Andrew Sullivan is hawking a nice piece today by another blogger (Matt Steinglass), essentially saying that neoconservatives are unintelligent morons.
Well – they may be… but the swipe is at the conservatives in general who are criticizing the President for how he is handling Iran, thus I feel compelled to respond.
Let me from the outset say that the “neoconservatism” of the Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush, period is not necessarily a reflection of the conservative movement. Just as leftist ideologies are “squishy” and anamorphous (for the wrong reasons – namely – obfuscation), the rubric of “conservatism” is not rigid or monolithic but is a large discipline of thinking held together by a core heuristic and set of principles. Historically, launching pre-emptive conflict is not a conservative thing, nor is getting involved in the affairs of other countries. However, when someone looking for a fight comes our way, conservatives believe that showing nothing but the full force and might available to us is the way to prevail. Conservatives don’t go looking for fights, but if one comes our way, we intent to stop at nothing to ensure victory. That was not the mantra of the last Administration, however, it is most consistent with conservatism generally.
The rise of neoconservatism was in response to the indecisiveness and multilateralism of Kennedy, Johnson, Carter (especially) and Clinton. Clinton perhaps sealed it for the class of neocons that came to government in 2000. There is really no other way to explain it. The same Secretary of Defense Cheney who in 1994 said “invading Iraq would be a Quagmire” was leading the charge in 2002 to end Saddam’s regime as Vice-President in 2000. What accounts for this change? A belief and a deep regret that “half-measures” in Iraq created instability and a regime capable of launching nuclear weapons at the US. Iraq was undoubtedly to be a warning to all rogue states that the US would not tolerate any more shenanigans from two-bit dictators who would threaten our interests. The neocons rejected multilateralism. They rejected attempting to use institutional arrangements to manage foreign affairs. Instead, bilateralism and direct intervention became their primary tools of foreign policy. I understand why they adopted those tactics, however, the brief history of neoconservatism being unsuccessfully employed in managing world affairs should have served as a warning.[1] It didn’t.
Thus comes the election in 2000 and neoconservatives populated the Bush Administration’s defense and intelligence arenas with the grand desire to “try out” their approach. Just as conservatives chastise the left for social experimentation, we should have chastised our brethren for engaging on a defense experiment. We did not, and we paid the price by losing the election in 2008. We also paid the price for the doctrine of “pre-emptive war.” The Doctrine made sense in a world where terrorists might nuke a US city with no warning, however, as applied, it was impossible to carry out effectively. The turn towards ideaslism, and away from the Reaganesque realism, got Bush into trouble. It got his father into trouble. It most assuredly got Clinton into trouble, who despite what we as conservatives may wish to believe, had a lot more in common with how neoconservatives conduct foreign policy than generally how liberals would have during that period.
So I agree the neoconservatives have their issues. Pre-emptive war was a disaster. That’s not anything novel. Reconciling the desire by the neocons to protect national security with conservatism’s realist/interest based foreign policy has been a debate for about 50 years. But that argument has nothing to do with the present construct and criticism of the President about his refusal to “step up the rhetoric” on Iran. Wanting the President to deal with Iran more forcefully is not a neoconservative issue – it’s a right and wrong issue. We either stand on the side of people who want liberty and freedom, or we don’t. Critics of neocons and conservatives are right on that issue – we do see the defense of freedom is dichotomous. However, that’s about as far as the argument goes.
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