest, but clumsy and heavy-handed in occupation, especially when faced with growing resentment and a spiraling insurgency. Jihadists flocked to Iraq and began exploiting the fact that the US troops were not numerous enough or given the right training to handle an increasingly hostile and violent population. Sectarian divisions, long suppressed by Saddam, emerged from dormancy, as Kurds consolidated their autonomy, Shi'ites fought to exploit their majority and Sunnis struggled to revive their dominance. And the Jihadists did an excellent job of carefully exacerbating all of these inflamed issues with well-placed propaganda, bombs and indiscriminate killings.
Despite the fact they were now tangling with ugly reality rather than fluffy fantasies, the neocons stuck doggedly to their script. In between vacations, naps, pretzels, natural disasters and scandals, the puppet Bush resolutely read whatever his autocue told him to say. Increasingly cocooned from reality, Bush ignored the corruption that bogged down reconstruction, pretended the insurgency was made up entirely of foreign-fighter terrorists, sidestepped Abu Ghraib (but sacrificed some low-ranking scapegoats) and hailed anything even vaguely positive as "a turning point".
But fantasy continued to crumble in the face of stark reality. Things got progressively worse. The insurgency became entrenched, and the blunt instrument of American military might became increasingly powerless to defeat it. While Bush desperately reassured a rapidly shrinking number of hopeful true believers with corny platitudes, the evidence on the ground became more and more clear, while the corpses - mainly Iraqi and civilian - piled ever higher. The neocons tried to peddle constant false dawns and new "turning points", only to be shown to be utterly and pathetically wrong at every turn. It was only a matter of time before all but the most deluded or clueless Americans realised that the military naysayers, the academics, the experts, the "liberals", and all those millions of protesters across the world, had been absolutely right: this is a disaster.
So what do we see now?
We see the very neocons who created this bloodstained mess "cut and run". The neocon rats are jumping ship, leaving their Presidential puppet, blinking and stammering like a moron, bewildered at the helm.
Take Kenneth Adelman, for example. A long-standing conservative Washington insider, Adelman was a prominent member of the neoconservative "Committee for the Present Danger" and worked for the key neocon think tank "The Project for a New American Century". It was Adelman who, on February 13, 2002, wrote an article in the Washington Post called Cakewalk in Iraq. It would be hard to find a more perfect example of just how deluded these blundering neoconservative chicken hawks were and this article would almost be funny if it wasn't, as is now clear, written in the fresh blood of thousands of innocent and now very dead people:
Even before President Bush had placed Iraq on his "axis of evil," dire warnings were being sounded about the danger of acting against Saddam Hussein's regime.
Two knowledgeable Brookings Institution analysts, Philip H. Gordon and Michael E. O'Hanlon, concluded that the United States would "almost surely" need "at least 100,000 to 200,000" ground forces [op-ed, Dec. 26, 2001]. Worse: "Historical precedents from Panama to Somalia to the Arab-Israeli wars suggest that . . . the United States could lose thousands of troops in the process."
Adelman goes on, drawing on his vast military experience (ie absolutely none at all), to argue that the conquest of Iraq would be easy - "a cakewalk" - and then blithely assumes that "(Saddam's) many opponents everywhere" within Iraq would rise to help the Americans overthrow the oppressor. What he - and every single neocon idealist - totally forgot to analyse was what would happen next. Their blithe assumption that this would be the end of the story was the bitter kernel of the disaster we now see relentlessly unfolding.
Others - people who had, unlike the neocon chicken hawks, actually worn a uniform and seen shots fired in anger - genuinely did bother to think about what would happen after the invasion. They realised that the US would not have to simply overthrow Saddam, but also occupy Iraq for several years and suppress the frenzy of conflicting aspirations which would fill the political vacuum he left behind.
Just today it was revealed that, as early as 1999, US military war-gaming predicted that the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq would require at least 400,000 troops, and even then could still see a major civil war erupt. Wolfowitz, Cheney and Rumsfeld rejected this estimate - it wasn't in keeping with their nicely theoretical neocon manifestos. So US forces in Iraq peaked at a mere 160,000. Even worse, there are only 144,000 troops there now; most of whom are in "force protection mode": ie hunkered down in heavily fortified bases and the Green Zone enclave to reduce causalities.
Adelman is a classic case study in exactly how out of touch with reality the neocons who drove Bush Administration policy and strategy in Iraq really were.
So what does this simpering idiot say now?
On the eve of elections which could well see his kind finally brought to account, he's running like a frightened rabbit.
This same neocon cheerleader, a poster-boy for an utterly discredited gaggle of sinister fools, now has the unmitigated gall to tell Vanity Fair that the Bush national security team is "dysfunctional" He goes on:
I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent .... They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."
Gee, now you tell us Ken? Isn't this the same team that followed your cheer leading to the letter? Isn't this the same team that accepted the direction of your ideological heroes, Cheney and Rumsfeld? Isn't this the same team that bought your clueless nonsense about "a cakewalk" and troop numbers, against the advice of real military men? And now you want to distance yourself from them, despite the fact they did precisely what you and your fellow ideologues directed?
So what does the new Kenneth Adelman say about the man who did precisely what Adelman shouted from the rooftops in 2002? He says this:
I'm crushed by (Rumsfeld's) performance .... Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don't know. He certainly fooled me.
No, Ken, you certainly fooled many naive and idealistic Americans by stridently advocating the very same measures that your neocon buddy, Rumsfeld, has put into practice. It wasn't his "performance" that was the problem, it was the fantasy that you, he and your ideological fellow-travelers peddled six years ago that was the prime cause of this disaster. You just have the political luxury of being able to dodge responsibility in a way he can't now that the heat is really on.
But it gets worse.
If there is an éminence grise of the neocons, it's Richard Perle. A founding member of "The Project for a New American Century", Perle was a key signatory to the 1998 PNAC open letter to Clinton calling for an invasion of Iraq. Unlike more politically prominent neocons, Perle chose to remain out of the spotlight, but his links to and his influence on other neocon figures and, therefore, on the Bush Administration remain clear. Even his political supporters in Washington acknowledged his behind-the-scenes role, dubbing him "The Prince of Darkness".
Like Adelman, Perle pushed the idea that Iraq would be a military pushover, both in public and - more importantly - in private. Speaking to PBS in July 2002 Perle spoke his mind:
Saddam is much weaker than we think he is. He's weaker militarily. We know he's got about a third of what he had in 1991. But it's a house of cards. He rules by fear because he knows there is no underlying support. Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder. Now, it isn't going to be over in 24 hours, but it isn't going to be months either.
Like Adelman, he was right. Up to a point. And like Adelman, the rest of the militarily clueless neocons, Rumsfled, Cheney and that gormless idiot Bush, he was spectacularly wrong about what this collapse would lead to in the longer term.
That wasn't all Perle was totally wrong about. From 2001 to 2003 the Bush Administration had been utilising "intelligence" about Saddam's supposed WMD program fed to them by the INC - the Iraqi National Congress. This group of politically partisan Iraqi exiles did everything they could to encourage the Bush Administration to believe the WMDs threat was real, immediate and dangerous. The CIA on the other hand, considered the INC's sources to be complete nonsense and tried to block their influence on intelligence assessments.
"The Prince of Darkness" swung into action on behalf of the INC and into conflict with the CIA. He got his way. His fellow neocon, Dick Cheney, sidelined the real intelligence experts and set up his own intelligence division (staffed by junior Republican zealots with no intelligence experience). This "Office for Special Plans" stovepiped INC "information" to the White House as though it was genuinely confirmed and carefully vetted intelligence, against the objections of the various real intelligence agencies. Thanks to Perle's influence, this junk intelligence was fed to George Bush and drove his Iraq policy, despite the fact it was known then to be and has now been exposed as total lies.
So what does Perle have to say for himself now?
Like Adelman, he's running frantically for cover:
"The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly .... At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible
How convenient. This is despite the fact that this President is an utter goose who has lived in a disinformation bubble for six years and has been fed total nonsense by people like Perle and his acolytes for that entire period.
Running as hard as he can for the cover of the long grass, Perle goes on:
"I think if I had been Delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?', I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists'."
Which is precisely what we "liberals", academics, experts etc were saying back in 2002, when Perle and his cronies were helping Bush beat the drums of war.
As I said above, if the blunders of these sinister fools, as they try to run from the consequences of their arrogance, weren't so utterly sad all this would be totally hilarious. Unfortunately, it represents a disaster involving the bloody deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, old people and children.
But these recent neocon hypocrites are just the latest in a long line of defectors from that totally flawed ideology. One by one, as their fantasies have proven to be complete and utter garbage, these clowns have variously recanted or tried to scrabble for cover. William F. Buckley, Jr, the founder of the arch-neoconservative National Review, was the first of the neocon disciples to cut and run. Back in February he finally acknowledged reality, contradicted everything he'd said for the past six years and wrote, for once, with unflinching honesty:
One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. … Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans.
Yes, Bill. It's a pity you and your fellow fanatics didn't realise that back in 2002.
In the same month, the sole real intellectual who had foolishly hitched himself to the disastrous neocon bandwagon, Francis Fukuyama, unhitched himself in spectacular style. He declared this blundering, deluded and misguided movement had "evolved into something I can no longer support" and that its practice demonstrated "the danger of good intentions carried to extremes ... (it) is now in shambles". In probably the most eloquent and most honest assessment how neoconservatism has utterly and ironically betrayed everything the USA and the free world stands for, Fukuyama wrote:
They believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version and it has returned as farce when practiced by the U.S.
The truth of that statement should the the fitting epitaph on the whole disastrous neoconservative experiment. The irony is not just that neoconservative ideology began as a reaction against hegemonic Communism, in all its most ugly glory. The full irony is that it has ended by creating what is rapidly becoming a mirror image of that vile philosophy. In reaction to Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Afghanistan in 1979 and in the Baltic in 1990 the world condemned Soviet attempts at military hegemony. In 2003, the neocons engineered just such an action by the US in Iraq. From 1945 to 1991 the free world condemned the Soviet use of torture and illegal detention without trial. From 2001 to the present the misguided necons have encouraged just such measures in and by the US.
But now they are jumping like rats from a sinking ship over Iraq, though unfortunately they are leaving behind a legacy that the rest of us will need to take decades to dismantle. If, indeed, we have the will and ability to do so.
They have created a hideous monster which we must now deal with. I hope we can, but regardless of whether we do or not, these vile neocon rats deserve to be condemned, reviled and pursued wherever they run. They have betrayed the best aspects of what the post-Cold War period potentially had to offer and left us with a bitter mirror image of everything we once totally despised.
They, their flaccid political puppets, their fellow travelers in the media and the oil industry and their many, many brainless, clueless, unquestioning "patriotic" dupes need to be totally condemned and utterly repudiated as fools, liars, murderers and traitors to the best ideals of all free societies.
-Thread title changed because of flaming remarks against neoconservatives, also a few flames/trolls removed from thread.
-Scottishranger
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Originally Posted by Brian1980
