Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Scathing Indictment of Neocons
This article is a scathing indictment of the Neocons and their shortsightedness. A quote from it "Neoconservatives have been wrong about every possible aspect of Iraq: wrong about the threat from Saddam, wrong about the way to deal with it, wrong about the costs of war, wrong about the insurgency, and wrong about staying the course. The only question left is how long the country and the Bush administration will continue listening to them on foreign policy. And at what cost?" Ouch!
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2 comments:
Although the Neocons have nothing to brag about as of late, I will say that a part of me is glad that they have (although through largely bogus and dishonest means) kept the fight against world terrorism at the forefront of American foreign policy.
Now before my comment gets taken out of context by the three people who will read it, let me say that I, in no way, support the Neocon reaction to terrorism, nor their shortsightedness in dealing with the threat of terror both in the US and abroad. However, there is no doubt in my mind that terrorism is a real threat to world stability that needs to be kept at the forefront of American foreign policy. The "Stick your head in the stand until terrorism blows up in your face" approach that Canada has taken towards terror, for instance, is appaling. There is a widespread belief in most of Canada that the country is immune from any terrorist attack, even after Osama Ben Laden himself identified Canada as a future terrorist target. As such, I would go as far as saying that the many blunders, lies and errors of the Neocons have had a positive byproduct, namely keeping global terrorism on top of the United States foreign policy agenda.
The Neocons, however, in relentlessly pursuing their particular brand of terror response, have certainly exacerbated the United States problems by getting bogged down in a costly war that has had no palpable effect on "winning the War on Terror." Strangely enough, Chuck Klosterman, pop-culture critic and Esquire Magazine columnist, wrote an opinion article on America's foreign policy which was, in my view, a rather intelligent response to both the blindness of Neocons as well as the stupidness of the far left, who contend that terrorism is at the root caused by American foreign policy and aggravated by Bush' handling of it. Klosterman basically says that both sides are wrong, but that a marriage of their views accurately reflects the situation. He argues very simply that there really are people who hate the West, hate democracy and hate any religous order that is not in line with radical Islam and that these people want to spead their particular strain of the Muslim faith accross the world, by any means and at any cost. However, rather then hindering the spead of terror and cutting it out at its root, the Bush Adminstration, under the auspices of the Neocons, has aggravated much of the situation by responding in the wrong way.
Klosterman, who should in no way be taken as an expert on terrorism, foreign affairs or politics, nonetheless makes a solid point. We need to refocus the battle against terrorism. The continued arrogance and hard headedness of the Neocons is NOT the way to do it.
Your points are well taken, John, and I generally agree with them. My main beef with the neocons is that they dangerously got distracted by Iraq, rather than pursuing the actual real life terrorists. This led to a. The US carrying out Iran's foreign policy flawlessly; and b. Time and space for the real terrorists to regroup. So now, even if we got serious about pursuing the real terrorists, the American public will only be energized by another 9/11, at which point it will have been too late.
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