Necroconservatives

[H2O Man]

"This world and yonder world are incessantly giving birth: every cause is a mother, its effect the child. When the effect is born, it too becomes a cause and gives birth to wonderous effects. These causes are generation on generation, but it needs a very well lighted eye to see the links in their chain." -- Jalal-ad-din Rumi, Persian Sufi poet

As the violence in Lebanon continues, the United States's support of Israeli policy stands out against the global call for a cease-fire. Condi Rice's trip seems less an attempt to find a diplomatic resoltion to the war, than an attempt to justify the administration's policy. I think it is important to examine what domestic group's agenda that Rice is advocating. My goal is not to focus on which side is right or wrong in the Israeli-Lebanon conflict, but rather, to consider the implications for the United States.

When we look at the Bush administration's policy in the Middle East, it is evident that it is largely the result of the influence of the group known as "neoconservatives." In the third book in his wonderful series on America in the King years, author Taylor Branch traces the genesis of the neconservative movement to the 1967 Six Day War. (At Cannan's Edge; Simon & Schuster; 2006; pages 615-624.) It is important to remember that 1967 marked a significant evolution in Martin's ministerial journey. On April 4, King delivered his greatest speech, "A Time to Break Silence" (aka "Beyond Vietnam") to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, at the Riverside Church in New York City. In his presentation, King connected the racism in the United States to the government policy in Vietnam.

While the connecting of the Civil Rights movement with the Anti-War groups may seem mainstream today, at the time it was not. The speech led to King being attacked more viciously than at any previous time in his ministry. In "Let the Trumpet Sound" (Mentor; 1982; pages 416-423), University of Massachusetts Professor Stephen Oates documents the reaction:

"But in April, 1967, most of King's country supported the Vietnam War, and his address provoked a fusillade of abuse from all sides. The Jewish War Veterans of America blasted it as 'an extremist tirade' that belabored an 'ugly parallel' with the Germans, revealed 'an ignorance of the facts,' pandered to Ho Chi Minh, and insulted 'the intelligence of all Americans.' The FBI claimed that Stanley Levison had shaped if not written the Riverside speech, and bureau documents denigrate King as 'a traitor to his country and to his race.' Taking his cue from the FBI, a Johnson aide remarked that King's argument was 'right down the Commie line,' and Congressman Joe D. Waggonner, in communication with the White House and the bureau, charged on Capitol Hill that King's 'earlier training at such gatherings as the Communist Highlander Folk School has called him on to another Communist end, mobilizing support for Peking and Hanoi in their war against South Vietnam'."

Newsweek, Life, and the New York Times all attacked Martin savagely for his speech. A few black leaders did, as well. Most seemed to view King's speech as wrong not because the necessarily supported the war, but because it was, in the words of Ralph Bunche, "a very serious tactical error which will do much harm to the civil rights movement. (King) should realize that his anti-U.S. Vietnam crusade is bound to alienate many friends and supporters."

Chapter 35 of Branch's book describes how the movement King was attempting to lead splintered in May and June of '67. He documents how the Six Day War led a number of the civil rights movements' "friends and supporters" to break from King's call for nonviolence when it applied to people other than black Americans. He uses the example of the "Shactmanite base" which had provided union support for leaders such as Bayard Rustin, as being among those groups that splintered.

The reaction to the Six Day War in this country was significant. Branch writes that, "A warrior's exultation hardened the awakening of Jewish spirit. 'We grew so fast into a visible central power that the seeds of arrogance as well came in,' observed David Hartman. First news of Israel's deliverance prompted a vulgar outburst from Abe Fortas in his Supreme Court chambers: 'I'm going to decorate my office with Arab foreskins.' The implications of the war were so fantastic as to be hushed in numb realization ..... For three hours on Day Four, Israeli war planes strafed and torpedoed the plainly marked U.S.S. Liberty spy ship in international waters off the coast of Egypt, killing thirty-four American sailors, wounding 170. Official statements of regret would leave the orgin and anatomy of the attack shrouded in secrecy, as if both sides needed to muffle the reprecussions." (page 618)

Then, regarding within the civil rights movement, "Michael Harrington split with Shactman over Vietnam, and he coined the word 'neoconservative' for Shactman's coalition thrust. As the term gained currency in the intellectual beehive of Manhattan, it suggested strong military purpose with a utopian residue focused on Israel. The powerful neoconservative school in American politics would grow from a merger of labor-wing Shactmanites into the larger movement associated with Irving Kristol." (page 620)

A number of books detail the neoconservative movement in the years following its genesis, as it would take shape through the offices of Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson and Abraham Ribicoff. In "A Pretext for War" (Anchor Books; 2004), James Bamford writes, "Among Jackson's greatest supporters were members of the neoconservative movement. Predominantly Jewish, they were turned off by the counterculture movements of the 1960s, disillusioned with the Great Society, offended by the 'anti-American' sentiments of the left, and fearful of the expansionist aims of the United Nations. At the core of the movement was a small but prolific band of sedentary intellectuals and think tank warriors .... they wrote longingly of a muscular expansion of American power and influence around the world, a rollback of communism and an end to detente with the Soviets, and the creation of a seamless bond between Israel's interests and America's military and foreign policy." (page 272)

Senator Jackson produced impressive results for Israel."In fiscal year 1970, Israel received military credits from the United States worth $30 million. But thanks to a Jackson amendment, the next year the amount sky-rocketed to $545 million. By 1974, it had reached an extraordinary $2.2 billion, more than seventy times what it had been just four years earlier." (Bamford; page 273)

Senator Jackson was associated with a former RAND consultant, Albert Wohlstetter, who was employed at the University of Chicago. From their Political Science Department, Wohlstetter worked on nuclear weapons research, and in opposition to detente and disarmament. He had what has been described as a "cultlike following among some of his students and others within the right-wing establishment." (Bamford; page 275) Wohlstetter would bring people such as Paul Wolfowitz into the neoconservative movement. This influence moved the neoconservatives from the camp of democratic hawks like Jackson and Moynihan to the necroconservative growth within the republican party in the 1980s.

The mestatasis of neoconservatism involved bringing a number of people from the Jackson-Wohltetter cult into the Reagan and Bush1 administration. These include Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis Libby, and Paul Wolfowitz. These individuals were all closely associated with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They were all outraged when President Bush1 ended the first Gulf War without taking out Saddam and setting up a neocon-friendly government in Iraq.

In 1992, Wolfowitz and Libby prepared a memo for Defense Secretary Cheney that called for an intensely aggressive military strategy for the US that would "set the nation's direction for the next century." The memo was leaked to the public, and there was a harsh response. President Bush1 distanced himself from the proposed policies, and for a time, it "was seemingly forgotten. But in September 2002, with Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Libby restored to power, theWolfowitz memo reappeared in an official document released by the White House, titled The National Security Strategy of the United States." (Patrick Buchanan; Where the Right Went Wrong; Thomas Dunne Books; 2004; page 44)

In the Clinton years, the neoconservatives continued to advocate for the US to take agressive military actions in the Middle East.This included the signing of a proposal in 1998, that President Clinton remove Saddam from power, as part of a Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

Also, Feith, Perle and David Wurmser became advisors to Israel, and recommended an invasion of Lebanon that would set the stage for actions against Syria and Iran. The plan was called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. They advocated using the pretext of a threat of WMD to cover the real purpose of preemptive invasions. (Bamford; 260-264)

These positions are consistent with a list that John Dean included in his book "Worse Than watergate" to describe neoconservative beliefs and tactics. The list came from Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul. It contains the following:

-- They believe in preemptive war and the naked use of military force to achieve any desired ends.
-- They are very willing to use force to impose American ideals.
-- They openly endorse the idea of an American empire, and .... call for imperialism.
--They are willing to redraw the map of the Middle East by force, while unconditionally supporting Israel.
--They believe the ends justify the means in politics.
-- They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.
-- They believe certain facts should only be known by the political elite, and withheld from the general public. (page 103)

It is worth noting that Joseph Wilson identified the neoconservative cells within the Bush administration as being those that both lied our nation into war in Iraq, and who participated in the operation to damage him and his wife. (See pages431-435 of "The Politics of Truth.") By no small coincidence, many of the same cast of characters is found in the neocon-AIPAC spy scandal, in which US military secrets involving Iran were provided to Israeli intelligence.

It is also worth noting that by the summer of 2004, when many of the fiscal and social conservatives in the republican party were beginning to recognize the damage the neoconservatives had done to this country, William Kristol told the New York Times of a new strategy. "If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me, too. I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan .... If you read the last few issues of the Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives." He described the concept of a neoliberal as "neoconservative who has been mugged by reality in Iraq."

As democrats and progressives watch the violence in Iraq, we should take note of how certain forces try to frame the issues. We don't want to be mugged by neoliberals.

[rumpel]

1. k&r

:kick:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Excellent piece, well cited

This is the sort of information I am looking for-not emotional, but factually based, indicating what the larger picture is so that we can better understand what is really going on.

Thanks, too, for the quote from Mevlana that started your piece. As you know, a dervish takes responsibility not only for his actions, but the results of those actions as well (no, I'm not close to being a dervish!)-it would be nice if our leaders followed the dervish way.

[H2O Man]

7. Thank you.

You are among the most rational, insightful, and balanced people on DU, and so I especially appreciate your comments! Thank you!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

22. You honor me by your words,

for I feel the same way about you.

[TahitiNut]

3. "Necroconservatives" ... I like that.

Right-wing political necrophiliacs ... a distinction without a substantive difference when compared to left-wing political necrophiliacs: Necroliberals. Just as there's nothing legitimately 'conservative' about a necroconservative (nationalism in service to global corporatism), there's nothing legitimately 'liberal' about a necroliberal (global corporatism in service to nationalism).

There's no question in my skull that 1967 saw a shift in Dr. King's focus and that shift portended an influence over a might-makes-right agenda that led to Dr. King's assassination, imho. The confluence and interaction between that shift and a shift in the schism within secular/political Zionism (an unfortunate label having little to do with sectarian Judaism) certainly gave a jolt of Miracle Grow to the necroconservative tumor which became malignant on the right. "Zionism" has really never been some homogeneous ideology, having substantive internal schisms for most of its recent history (50 years), and even more so since 1967.

[H2O Man]

6. A number of

people close to Martin are convinced that the "A Time to Break Silence" speech was the tipping point. Before then, there were plenty of rabid racists who definitely wanted to kill him. And Hoover was among them. But that speech moved things to a whole nother level. It was no longer about integrating a coffee shop, or using the same public toilet. It was the "giant triplets" that Martin described in the speech.

[Me.]

18. Interesting Post

And I'm glad to see you point out that there is a difference between Zionism and sectarian Judaism. Zionism is a political "party" and is not defining of Israel or Judaism as a whole.

*shadow government*

[TahitiNut]

21. People with agendas diligently attempt to conflate or hijack language.

Zionism is not itself monolithic, nor is it a religion. It is a spectrum/collection of political ideologies that infiltrates not only the secularism of Judaism but the secularism of Christianity (dispensationalism and evangelicalism). Various proponents of a variety of political and sectarian ideologies insist on (dis)serving their causes by making equivalence claims that, in fact, are not shared at large. Most of such rhetoric, even on DU, is used to destroy understanding rather than create understanding.

[Octafish]

34. MLK stood in the way of the Military Intelligence WallStreet Mafia Complex

Here's one of the fine people who enjoy living high off the human hog, as it were.



Attorney General John Ashcroft back home in Missouri
on a typical 3-day weekend during the summer of 2001.

April 2004: The Plot to Rule the World

Bush’s neo-cons want four more years to achieve U.S. world domination

Some five years prior to Ronald Reagan becoming President of the United States, the first wave of neo-conservatives formed the infamous Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). Of its 61 original directors, 29 eventually found positions in the Reagan administration.

Some of the key members of this latter group were Donald Rumsfeld, George P. Shultz, who became Secretary of State under Reagan, Ken Adelman, who became head of the oxymoronic Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), Richard Perle, who became Assistant Secretary of Defense, and several hawkish academics who were the personification of the contemporary neo-con, such as Colin S. Gray and Richard Pipes.

Pipes was a member of a secret team outside the CIA, called “Team B,” organized by then CIA Director George Bush Sr. Their goal was to exaggerate the Soviet threat to the point of creating a crisis situation. They, together with Reagan and the CPD, then planned to abandon the existing policy of mutual assured destruction (MAD) in favour of a mad plan to win a nuclear war by all means, including pre-emption and the weaponization of space (“Star Wars”). They also set out to scuttle the key SALT II Treaty. Together with Caspar Weinberger and later Paul Wolfowitz, who entered government service under Presidents Ford and Carter, the first wave of neo-cons came to power in the Reagan administration.

A key person in the neo-cons’ rise to power was Albert Wohlstetter, who was part of Project Rand, the Rand Corporation’s contribution to the new U.S. military policy of nuclear war-fighting and war-winning. A secret study led by Wohlstetter, Rand Report R-244-5, applied game theory to defeating the Soviet Union in a nuclear war. Wohlstetter left Rand in 1962 for academia, but strongly influenced one of his students, Paul Wolfowitz, who, together with Richard Perle, became the penultimate neo-cons. They strongly supported the secret “Team B” report, but also urged a major focus to include the Middle East and the geopolitics of oil. Both found positions of influence in the government. Later, Wolfowitz and Perle served under Dick Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense in the Bush Sr. administration. The neo-con noose was tightening around the neck of U.S. foreign policy.

Joining this coterie of neo-cons a few years later were Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. In 1990, they produced a definitive study, the Defense Guidance Planning (DGP) document, which was leaked to the New York Times. In this study, the U.S. was to “maintain the mechanisms for deferring potential competitors from ever aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” It strongly supported pre-emptive strikes as the only way to assure U.S. domination of the world, and went so far as to assert that “the United States should be postured to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated (my emphasis). The war on Iraq and the focus on oil were set into inevitable motion, as well as the declaration of UN irrelevance. The truly key figure in these policies is defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who earlier had also been Gerald Ford’s Secretary of Defense.

By 2000, the neo-cons found the perfect puppet for their plans of global domination--George W. Bush--and were able to codify the DPG document of 1990 into official U.S. policy. They first set about to trash the entire nuclear arms control regime and the many treaties of which it was composed. They also proceeded to complete the original Star Wars fantasy, now converted into a National Missile Defense (NMD) program.

CONTINUED...{/a]

First we make peace. Then we can solve the problems.

All this fighting uses up all the money. And the good people.

Speak of the devil...

W is for WAR

[Me.]

4. There Really Are No Words To Describe These People

Neo-con, neo-liberal, arrogant, insane, none of them do it or fully convey the damage to our democracy these people have inflicted. Very cosy way to conduct a war Mr. Kristol, from a comfortable chair in your air conditioned office or the set of Faux, both of which have cooling, electricity, toilets that work and phone and computer hook-ups. Not quite as comfy as Rummy's and Dirty Dick's million dollar estates in Maryland, yet still with no understanding of the horrors of a war of choice and the ramifications for the people subjected to the effects of the carnage. We too have been paying a price, what with our treasury having been looted, but I suspect the greater price is yet to come due.

I've heard the attack on Lebanon described as trying to kill an ant with a powermower and it certainly has the sense of overkill as reports of maimed and dead Lebanese children come in. Yet I can understand Israel's frustration each time a suicide bomber climbs on a bus and kill their citizens.

What I don't accept are events as represented by the AIPAC scandal. We are a sovereign nation and as such no other nation is entitled to breach our security as a matter of course. And the fact that the giving over of secret documents has been described as business as usual makes it a very dangerous situation.

In this Dr. Seuss world of ours where up is down and down is sideways, sanity and clear thinking seem to be the missing quotient. The earthmovers have been brought in and are covering over all manner of truth and right in favor of hyperbolic theories from people who have lost their minds. W. Buckley, in an interview Sat. on CBS news seems, now to agree more with me, than his former neo-con buddies.

*shadow government*

[H2O Man]

5. There is a powerful

article by Seymour Hersh from 2003, titled "The Stovepipe." I do not have a link to it, but I seem to recall that DUer and friend Stephanie posted it about two months before I joined DU. It documents the errors in thinking that the neocons brought to the foreign policy table. When I watch the horrors on the news from the Middle East, I am under the impression some of the same errors in perception are in play.

[im10ashus]

13. Is this the article?

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact

[H2O Man]

14. That's it!

You are good! Thanks.

[im10ashus]

15. Stephanie is a good friend here too.

:-)

I remembered that article from the New Yorker. Lot's of good stuff in there.

:hi:

[rman]

8. "Necroconservatives" - that made me LOL

Excellent piece

[annabanana]

9. You have laid bare the roots of the Aspens..

And they inhabit a carefully tended garden.

[tnlefty]

10. K & R!

Very well done. I enjoy your work.

[CatWoman]

11. speaking of which

I saw my boyfriend on tv late last night, talking about the Mideast crises.

:hi:

K&R!!!

[H2O Man]

12. You will have

a lot of people wondering with that comment. But don't worry -- your secret is safe with me.

[CatWoman]

24. heh

Trumad ambushes me with pics of OJ, and you ambush me with pics of Al.

Can't be too hard for them to figure out :D

[Canuckistanian]

16. K&R for the title alone!

What a good post. A primer for neocon neophytes.

[bleever]

17. To participate in a history seminar such as this

is a genuine privilege.

Thank you so much.

[H2O Man]

27. Thank you. n/t

[Iowa]

19. K&R...

H20 Man comes through again.

The complexities are such that the more I know, the less I feel I know.

[spuddonna]

20. And the war machine rages on...

Thank you for this, and for your last article on the neocons. They were extremely informative.

I find it quite puzzling that there are people that believe these things will work:'They are very willing to use force to impose American ideals.'

This neocon philosophy is such a twisted ideology of elite power and military force. When you force people to do your will, the natural act is rebellion, so military force is the next 'necessary' step. But don't they see that the end result is a never-ending state of warfare with an enemy that tries to preserve its own beliefs and way of life? Well, that or the utter annihilation of the enemy? I guess they see that as a 'cost of doing business'... :(

BTW, I had never read "A Time To Break Silence" before (or if I had it had been so long I'd forgotten!)

If anyone would like to hear MLK's "A Time To Break Silence" speech (or read it if you have a slow connection) go here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

[burythehatchet]

23. Quite an appropriate time to reference Sufi wisdom. n/t

[Emit]

25. Excellent, H2O Man! Looks like I'll have to

be heading back to my local book store soon. The series by Taylor Branch seems like a must read.

[H2O Man]

26. I think it is.

His series on the King years is of the same high quality as Robert Caro's series on LBJ. (I've been waiting for word that Robert's final book is ready ....)

[Me.]

28. Kick

*shadow government*

[robertpaulsen]

29. Thanks. You really know how to put things in perspective.

To paraphrase the famous Teddy Roosevelt quote, Condi seems to be over in Lebanon more to remind them of the big stick we carry than anything else. Necroconservatism, as you rightly label it, is nothing more than the antiquated ethos of Manifest Destiny. It's a might makes right world philosophy that should have died back in the 19th century. In a better world, King's 1967 speech would have celebrated it's demise, rather than warn of it's festering danger. Thanks for clarifying who we need to watch out for in these troubling times.

[PATRICK]

30. Nero-conservatives

I like the variations. All too fitting and more descriptive.

[sweetheart]

31. necromongers

Their undead armies are indeed impressive in their slash and burn invasion.

[KYDEM]

32. Kick

n/t

[Octafish]

33. They ARE the Party of Death.

The War Party.
BushCo.
The Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Mafia Complex.

They live for death.
It is the key to their power.
Their application of death is the reason for their position.
Their love of death is their reason for being.

Thanks for the heads-up and the who's-who, H20 Man. You are like a Hurricane.


My 2-cents: Where your end-of-the-Cold-War Peace Dividend goes:

Remembering Team B

By Tom Barry | February 12, 2004

The most notorious attempt by militarists and right-wing ideologues to challenge the CIA was the Team B affair in the mid-1970s. The 1975-76 “Team B” operation was a classic case of threat escalation by hawks determined to increase military budgets and step up the U.S. offensive in the cold war. Concocted by right-wing ideologues and militarists, Team B aimed to bury the politics of détente and the SALT arms negotiations, which were supported by the leadership of both political parties. 1

The historical record shows that the call for an independent assessment of the CIA's conclusions came from the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB--pronounced piffy-ab ). But the fear-mongering and challenges to the CIA's threat assessments--known as National Intelligence Estimates--actually started with nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter, who laid down the gauntlet in a 1974 Foreign Policy article entitled “Is There a Strategic Arms Race?” 2 Wohlstetter answered his rhetorical question negatively, concluding that the United States was allowing the Soviet Union to achieve military superiority by not closing the “missile gap.” Having inspired the Gaither Commission in 1957 to raise the missile gap alarm, Wohlstetter applied the same threat assessment methodology to energize hawks, cold warriors, and right-wing anticommunists in the mid-1970s to kill the politics of détente and increase budget allocations for the Pentagon. Following his Foreign Policy essay, Wohlstetter, who had left his full-time position at RAND to become a professor at the University of Chicago, organized an informal study group that included younger neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz and longtime hawks like Paul Nitze.

PFIAB, which was dominated by right-wingers and hawks, followed Wohlstetter's lead and joined the threat assessment battle by calling in 1975 for an independent committee to evaluate the CIA's intelligence estimates. Testimony by PFIAB President Leo Cherne to the House Intelligence Committee in December 1975 alerted committee members to the need for better intelligence about the Soviet Union. “Intelligence cannot help a nation find its soul,” said Cherne. “It is indispensable, however, to help preserve the nation's safety, while it continues its search,” he added. George Bush Sr., who was about to leave his ambassadorship in China to become director of intelligence at the CIA, congratulated Cherne on his testimony, indicating that he would not oppose an independent evaluation of CIA intelligence estimates.


Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush Support Team B

Joining in the chorus of praise, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Bechtel's president George Shultz also congratulated Cherne, implicitly adding their backing for an independent threat assessment committee. 3 Led by several of the board's more hawkish members--including John Foster, Edward Teller, William Casey, Seymour Weiss, W. Glenn Campbell, and Clare Booth Luce--PFIAB had earlier in 1975 called for an independent evaluation of the CIA's national intelligence estimates. Feeling that the country's nuclear weapons industry and capacity was threatened, PFIAB was aiming to derail the arms control treaties then under negotiation.

SNIP...

Committee on the Present Danger Follows Team B

SNIP...

Team B as Model for Post-Cold War Intelligence;/b]

CONTINUED...

WARMONKEY



And yet it
vacations...

[H2O Man]

41. They are indeed

a death cult. While the necroconservatives come from a variety of backgrounds, and different ethnic groups, religions, etc, they share several common features. The most important is they have sold their souls.

[norml]

35. Israel is to them but a weinie to roast on the bonfire of their vanities.

Minute by minute right wing radio clowns push the false concept that the more you act like Nazis, the stronger you will be.

They don't care if the world goes up in flames.

That in fact is their goal.

[Straight Shooter]

36. Necroconservatives, Republicannibals. Feeding off the dead to survive. nt

[samsingh]

37. very powerful and true

thanks for posting

[LSK]

38. kick

[Nikki Stone 1]

39. So how do we remove this treasonous neoconservatism from government?

They seem to have both parties in thrall.

[HamdenRice]

40. Thanks for this thoughtful analysis! KR nt