Unrepentant Neocon

by Joseph Rago - August 12th, 2006 - Wall Street Journal (opinionjournal.com)

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y.--If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then Iraq was lost--according, at least, to the conspiracy-minded--on the pages of Commentary magazine and the other house organs of the neoconservative movement. Better yet, blame America's post-9/11 foreign policy on Leo Strauss, Albert Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom, regularly disinterred as the neocon godfathers.

Yet however much one loathes lending credence to talk of a neocon conspiracy--call it Cabal Theory--it does possess a certain element of truth. That is, the Iraq intervention found its genesis not only in the immediate crises of the prewar period, but also in a way of thinking about foreign policy that matured over several decades. In other words, "Ideas shape events. They are the moving force in history," notes Norman Podhoretz, editor in chief of Commentary for the 35 years ending in 1995, and a highly influential adventurer in the world of neoconservatism.

The title of this article is the closest label that I would apply to my views on foreign policy. The article is in fact a great essay on what a neocon is and how the neocon view came to be. It also describes accurately the intellectual discussion going on between neocons (like Podhoretz), libertarians (like Charles Krauthammer), waffling neocons (like George Will), conservatives (like William Buckley) and paleo-conservatives (like Pat Buchanan).

The reality is that we are in World War IV (the cold war being World War III) against the islamofascists (a term even George Bush is starting to edge up to with his recent use of the term "Islamic Fascist"). This discussion is the most important thing happening in our nation.

There are two really interesting quotes in the article.

1. [Podhoretz] retains an acute sense of longing for the intellectual community in which he grew up, a world--irretrievably lost--with no real equivalent today. It was a world that cared immensely about the life of the mind . . .

2. Both domestic opposition and the international community, unhappily, are "defining torture down. The things they're calling 'torture' now have never been and have no business being considered torture." He keeps on: "It is an effort to disarm us that's succeeding to a frightening extent. No, it's worse than that. They're trying to make it impossible to fight terrorism. . . . Every weapon that's been developed to protect us from terrorism, and the Iraqis from internal terrorism, is under assault."

I think that both issues are at a very important stage.

The intellectual curiousity that used to define universities and newspapers that were part and parcel of the wide ranging discussions of life and our world back in the 60s and 70s has disappeared only to the extent that it has left its former environment. Now this intellectual discussion is happening not in universities and newspapers, but in Republican political meetings and on the blogs. The first quote above is thus wrong only in where the discussion is taking place. The goal is still to understand the world clearly and develop ideas about the world.

The second issue is frightening because the MSM has so clearly come down on the side of convincing the public that we have to reject using the tools needed to fight our enemy. We can still lose this battle on the ground if we lose the battle of ideas.

To repeat Ragan's quote in his article "Ideas shape events. They are the moving force in history," notes Norman Podhoretz . . .

So true. This is an important article that will teach you a lot and make you think!