It has come to my attention recently that not only does the Neocons operate in high places in our President's Administration, Congress, the Pentagon, FBI, and CIA but it also has found it's way into our military ranks as well. I first would like to also state that as with all else in life, there are always some bad with the good. We do have a portion of a military structure that actually performs with a great ability to accomplish it's missions in a civil manner per conditions that it comes under. This thread is dedicated to exposing the neocon mentality that has filtered into the ranks of the military via postings of articles, commentaries, and reports of such as to make aware the effects of what takes place inside the military and those around them.

Lets begin with the PNAC and it's influence.

http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2030.cfm


(U.S. Army troops from the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment take part in a ceremony at Camp Marez, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Feb. 14.)

Liberal Hawks Ally With Project for the New American Century
Neocons and Liberals Together, Again

Tom Barry
International Relations Center
February 16, 2005


The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (P.N.A.C.) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government’s national security strategy with a new public letter stating that the “U.S. military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume.” Rather than reining in the imperial scope of United States national security strategy as set forth by the first Bush administration, P.N.A.C. and the letter’s signatories call for increasing the size of America’s global fighting machine.

The Jan. 28 P.N.A.C. letter advocates that House and Senate leaders take the necessary steps “to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps.”

Joining the neocons in the letter to congressional leaders were a group of prominent liberals — giving some credence to P.N.A.C.’s claim that the “call to act” to increase the total number of United States ground forces counts on bipartisan support.

After an initial spate of public pronouncements after Sept. 11 and during the onset of the Iraq occupation, the Project for the New American Century is again positioning itself as the policy institute that will set the second Bush administration’s security agenda. Although P.N.A.C.’s 1997 statement of principles included only prominent right-wing figures — many of whom later joined the first Bush administration — the neocon policy institute has repeatedly reached out to liberals to give its public letters to the Congress and the president the gloss of bipartisanship.

Its new call for congressional leaders to increase overall United States troop levels includes endorsement of key liberal analysts. Among the signatories are the leading foreign policy analysts at the Brookings Institution and the Progressive Policy Institute (P.P.I.), which are closely associated with the Democratic Party. The endorsees of the letter are largely neoconservatives who are principals in such neocon-led institutes as P.N.A.C., American Enterprise Institute (A.E.I.), Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and the Center for Security Policy. However, this call for a larger expeditionary force was also signed by prominent liberal hawks, including Michael O’Hanlon, Ivo Daalder, James Steinberg, and Will Marshall — all of whom have signed previous P.N.A.C. letters and policy statements.
Support for a ‘Generational Commitment’ in the Middle East

P.N.A.C.’s “Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces” endorses Secretary of State Rice’s assessment that United States military engagement in the Middle East is a “generational commitment.” To meet that commitment, the P.N.A.C. signatories call on Congress to fulfill its constitutional obligation to raise and support military forces — which they say means increasing the number of ground forces by at least 25,000 troops annually over the next several years.

P.N.A.C., which has repeatedly called for increases in the military budget and for military-backed “regime change” around the world, is concerned that the “United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume.” The neoconservative policy institute, which produced the blueprint for the national security strategy of the first Bush administration, echoes the recent assertion by the chief of the Army Reserve that the “overuse” of United States ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan could result in a “broken force.”

Given that the military’s reenlistment rates are declining and recruitment goals are not being met, P.N.A.C.’s call for Congress to increase troop levels implies either reintroducing the draft or dramatically increasing the pay for volunteer enlistees. The latter option would in effect create a global mercenary force deployed to meet the new responsibilities of preventive war, regime change, and political restructuring of the Middle East.

THERE IT IS.... in a Neocon nutshell... even J.A.G. is very concerned about how much NEOCON mentallity is rubbing off in the military ranks itself and the dangers it places this country because of it. It's Bush mentality!

[Every American who cares about our troops, our security and our international prestige should know why the J.A.G.’s were so deeply concerned about the direction taken by the Bush administration.]

[More broadly, the J.A.G. officers were troubled by the implications for the military and the nation of the high-handed attitude exemplified by the Bush advisors. What kind of country would the United States become if we allowed our military officers to behave like criminals? What kind of country would we become if we accepted the dangerous theory, promoted by the Pentagon civilians, that in wartime a President can issue whatever orders he may choose, regardless of U.S. and international law?]


http://www.observer.com/opinions_conason.asp

Officers and Veterans Defy
Bush's Neocons


By Joe Conason

Among the most durable stereotypes of American political culture is that military officers secretly yearn for authoritarian rule and blind brutality, especially if they happen to be from the South, while civilian officials and intellectuals supposedly cherish our constitutional order.

Those old liberal clichés have been proven false in the struggle to curtail the lawless misconduct symbolized by Abu Ghraib. We now know that the most reliable defenders of the Constitution are lifetime military officers—bolstered by a trio of Southern conservative Senators who also happen to be decorated veterans.

They have been pushing back against the neoconservative academics and experts whose advice led to torture scandals and the abrogation of civil and human rights.

In an effort to restore the honor of the armed forces and prevent future abuses, Senators John McCain of Arizona, John Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have proposed amendments to the Defense Authorization Act that would institute standards for the treatment of military detainees. Having loyally muted their criticism during last year’s election season, the three Republican Senators are again voicing demands for candor and reform.

The White House responded with a blatant threat conveyed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather than accept sane restraints on future abuse, the President would veto the annual defense bill. With the administration’s credibility badly diminished, the Senate Republican leadership postponed a vote on the defense bill until September.

Meanwhile, however, the dispute between the Republican rebels and the White House has revealed similar dissension within the military. Those fissures were exposed when Senator Graham released declassified memoranda written by top Judge Advocate General officers. Pried loose from the Pentagon by the Senator, those memos show that in early 2003, ranking J.A.G. officers from every service branch tried to warn against interrogation methods that violate the human and legal rights of prisoners in U.S. military detention facilities.

Every American who cares about our troops, our security and our international prestige should know why the J.A.G.’s were so deeply concerned about the direction taken by the Bush administration.

In essence, the J.A.G. officers worried about the effect on the military of policies that encouraged torture and other interrogation practices prohibited under U.S. and international law. Doing so endangered American troops, who could be prosecuted in U.S. or international courts—and undermined their own protection against enemy abuses. The J.A.G. officers could barely conceal their astonishment that the Bush administration would consider discarding decades of training and tradition for the sake of dubiously effective interrogation methods.

“Treating [the] detainees inconsistently with the [Geneva] Conventions arguably ‘lowers the bar’ for the treatment of U.S. POWs in future conflicts,” wrote Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack Rives. “How will this affect their treatment when incarcerated abroad and our ability to call others to account for their treatment?” asked Navy Rear Adm. Michael Lohr.

The “implementation of questionable techniques will very likely establish a new baseline for acceptable practice in this area,” wrote Army Gen. Michael Romig, “putting our service personnel at far greater risk and vitiating many of the POW/detainee safeguards the U.S. has worked hard to establish over the past five decades.”

Somehow, those concerns appear to have made little impression on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his advisors. But then, as Marine Corps Gen. Kevin Sandkuhler noted dryly in his own dissenting memo, those zealous lawyers promoting torture in the Justice Department and the White House “do not represent the services; thus, understandably, concern for service members is not reflected in their opinion.”

More broadly, the J.A.G. officers were troubled by the implications for the military and the nation of the high-handed attitude exemplified by the Bush advisors. What kind of country would the United States become if we allowed our military officers to behave like criminals? What kind of country would we become if we accepted the dangerous theory, promoted by the Pentagon civilians, that in wartime a President can issue whatever orders he may choose, regardless of U.S. and international law?

We have yet to confront the full consequences of that theory, as applied in U.S. military detention facilities. At the moment, the Pentagon and the White House are withholding photos and videos that reportedly document abuses even graver than what we’ve already seen, despite a court order demanding their release.

The warnings of the J.A.G. officers were prescient indeed. Someday, when historians consider how this President and his associates sought to overturn American values, traditions and statutes in pursuit of absolute power, they will praise the officers and politicians who resisted those illegitimate maneuvers.

And to trump it off i can tell you that it has been no news to several of US allies that have worked together whit US troops and brass (I will defirensiatet here)
We / they have seen that turnabout, actually since Clintons last years in the WH.
So even throu the NCO and lifers is still popular to work whit for several of your allies on a day to day basis, the same cannot be said about your topbrass, which is more and more being called PC's and PAA's, both behind their backs, but also more and more in their face.

Ghost, good post Bro' - for sure.

Not really hard to see NeoCon MoFo's in the Military my brother.

"METHINKS" eh', all you have to do is set sail MATEY, AYE! And look for Avators! LOL

Think you will definately find some true scumbag NeoCons Bro'!

"METHINKS" this would be easy as he_l - and the Avator thing can give the Neocons position away, especially reading this self proclaimed professionals posts! LOL

Hang Tough Bro'~

Equally fine awareness from yourself brother Bammo! I used to tag it as being Bush Mentality, but in all due respect, I had to admit that the Neocon Mentality goes way back in time, when the Neocons were forming since at least the middle of our last century and spilled over into the mentality of our military forces. Mix capitalism and armed forces together and we get that spit in your face killer mentality that locksteps to our dictator. In this new age, that Neocon mentality has now become more defined as Bush Mentality in my opinion. Those who support the imperialistic ways and means of our Pentagon and Dictatorship. What hurts me Bammo is, I know there also many good young men who sign up into Sammy's forces with the belief of doing things right and defending our country, but then after it's too late, they are trapped per Sammy's contract to do as they are told or else. In that time span, the either conform to Neoconic mentality or suffer the consequences and be cast aside and branded as such.

All the Way Bro!

Just to explain the non-millitary members.

PC's = Pinafore captains/Political correct. (Take a guess why)

PAA*s = Political appointet asslickers. (Self explanatory)

Thankfully there is still mostly liférs in the US millitary otherwise it would be S***.

http://antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=2081

March 3, 2004 Reality 1, Neocons 0

by William S. Lind

The Marines have landed, and the situation is not well in hand, nor will it ever be. I am speaking, of course, of Haiti, that boil on the Western Hemisphere's posterior which no plaster can ever cure. In the 18th century, Haiti was so rich, thanks to the sugar trade, that it alone provided two-thirds of the value of France's overseas commerce. Today, Haiti is so poor that the average American dog probably lives better than the average Haitian.

But I forget: just ten years ago, we solved all of Haiti's problems. Applying the neo-cons' prescription for the whole world, we sent in thousands of American troops, overthrew the "undemocratic" Haitian government and installed Haiti's Mr. Chalabi, Monsieur Aristide – the same savior who just departed, with Washington's encouragement, to the universal anthem of the Third World's elite, "I'm Leavin' on a Jet Plane." For some incomprehensible reason, democracy backed by American bayonets failed to turn Haiti into Switzerland. It's probably because we forgot to teach them how to make cuckoo clocks and put holes in cheese.

Haiti is in fact a fair test of the neo-cons' thesis, a thesis we are now putting to further trials in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their core argument is that history and culture simply don't matter. Everyone in the world wants American-style "democratic capitalism," and everyone is also capable of it. To think otherwise is to commit the sin of "historicism."

The argument is absurd on the face of it. History and culture don't matter? Not only do the failed cultures and disastrous histories of most of the world argue the contrary, so does our own history and culture. Democratic capitalism first developed in one place, England, over an historical course that goes back almost a thousand years, to the Magna Carta. America was born as an independent country to guarantee the rights of Englishmen. If England had possessed the culture of, say Mongolia, can anyone with the slightest grasp on reality think we would be what we are today?

While the neo-cons' thesis says nothing about reality, it says a great deal about the neo-cons themselves. First, it tells us that they are ideologues. All ideologies posit that certain things must be true, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. That evidence is to be suppressed, along with the people who insist on pointing to it. Sadly, the neo-cons have been able to do exactly that within the Bush Administration, and the mess in Iraq is the price.

Second, it reveals the nature of the neo-con ideology, which has nothing whatsoever to do with conservatism (as Russell Kirk wrote, conservatism is the negation of ideology). The neo-cons in fact are Jacobins, les ultras of the French Revolution who also tried to export "human rights" (which are very different from the concrete, specific rights of Englishmen) on bayonets. Then, the effort eventually united all of Europe against France. Today, it is uniting the rest of the world against America.

Finally it reveals the neo-cons as fools, lightweights who can dismiss history and culture because they know nothing of history or culture. The first generation of neo-cons were serious intellectuals, Trotskyites but serious Trotskyites. The generation now in power in Washington is made up of poseurs who happen to have the infighting skills of the Sopranos. If you don't believe me, look at Mr. Wolfowitz's book. Or, more precisely, look for Mr. Wolfowitz's book (hint: he never wrote one).

Perhaps it was America's turn to have its foreign policy captured by a gang of ignorant and reckless adventurers. It has happened to others: Russia before the Russo-Japanese War, Japan in the 1930's. The results are seldom happy.

Before we get ourselves into any more neo-con led follies, we should apply their thesis to a simple test: send them to Haiti and see if they can make a go of it, after the U.S. Marines pull out. If they can, I'll put my money in a Haitian bank.

Washington Post glorifies US military “ruthlessness” in Iraq
By James Cogan

A disturbing article by Washington Post journalist Steve Fainaru, published on April 13, serves to both justify and promote a colonial and homicidal mentality among American troops fighting in Iraq.

The piece, headlined “In Mosul, a Battle ‘Beyond Ruthless’,” dwells on the exploits of Sergeant First Class Domingo Ruiz, a 39-year-old US soldier who grew up in the ghettos of Brooklyn and Puerto Rico. Ruiz is part of the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, a unit equipped with the Army’s new Stryker wheeled assault vehicle and currently on deployment in the volatile Iraqi city of Mosul.

In November, following the US assault on Fallujah, insurgents seized control of much of Mosul. The majority of the Iraqi police deserted. American troops were rushed to the area to suppress the Iraqi resistance fighters, who appear to operate with broad popular support from the large Sunni Muslim population in Mosul. Over the past several months, a bloody counter-insurgency operation has been underway to restore occupation control.

Soldiers told the Post that no-one was more “ruthlessly proficient at fighting the insurgents than Ruiz”. The image conveyed in the article, however, is that of an ignorant, brutalised man, whose personality matches his unit’s emblem—a “leering skull in a green beret, blood dripping from its mouth”.

Fainaru began by regaling his readers with an account of how Ruiz’s platoon ambushed a group of suspected Iraqi guerillas on March 12, as they were allegedly moving weapons from one car to another. A US sniper, on Ruiz’s order, blew apart an Iraqi man’s head with a single shot. The platoon then opened fire as the other Iraqis attempted to flee. The American troops gave the men no opportunity to surrender.

“After the ambush,” Fainaru reported, “the Americans scooped up a piece of skull and took it back to their base as evidence of the successful mission”.

According to the Post, “Ruiz said the decision to pick up the skull fragment and take it back to the base was a ‘sarcastic’ gesture to confirm the kill to the battalion”. His company commander endorsed this justification of a depraved act, denying that it amounted to taking a body part as a “trophy”, which is illegal under both US military law and international law.

Ruiz, his 23-year-old platoon commander Lieutenant Colin Keating declared, “plays by the rules of Iraq, not by the rules that are written by some staff guy who’s never been on the ground”. Post readers were reassured that the sergeant had “never crossed the line,” presumably a reference to committing outright war crimes, “but he’ll go right up to it time and time again”.

Ruiz told the Post: “It’s important for my soldiers to know that we’re not going to hesitate to annihilate the enemy. A bullet coming toward you means that they want to kill you. What are you supposed to do, come back with flowers? But believe or not, you have people here that want to give them, you know, a little bag of candy.”

The actions of Ruiz that are highlighted by the article, however, do not involve fighting an enemy that is firing bullets toward either him or his unit. They involve the brutal intimidation of Iraqi civilians in order to suppress popular opposition to the US occupation.

Conduct attributed to the sergeant by the Washington Post included:

* Physically intimidating a principal and threatening to close down a school where he had “heard” insurgents were meeting at night.

* Threatening to post a sign out the front of a man’s store labelling him a supporter of terrorism—and thereby encouraging violence against him—on the grounds that Ruiz “believed” he was aiding the resistance.

The fighting in Iraq, Ruiz explains in the article, reminded him of his days as a teenage member of the Coney Island Cobras, a Brooklyn gang, when he had taken part in “turf battles” using “whatever you had in your pocket”. In other words, the mentality with which he is conducting himself is that of a street thug.

The article does not state on whose authority Ruiz was intimidating and threatening Iraqi civilians. Ruiz is, after all, only a sergeant. The article leaves the impression, however, that he operates with the support of senior officers and enjoys the admiration of other American soldiers. The Post states he is “renowned among US troops in Mosul”.

Fainaru recounted that a platoon commander was transferred “just 48 hours after he tangled with Ruiz”. Did the officer disagree with the sergeant’s methods? The article does not say. It simply cites Ruiz’s ultimatum to Lieutenant Keating who took command of the platoon on February 6: “Just let me fight my war.”

The obvious question is why are the Washington Post and the US military—which would have vetted the contents of the article—glorifying this man? The Post, a media representative of decaying American liberalism, has been at the forefront of attempting to justify the invasion of Iraq on the grounds it will bring democracy. Two years into the occupation, it is trying to create a hero out of an individual who views the basic rights of ordinary Iraqis as an obstacle to winning “his” war.

The fact that Ruiz’s conduct is looked upon with approval testifies to the extent to which the US occupation is bound up with the systematic repression of the population. In the course of the military campaign to bring Iraq under control, the lives, well-being and rights of the Iraqi people are treated with utter indifference. They are being killed, bullied or dragged away to concentration camps by the likes of Ruiz in order to terrorise them into submission.

Such methods flow from the real motives of the war. The conquest of Iraq was carried out for the interests of the American ruling elite, who aspire to plunder the country’s energy resources and use it as a base to dominate the rest of the Middle East. Such ambitions inevitably generate determined opposition from Iraqis that can only be dealt with through brute force.

Numerous articles have appeared in the press—some in the Post—citing disillusioned and angry comments by young marines and soldiers at the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq was invaded to stop “weapons of mass destruction”, to prevent “terrorism” or to bring “liberation”. While they may not comprehend everything, many US troops understand that they and the American people were deceived. Over 1,500 Americans are dead and more than 10,000 have been wounded for these lies.

The American political establishment, however, is determined that the US cannot “cut and run”. Having invaded Iraq, the country must be subdued and a pliant American client state created, regardless of how many more Iraqi and American lives it costs. Newspapers such as the Washington Post and New York Times have consistently used their pages to propagandise for the continuation of the occupation. The war is presented as an accomplished fact that cannot be changed.

The coverage of Ruiz is a particularly insidious aspect of this propaganda. It is to promote the conception, both among the military and the American people, that, whatever their attitude toward the war, it now must be won by whatever means. The ongoing resistance in Iraq, according to the logic of Sergeant Ruiz and the Washington Post, is because US troops are not fighting “their war” with the necessary degree of ruthlessness, or worse, are being prevented from doing so by commanders who don’t understand the “reality” of the conflict.

On October 10, 2004, Fainaru wrote another article for the Post headlined “For Marines, a Frustrating Fight”. Statements attributed to US marines in the piece included:

“It seems as if they [US commanders] place more value on obeying the letter of the law and sacrificing our lives than following the spirit of the law and getting the job done.”

“They [the Iraqi fighters] know our limits, but they have no limits. We can’t compete with that.”

“We feel they [US commanders] care more about Iraqi civilians than they do American soldiers.”

A month later in Fallujah, a US marine casually executed an unarmed and wounded prisoner in front of a television camera. American forces were accused of the indiscriminate bombardment of mosques and houses, of murdering civilians searching for water or attempting to escape the city and of bombing clinics to prevent Iraqi fighters receiving medical treatment. Much of the city was left in rubble.



This is the NeoCon mentality of those in charge of our Military and the "COMMANDER AND THIEF - THE SHRUB"!

Do they get the blame for this mentality?

He_l no, they get their trinketts and promotions while the Cannon Fodder EM take the blame for their actions!

Hang Tough~

As you already know, I'm totally against Bush policies and the neconons.... nothing has changed there. We all have paid our rent and here we are to speak freely for what we feel and stand for.. 'our' opinons, Even you avatar marine... as long as I'm allowed to return fire based on how you present yourself to me, I will always return equal fire to what you bring... until I become suppressed by higher powers in here. It's known to happen.

So to answer your other question. Why is it that the US and it's few special allies can have a chit load of (nuke) bombs and others are not allowed avatar marine? Who invades others the most and does more damage to others? Is it you like it when you are able to contain ppl and fire on them when they are defensless? You find it wrong for other countries to try to defend themselves among countries who invade or war with them or their neighbors? What's a fair fight for others avatar marine? You really expect other countries to 'trust' BushForce and sit idle while threats of further war spreads after seeing 1st hand the actions by BushForce as it invades other countries as it has in the past? Never mind all the innocents that are also hurt or killed for such selfish profiting actions, but look at all who are killed and the total destruction. Is this worth $billions to trillions of taxpayers money while many Americans are suffering from the lack of affording what they need when only 5 years ago, they could afford most of these things? Neocons and it's military want only one thing avatar marine. To take over what other's have and destroy everything in it's path that generates profits for their own kind in which, also in such actions controls the minds of the American sheeple via fear whcih is always the bi-product of war. That's Neocon action and true dissent is what blocks such an evil force.

Before you spew off the deep end about American Patriotism, avatar marine, let me again, set the record. I'm a pissed off American who stands for what this country once represented itself to be. I am for this country's military that defends this country against 'defind' attackers and not for offensive military actions for neocon profits. I support the safety of military troops. It also happens to be that not all troops are of like minds in how I see things about the BushCons. Some, like you, support the Bush policies and actually believe in this moronic fiasco in Iraq. Just as they will believe in more moronic actions in Iran and other countries that falls under US aggression. The only thing you types can claim now is that while new enemies are forming, along with the recent enemies to the US coaliton, the bushconic mentalities have created a scenario where this country will have to defend itself from attacks, since the Neocons started it and others are retaliating because of the Neocon's actions. So, just as radical Republicans and Neocons are slick with faking out it's sheeple following by creating smoke screens to make it all 'appear' as if we are a nation being attacked or threated, this is what talking points and trickery you Neocons use in everyday jabber in public, the media, and inside forums. You may fool approx 60% of forum life by it, but not all. I'm here to defend what our Constitution once was all about and resist the likes of the Patriot Act that only reflects old Nazi Germany. This Republican Party is nothing but Facism along with it's Facist Neocons. In my own opinion, it's not what America based it's original principles on and I sure the hell am not giving into the Neocon action what so ever! Suppression and mind control is what the Neocons work so hard at.

This is a long read but well defines the neocon movement in our country that also involves our military.

http://list.haifa.ac.il/pipermail/alef/200...ril/002868.html

Published on Friday, April 22, 2005 by TomDispatch.com
New Boys in Town
by Andrew J. Bacevich

In our own time -- and especially since the ascendancy of George W. Bush to the presidency -- "neoconservative" has become a term of opprobrium, frequently accompanied by ad hominem attacks and charges of arrogance and hubris. But the heat generated by the term also stands as a backhanded tribute, an acknowledgment that the neoconservative impact has been substantial. It is today too soon to offer a comprehensive assessment of that impact. The discussion of neoconservatism offered here has a more modest objective, namely, to suggest that one aspect of the neoconservative legacy has been to foster the intellectual climate necessary for the emergence of the new American militarism.
As a practical matter, the task of reinventing neoconservatism for a post-Communist world -- and of spelling out an "imperial self-definition" of American purpose -- fell to a new generation. To promote that effort, leading members of that new generation created their own institutions.

The passing of the baton occurred in 1995. That year, Norman Podhoretz stepped down as editor of Commentary. That same year, William Kristol founded a new journal, the Weekly Standard, which in short order established itself as the flagship publication of second-generation neoconservatives. Although keeping faith with neoconservative principles that Commentary had staked out over the previous two decades -- and for a time even employing Norman's son John Podhoretz in a senior editorial position -- the Standard was from the outset an altogether different publication. From its founding, Commentary had been published by the American Jewish Committee, an august and distinctly nonpartisan entity. The Weekly Standard relied for its existence on the largesse of Rupert Murdoch, the notorious media mogul. Unlike Commentary, which had self-consciously catered to an intellectual elite, the Standard -- printed on glossy paper, replete with cartoons, caricatures, and political gossip -- had a palpably less lofty look and feel. It was by design smart rather than stuffy. Whereas Commentary had evolved into a self-consciously right-wing version of the self-consciously progressive Dissent, the Standard came into existence as a neoconservative counterpart to the neoliberal New Republic. Throughout Norman Podhoretz's long editorial reign, Commentary had remained an urbane and sophisticated journal of ideas, aspiring to shape the terms of political debate even as it remained above the muck and mire of politics as such. Beginning with volume 1, number 1, the editors of the Standard did not disguise the fact that they sought to have a direct and immediate impact on policy; not ideas as such but political agitation defined the purpose of this new enterprise.

Better than anything else, location told the tale. Commentary's editorial offices were on Manhattan's East Side; for first-generation neoconservatives, the East River on one side and the Hudson on the other defined the universe. In contrast, the Standard set up shop just a few blocks from the White House; for William Kristol and his compatriots, the perimeter of the Washington Beltway delineated the world that mattered.

The Power of Positive Thinking

What emerged as the hallmarks of this post–Cold War variant of neoconservatism? Unlike their elders, second-generation neoconservatives did not define themselves in opposition -- to Communism, to the New Left, or to the sixties. Theirs was no longer an "ideology of anti-ideology." Rather, they were themselves advocates of a positive ideological agenda, a theology that brought fully into view the radical implications -- in John Judis's formulation, the "inverted Trotskyism" -- embedded within the neoconservative insurgency from the outset.

Fearing the implications certain to flow from an America that was weak or tormented by self-doubt, the elder statesmen of the neoconservative movement had labored to restore to the idea of American power the legitimacy that it had possessed prior to the sixties. With American power now fully refurbished -- and seemingly vindicated by the outcome of the Cold War -- the second generation went a step further, promulgating the notion that the moment was now ripe for the United States to use that power -- especially military power -- to achieve the final triumph of American ideals. In this sense, the neoconservatives who gravitated to the Weekly Standard showed themselves to be the most perceptive of all of Woodrow Wilson's disciples. For the real Wilson (in contrast to either the idealized or the demonized Wilson) had also seen military power as an instrument for transforming the international system and cementing American primacy.

Efforts to promote "a neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military supremacy and moral confidence" found expression in five convictions that together form the foundation of second-generation neoconservative thinking about American statecraft.

First was the certainty that American global dominion is, in fact, benign and that other nations necessarily see it as such. Thus, according to Charles Krauthammer, a frequent contributor to the Weekly Standard, "we are not just any hegemon. We run a uniquely benign imperium. This is not mere self-congratulation; it is a fact manifest in the way others welcome our power."

However much they might grumble, the baby-boomer neocons believed, other nations actually yearned for the United States to lead and, indeed, to sustain its position as sole superpower, seeing American dominance as both compatible with their own interests and preferable to any remotely plausible alternative. Despite "all bleating about hegemony, no nation really wants genuine multipolarity," Robert Kagan observed in this regard. "Not only do countries such as France and Russia shy away from the expense of creating and preserving a multipolar world; they rightly fear the geopolitical consequences of destroying American hegemony." According to Kagan, the cold hard reality of U.S. supremacy was sure to have "a claming effect on the international enviroment, inducing other powers to focus their energies and resources elsewhere." Joshua Muravchik concurred; rather than eliciting resistance, American dominance could be counted on to "have a soothing effect on the rest of the world." With the passing of the Cold War, wrote Charles Krauthammer, "an ideologically pacified North seeks security and order by aligning its foreign policy behind that of the United States
[This] is the shape of things to come."

Failure on the part of the United States to sustain its imperium would inevitably result in global disorder, bloody, bitter, and protracted: this emerged as the second conviction animating neoconservatives after the Cold War. As a result, proposals for organizing the world around anything other than American power elicited derision for being woolly-headed and fatuous. Nothing, therefore, could be allowed to inhibit the United States in the use of that power.

On this point no one was more emphatic than Krauthammer. "Collective security is a mirage," he wrote. For its part, "the international community is a fiction." "‘The allies' is a smaller version of ‘the international community'--and equally fictional." "The United Nations is guarantor of nothing. Except in a formal sense, it can hardly be said to exist." As a result, "when serious threats arise to American national interests
unilateralism is the only alternative to retreat."

Or more extreme still, "The alternative to unipolarity is chaos." For Krauthammer the incontrovertible fact of unipolarity demanded that the United States face up to its obligations, "unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them." The point was one to which younger neoconservatives returned time and again. For Kristol and Robert Kagan, the choice facing Americans was clear-cut. On the one hand loomed the prospect of "a decline in U.S. power, a rise in world chaos, and a dangerous twenty-first century"; on the other hand was the promise of safety, achieved through "a Reaganite reassertion of American power and moral leadership." There existed "no middle ground."

A Military Transformation of the International Order

The third conviction animating second-generation neoconservatives related to military power and its uses. In a nutshell, they concluded that nothing works like force. Europeans, wrote Robert Kagan, might imagine themselves "entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant's ‘Perpetual Peace.'" Americans of a neoconservative bent knew better. In their judgment, the United States remained "mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might." Employing that military might with sufficient wisdom and determination could bring within reach peace, prosperity, democracy, respect for human rights, and American global primacy extending to the end of time.

The operative principle was not to husband power but to put it to work -- to take a proactive approach. "Military strength alone will not avail," cautioned Kagan, "if we do not use it actively to maintain a world order which both supports and rests upon American hegemony." For neoconservatives like Kagan, the purpose of the Defense Department was no longer to defend the United States or to deter would-be aggressors but to transform the international order by transforming its constituent parts. Norman Podhoretz had opposed U.S. intervention in Vietnam "as a piece of arrogant stupidity" and had criticized in particular the liberal architects of the war for being "only too willing to tell other countries exactly how to organize their political and economic institutions." For the younger generation of neoconservatives, instructing others as to how to organize their countries -- employing coercion if need be -- was not evidence of arrogant stupidity; it was America's job.

By implication, neoconservatives were no longer inclined to employ force only after having exhausted all other alternatives. In the 1970s and 1980s, the proximate threat posed by the Soviet Union had obliged the United States to exercise a certain self-restraint. Now, with the absence of any counterweight to American power, the need for self-restraint fell away. Indeed, far from being a scourge for humankind, war itself -- even, or perhaps especially, preventive war -- became in neoconservative eyes an efficacious means to serve idealistic ends. The problem with Bill Clinton in the 1990s was not that he was reluctant to use force but that he was insufficiently bloody-minded. "In Haiti, in Somalia, and elsewhere" where the United States intervened, lamented Robert Kagan, "Clinton and his advisers had the stomach only to be halfway imperialists. When the heat was on, they tended to look for the exits." Such halfheartedness suggested a defective appreciation of what power could accomplish. Neoconservatives knew better. "Military conquest," enthused Muravchik, "has often proved to be an effective means of implanting democracy." Michael Ledeen went even further, declaring that "the best democracy program ever invented is the U.S. Army." "Peace in this world," Ledeen added, "only follows victory in war."

By their own lights, the neoconservatives of the 1990s did not qualify as warmongers, but once having gotten a whiff of gunpowder during the Persian Gulf War of 1990–91, they developed a hankering to repeat the experience. The neoconservative complaint about Operation Desert Storm was that President George H. W. Bush and his commanders had failed to press the attack. In their eyes, the war demonstrated that the U.S. military was a superb instrument wielded by excessively timid officers, of whom General Colin Powell was the ultimate embodiment. "One of the [Gulf] war's important lessons," wrote one neoconservative, "is that America's military leadership is far too cautious
Now the success of that campaign has had the effect of enhancing the prestige of our military leadership while doing little or nothing to change its underlying attitude to fighting. Thus today and tomorrow it may feel even less inhibited in opposing the use of force than it did before the Gulf war." Indeed, promoting the assertive use of American military power became central to the imperial self-definition devised by second-generation neoconservatives.

Using force to advance the prospects of peace and democracy implied that the United States ought to possess military power to spare. The fourth conviction animating second-generation neoconservatives was a commitment to sustaining and even enhancing American military supremacy. Recall that throughout the 1990s, even before Osama bin Laden declared his jihad against America, U.S. defense spending remained at Cold War levels despite the absence of the Cold War. Even so, neoconservatives assessed the Pentagon's budget as completely inadequate and pressed for more. Highly respected historians of a neoconservative persuasion even charged that the United States was repeating the folly of Great Britain in the period between the world wars: engaging in de facto unilateral disarmament. With the Cold War now history, it seemed, the world was becoming even more dangerous, and the United States therefore needed more military power than ever before. Whether or not a proximate threat existed, it was incumbent upon the Pentagon to maintain the capability "to intervene decisively in every critical region" of the world.

To alarmists, the prospect of conflict without end beckoned. Surveying the world, Frederick W. Kagan, brother of Robert, concluded in 1999 that "America must be able to fight Iraq and North Korea, and also be able to fight genocide in the Balkans and elsewhere without compromising its ability to fight two major regional conflicts. And it must be able to contemplate war with China or Russia some considerable (but not infinite) time from now." The peace that followed victory was to be a long time coming.

Dealing with the "Professional Pessimists"

The fifth and final conviction that imparted a distinctive twist to the views of second-generation neoconservatives was their hostility toward realism, whether manifesting itself as a deficit of ideals (as in the case of Henry Kissinger) or an excess of caution (as in the case of Colin Powell). As long as the Cold War had persisted, neoconservatives and realists had maintained an uneasy alliance, based on their common antipathy for the Soviet Union. But once the Cold War ended, so too did any basis for cooperation between the two groups. From the neoconservative perspective, realism constituted a problem. Realism was about defending national interests, not transforming the global order. Realists had a marked aversion to crusades and a marked respect for limits. In the neoconservative lexicon, the very notion of "limits" was anathema. To the extent that realists after the Cold War retained influence in foreign policy circles, they were likely to obstruct neoconservative ambitions. So second-generation neocons trained their gunsights on realism and shot to kill.

The problem with realists, complained Robert Kagan, was that they were "professional pessimists." In that regard there had always been "something about realism that runs directly counter to the fundamental principles of American society." The essential issue, according to Kagan, was this: "if the United States is founded on universal principles, how can Americans practice amoral indifference when those principles are under siege around the world? And if they do profess indifference, how can they manage to avoid the implication that their principles are not, in fact, universal?" To Kagan and other neoconservatives the answer was self-evident: indifference to the violation of American ideals abroad was not simply wrong; it was un-American. Worse, such indifference pointed inevitably down a slippery slope leading back toward the 1960s or even the 1930s. An authentically American foreign policy would reject amorality and pessimism; it would refuse altogether to accept the notion of limits or constraints.

As the 1990s unfolded, neoconservatives pressed their case for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity," emphasizing the use of armed force to promulgate American values and perpetuate American primacy. Most persistently, even obsessively, neoconservatives throughout the Clinton years lobbied for decisive U.S. action to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. From a neoconservative perspective, the Iraqi dictator's survival after Desert Storm exposed as nothing else the cynicism and shortsightedness of the realists who had dominated the administration of George H. W. Bush and who had prevented the American army from completing its proper mission -- pursuing the defeated Iraqi army all the way to Baghdad. Topping the agenda of the second-generation neoconservatives was a determination to correct that error, preferably by mobilizing America's armed might to destroy the Baathist regime. "Bombing Iraq Isn't Enough," declared the title of one representative op-ed published by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in January 1998. It was time for the gloves to come off, they argued, "and that means using air power and ground forces, and finishing the job left undone in 1991."

Neocons yearned to liberate Iraq, as an end in itself but also as a means to an eminently larger end. "A successful intervention in Iraq," wrote Kagan in February 1998, "would revolutionize the strategic situation in the Middle East, in ways both tangible and intangible, and all to the benefit of American interests." A march on Baghdad was certain to have a huge demonstration effect. It would put dictators around the world on notice either to mend their ways or share Saddam's fate. It would silence doubters who questioned America's ability to export its values. It would discredit skeptics who claimed to see lurking behind neoconservative schemes the temptations of empire, the dangers of militarism, and the prospect of exhaustion and overstretch.

Above all, forcibly overthrowing Saddam Hussein would affirm the irresistibility of American military might. As such, the armed liberation of Iraq would transform U.S. foreign policy; not preserving the status quo but promoting revolutionary change would thereafter define the main purpose of American statecraft. After all, wrote Michael Ledeen well before 9/11, stability was for "tired old Europeans and nervous Asians." The United States was "the most revolutionary force on earth," its "inescapable mission to fight for the spread of democracy." The operative word was fight. According to Ledeen, Mao was precisely correct: revolution sprang "from the barrel of a gun." The successful ouster of Saddam Hussein could open up whole new vistas of revolutionary opportunity.

The Neoconservatives Become the Establishment

What did all of this expenditure of intellectual energy actually yield? During the decade between the end of the Cold War and the onset of the global war on terror, the achievements of second-generation neoconservatives compare favorably with those of the anti-Communist liberals who in the immediate aftermath of World War II created the ideological foundation for what became a durable postwar foreign policy consensus. Through argument, organization, and agitation, leading liberal intellectuals of the 1940s such as the historian Arthur Schlesinger and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr imbued the muscular, implacably anti-Stalinist internationalism that they favored with the appearance of offering the only acceptable basis for U.S. foreign policy. To diverge from this "the vital center" of American politics, which they themselves defined and occupied, as Senator Robert Taft on the right and former vice president Henry Wallace on the left proposed to do, became almost by definition perverse.

When deciding how to respond to growing Communist influence in Western Europe or to the invasion of South Korea, President Harry S. Truman did not necessarily pause to consult the latest scribblings of Schlesinger or Niebuhr. The influence of intellectuals on policy is seldom that straightforward. Indirectly, however, these Cold War liberals helped to lend respectability to certain propositions that in the 1930s might have seemed outlandish -- for example, the decision to permanently station U.S. troops in Europe and to create the apparatus of the national security state. In short, they fostered a climate congenial to Truman's pursuit of certain hard-line anti-Communist policies and increased the political risks faced by those inclined to question such policies.

During the 1990s, the intellectual offspring of Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz repeated this trick. By the end of that decade, neoconservatives were no longer insurgents; they had transformed themselves into establishment figures. Their views entered the mainstream of public discourse and became less controversial. Through house organs like the Standard, in essays published by influential magazines such as Foreign Affairs, through regular appearances on TV talk shows and at conferences sponsored by the fellow-traveling American Enterprise Institute, and via the agitprop of the Project for the New American Century, they warned of the ever-present dangers of isolationism and appeasement, called for ever more munificent levels of defense spending, and advocated stern measures to isolate, punish, or overthrow ne'er-do-wells around the world.

As a mark of the growing respectability of such views, each of the three leading general-interest daily newspapers in the United States had at least one neocon offering regular foreign policy commentary -- Max Boot writing for the Los Angeles Times,, David Brooks for the New York Times, and both Charles Krauthammer and Robert Kagan for the Washington Post. Neoconservative views also dominated the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. As a direct consequence of this determined rabble-rousing, neocon views about the efficacy of American military power and the legitimacy of its use gained wide currency. On issues ranging from ethnic cleansing in Bosnia to the "rise" of China to the proper response to terror, neoconservatives recast the public policy debate about the obligations imposed upon and prerogatives to be claimed by the sole superpower. They kept the focus on the issues that they believed mattered most: an America that was strong, engaged, and even pugnacious.

Ideas that even a decade earlier might have seemed reckless or preposterous now came to seem perfectly reasonable. A good example was the issue of regime change in Iraq. On January 26, 1998, William Kristol and Robert Kagan along with more than a dozen other neoconservative luminaries sent a public letter to President Bill Clinton denouncing the policy of containing Iraq as a failure and calling for the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein. To persist in the existing "course of weakness and drift," the signatories warned ominously, was to "put our interests and our future at risk." Nine months later, Clinton duly signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, passed by large majorities in both houses of Congress. That legislation declared that it had now become the policy of the United States government to "remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein," with legislators authorizing the expenditure of $99 million for that purpose. Clinton showed little enthusiasm for actually implementing the measure, and most of the money remained unspent. But neoconservative efforts had done much to create a climate in which it had become impolitic to suggest aloud that publicly declaring the intent to overthrow regimes not to the liking of the United States might be ill-advised. At the end of the 1940s, thanks to the Cold War liberals, no politician with the slightest interest in self-preservation was going to risk even the appearance of being soft on the Soviet Union. At the end of the 1990s, thanks to the neoconservatives, no politician was going to take the chance of being tagged with being soft on Saddam.

In fact, the grand vision entertained by second-generation neoconservatives demanded that the United States shatter the status quo. New conditions, they argued, absolved Americans from any further requirement to adhere to the norms that had defined the postwar international order. Osama bin Laden and the events of 9/11 provided the tailor-made opportunity to break free of the fetters restricting the exercise of American power.

Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University. A graduate of West Point and a Vietnam veteran, he has a doctorate in history from Princeton and was a Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He is the author of several books, including the just published The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War.

© 2005 Andrew J. Bacevich

Let's see if I can go through your ramblings and identify what you state to be the world's problems.

I guess you first issue is if the USA can have Nuclear weapons then why can't everyone? Is that the correct position you state? This is just my opinion so don't take it as government policy. I think they don't want nuclear weapons to fall into the same availability and marketability as an AK-47 because nuclear weapons can do infinitely more damage than than an AK-47. Are we still on the same page or did I lose you? I trust the USA to hold nuclear weapons because they have a 60 year history of having them and not using them but twice and that was to end a war. If we in the military were as bad boys as you seem to think we are then Teheran would be a big hole that glows in the dark right now. Little known but about four or five years back the world almost witnessed a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. I don't want anymore countries to have the ability to snuff at the lives of hundreds of thousands of people at the snap of a finger than we got already.

Now it seems the next issue you have is Neocons trying to control people by making them afraid. Is that a correct assumption? Well, I think we have good reason to be afraid when there are some folks trying to kill us. I think we were complacent for too long. And I don't think only neocons use fear as a tool alone; it seems to me I remember you as well as others posting a good number of articles about the US military must return to drafting people to get the ranks filled. Tell me what that was about if it wasn't to try to influence peoples opinions through fear?

The patriot act seems to be an issue? The USA has had worst laws in it's 229 year old history than the patriot act and survived. Matter of fact during the Civil War civil liberties were trampled upon to a degree no one would have thought they could ever survive. People wanting to make the government work for the people got them back and that's the same thing that will save us from the patriot act.

I state clearly that the Neocons or BushCons are the aggressors and just as I stated, I can not blame anybody else arming themselves against us when we are attacking them. Hell man, since Korea we've invaded other countries like it's our favorit past time, so what do you expect? You honestly believe that no one else has a right to arm themselves? The only time that we were able to control nuclear weapons was after the Vietnam lie war as we began to reduce (or said we did) our nuclear buildup along with Russia backing off their buildup. Nukes were pretty much in check for a decade or so until the Neocons cranked the action up again in the Middle East. The problem is US! No need to go any further than that because I understand the problem and you have your patriot head up the BushCon's azz. It's simple as that.

Hey, if you don't like the answers, shove off! Move on. Squat in other threads. Like I said, you and I don't agree... end of discussion. So hump it to other threads.

For some who are 'blind' to what Neocons and it's mentality is all about, this is a fair read about it.


http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...03/000tzmlw.asp

The Neoconservative Persuasion
From the August 25, 2003 issue: What it was, and what it is.
by Irving Kristol
08/25/2003, Volume 008, Issue 47

Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the "American grain." It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic. Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked. Of course, those worthies are in no way overlooked by a large, probably the largest, segment of the Republican party, with the result that most Republican politicians know nothing and could not care less about neoconservatism. Nevertheless, they cannot be blind to the fact that neoconservative policies, reaching out beyond the traditional political and financial base, have helped make the very idea of political conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters. Nor has it passed official notice that it is the neoconservative public policies, not the traditional Republican ones, that result in popular Republican presidencies.

One of these policies, most visible and controversial, is cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth. This policy was not invented by neocons, and it was not the particularities of tax cuts that interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth. Neocons are familiar with intellectual history and aware that it is only in the last two centuries that democracy has become a respectable option among political thinkers. In earlier times, democracy meant an inherently turbulent political regime, with the "have-nots" and the "haves" engaged in a perpetual and utterly destructive class struggle. It was only the prospect of economic growth in which everyone prospered, if not equally or simultaneously, that gave modern democracies their legitimacy and durability.

The cost of this emphasis on economic growth has been an attitude toward public finance that is far less risk averse than is the case among more traditional conservatives. Neocons would prefer not to have large budget deficits, but it is in the nature of democracy--because it seems to be in the nature of human nature--that political demagogy will frequently result in economic recklessness, so that one sometimes must shoulder budgetary deficits as the cost (temporary, one hopes) of pursuing economic growth. It is a basic assumption of neoconservatism that, as a consequence of the spread of affluence among all classes, a property-owning and tax-paying population will, in time, become less vulnerable to egalitarian illusions and demagogic appeals and more sensible about the fundamentals of economic reckoning.

Behind all this is a fact: the incredible military superiority of the United States vis-à-vis the nations of the rest of the world, in any imaginable combination. This superiority was planned by no one, and even today there are many Americans who are in denial. To a large extent, it all happened as a result of our bad luck. During the 50 years after World War II, while Europe was at peace and the Soviet Union largely relied on surrogates to do its fighting, the United States was involved in a whole series of wars: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo conflict, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War. The result was that our military spending expanded more or less in line with our economic growth, while Europe's democracies cut back their military spending in favor of social welfare programs. The Soviet Union spent profusely but wastefully, so that its military collapsed along with its economy.

Neocons and it's idealogoy as viewed by Wouk, pre WWII and post WWII during the 50s, 70s, and 80s right up to it's existing mind powering idealogoy of today. Projections about the world is all in with how it's presented to our minds.... and who knows for sure, how true our hostory is... or isn't. These last 4 years under BushCon rule has made that perfectly clear to me in just these 4 short years in comparrison to the last 50- 100years. Military might reenforces what the Neocon stratigests paints.... get the picture?

The article below reflects views of Herman Wouk, and not entirely my own views, but I certainly leave room for thought with some of his observations.



http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue39/brodkin39.htm

The First Neoconservative

Herman Wouk, the Americanization of the Holocaust, and the Rise of Neoconservatism
Joel Brodkin


IN THE 1950S, following postwar red scares and suburbanization, a conservative mood predominated in American society. Several social analysts described both the oppressive atmosphere and conformity that pervaded the social institutions and everyday life of America at the time. Among them were David Reisman (The Lonely Crowd, 1950), William H. Whyte (The Organization Man, 1957), and Harvey Swados (On The Line, 1957).

WOUK'S CLAIM THAT THE U.S. military saved world Jewry is false, as the history of World War II indicates. Auschwitz and most of the death camps where Jews were exterminated were located in Eastern Europe, and the survivors were liberated by the Red Army. In fact, 70 percent to 80 percent of all German casualties in World War II were inflicted by the Soviet Union. In North Africa, the first area to be liberated by American forces, the local fascists were reinstated in power. Anti-Semitic laws were kept in place at the behest of Robert Murphy, Eisenhower's chief political advisor. The U.S. preferred to deal with fascist elements led by Admiral Darlan. This group merely wished to change sides as the balance of power in the global conflict began to shift. Four hundred members of the anti-fascist resistance (80 percent of whom were Jewish) who had occupied the key sectors of Algiers to facilitate the Allied landings were betrayed and had to resume a clandestine existence. Only five months after the landings were Jewish and other anti-fascist prisoners freed.7

U.S. government policies also aided Nazis and fascists in the postwar years. Following World War II, thousands of German and Eastern European members of the S.S. and the Gestapo were brought to the U.S. by the military. Among these "immigrants" were people involved in carrying out Hitler's Final Solution. At the time Wouk was writing Caine there was some awareness within the American Jewish community of this fact.9 The influx of Nazis and Nazi collaborators, combined with an initial limitation on immigration to the U.S. by survivors of the Holocaust, prompted Rabbi Stephen Wise to say in the late 1940s, "As long as we reward former servants of Hitler while leaving his victims in DP camps, we cannot even pretend we are making any real effort to achieve the aims we fought for."10

The history of American corporate and governmental collaboration with fascists and Nazis before, during and after World War II -- although the subject of repeated Congressional investigations in the 1930s and 1940s -- has been ignored and concealed in the years since then. Its acknowledgment would interfere with the portrayal of American power as righteous.

IN THE MID 1970S, to intensify the Cold War, the neocons and others founded the Committee on the Present Danger II (CPD). On its Board of Directors were such neocon intellectuals as Nathan Glazer, Seymour Martin Lipset, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Midge Dector. Richard Perle was a member and would become an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration. Ronald Reagan, too, was a member.

The CPD had been created in 1976 during the Nixon-Ford detente with the Soviet Union. It propagated the false view that the U.S. was militarily inferior to the Soviet Union. This became part of Reagan's electoral program in 1980 and led to massive arms spending once he entered the White House. Its premise, like Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, was a fraud, propagated by some of the same people.

Neoconservative ideology took on a second institutional form. In 1979, the right-wing Likud government of Menachem Begin created the Jonathan Institute. Meetings held in 1979 and 1984 were attended by such neocons as Daniel Moynihan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Dector, the Senator from Boeing, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, George H.W. Bush, as well as Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin and high-ranking intelligence officials of both states. The message conveyed was that the Palestinian struggle had to be understood in terms of Palestinians being practitioners of terror and Soviet surrogates; nothing more. The continuing removal of the indigenous Palestinian population was not an issue and could proceed apace.18

WOUK WAS A PROPHET in 1951 when The Caine Mutiny was published, for anticipating a converging of interests between the American empire, the State of Israel, and organized American Jewry.

However, not all consented to this shortsighted definition of self-interest. In Israel over 500 reservists, soldiers and officers, refused occupation duty in the West Bank and Gaza since performing such service often entailed the commission of war crimes. In South Africa, Jewish heroes of South Africa's struggle for liberation, Ronnie Kasrils and Max Ozinsky along with hundreds of others, signed a Not in My Name petition protesting the occupation and comparing it to South Africa's apartheid. Some worried about the danger the alliance posed, not least of all to Jews.

If people don't like your answers, or the answers you agree with, they can challenge them too! No one has to "hump it" to anywhere if they don't want to.

Everyone on this forum should be clear on this point.

I agree, as long as there's no 'special' editing (as in the past) that favors some and not the others. That's my only point Arne, if we are allowed to lock horns as adults usually do, then as always, I welcome anyone with their opinons as they should mine.

By the way... was complementing avatar marine with the 'hump it' a term used by grunts... and he just stated recently how he's pretty much the king of humpers in his 30 yr military service. (walked a like a million or zillion miles, something to that nature)

By the way, as I have stated many times when some folks here don't like a particular thread..... common sense would have it that they'd simply move on, as I do when I don't find some threads worth commenting in. So as some may complain, I let them know that they should simply overlook the thread and move on. I mean how else can we make it any clearer than that to some who like to remain in one's thread and complain or flame? The most common sense thing to do would be for one to move on and vist other 'happier' threads to their liking. I'm being curtious letting some know that they should move on when they do seem unhappy over the subject matter being discussed in a particular thread. I think you may agree that helping others to better understand that is actually a kind gesture. Hey, I'm just an ole vet that doesn't chatter in the same ways that you all do.

Arneoker, agree with what you post above to the max!

No one has to hump jack squat, and "EVERYONE" shall be given the right to challenge a post if they do not agree without special protection, or favoritism!

Lets hope this can be a Common Practice of Common Ground Common Sense, it would certainly be a breath of clean - unpolluted air--trust me on that!

Hang Tough~

Illusions of Iraq Echo Vietnam

by Gordon Adams
Published on Tuesday, July 19, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun

While conditions in Iraq may seem different from Vietnam, the differences are misleading.

More important, how the United States has interpreted these differences and created an illusion about Iraq is critical. The striking similarities between the two are in Washington policy-making, not in Iraq itself. Until the hubris and illusion in U.S. policy are gone, Iraq will remain a deepening quagmire.

U.S. policy-makers have seriously misinterpreted the domestic history, politics and economics of Iraq, making the differences with Vietnam seem real. Both countries share the experience of Western colonialism. In Vietnam, regardless of communist ideology, the struggle against the United States resonated as one of national liberation against the foreign oppressors.

U.S. policy-makers assumed Iraq was different: The Sunni insurgents are not "national liberators" but seek to return the Baathists to power, with the support of outside "terrorists" for whom Iraq is a happy hunting ground for American targets.

There is surely some truth here, but a good deal of illusion. The illusion was to imagine that U.S. forces would be welcomed as liberators and defenders of democracy, not occupiers. This mistaken calculus has cost the United States dearly. Our forces are seen as occupiers, much like the British before them, and the Iraqis want us to leave. The failure to understand this similarity to Vietnam is dangerous for U.S. forces and policy. The United States becomes less popular the longer it stays.

Another similarity involves corruption and public support for governance. The South Vietnamese government was riddled with corruption and had little support. The mistake in Iraq was to assume that corruption might disappear with Saddam Hussein and the new democracy would be popular. While the full story of corruption remains untold, the government of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was suspect in many parts of Iraq, and many see corruption continuing today. U.S. policy-makers risk assuming that the new government will have greater legitimacy than it is likely to have.

Another illusion derives from the assumption that Iraq is better prepared for governance and economic growth than was Vietnam, which was saddled with an ineffective bureaucracy and a backward agricultural economy. Iraq, by contrast, was thought to have a functioning civil service and security force and oil revenues that could fund the government and generate rapid economic growth, ensuring the popularity of the new democratic regime.

This illusion has had severe consequences for U.S. policy. The civil service functioned as an employment opportunity for Iraqis, not a tool of effective governance. The security bureaucracy simply melted away, and ministries were inept.

Oil revenues sustained handouts to two-thirds of the Iraqi population for years. Funds were drained through corruption, and entrepreneurship was nonexistent. The hopes that the United States pinned on "reconstruction and development" assistance plus oil revenues were doomed to near-term failure. The resulting ineffective governance and empty promises of economic recovery have led to widespread disillusionment about U.S. policies.

The U.S. government assumed that Iraq was not Vietnam, that we would be welcomed as liberators, that the insurgency would have no popular base, that corruption would disappear, that the bureaucracy could provide security and governance quickly, allowing a rapid reduction in the U.S. presence - that there was no need for post-invasion planning for governance and assistance.

The willful blindness of U.S. policy-makers with respect to Iraq is painfully familiar to those who experienced Vietnam. Sen. J. William Fulbright called it the "arrogance of power." The policies and reactions of senior officials are frighteningly similar to Vietnam. They have seen what they want to see and assumed they stood above history.

As reality has diverged from illusion, officials have refused to admit error, made up phrases to cover mistakes, poured more funds and troops into the effort, determined to prove the illusion can be forced into reality. And they turn on the critics as people who would coddle the enemy. The comparison with Vietnam is increasingly apt.

The most tragic comparison is becoming more real: In for a dime, in for a dollar. If the policy is not working, find a counterinsurgency strategy that will work. Even many policy critics huddle safely behind this illusion, calling for more U.S. troops and more effective policy implementation but not for real policy change.

Perhaps there is a quiet way tents can be folded, hubris can be buried and the United States can gradually disengage. It has not been defined, chilled as officials and critics are by the fear of the bloggers and the radio talk-show hosts. As in Vietnam, it is increasingly urgent to define that alternative in the long-term interests of American national security.

Gordon Adams, director of security policy studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, was senior White House budget official for national security in the Clinton administration.

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.as...RJ8OVF&b=913527

You understand things perfectly correctly.

No favoritism or special protection, no matter what the viewpoint, popular or unpopular.

As far as how someone wants to react to a post they particularly dislike, from whomever, I really don't think that any advice is needed. They can respond to it, ignore it, put posters they don't care for on their ignore list. I have seen many posts whose viewpoints have struck me in all sorts of negative ways, and I have made my own unadvised decisions on whether to engage or ignore. Sometimes I find it better to ignore, although I usually respond, if I have the time. Personally, I would not presume to give advice to another person on this matter, particularly someone who sharply disagrees with me. And Ghostgovt, that would be my point. As long as you keep within the rules, you have the right to post whatever opinion on the issues you have, no matter how unpopular, or how angry your views make someone else. And anyone else can choose to respond in any manner they choose, as long as they keep within the rules. You, perhaps others, may find their views enfuriating and/or tiresome, but par is for the course.

And I believe that is all that I need to say on this matter, at least in this thread!

There it is!! Glad you had the time to stop by and clarify this for us ordinary members.

Amen-- Like your sig there - "The right-wing hates our freedom." -- Agree top shelf with that sucker Arne --for sure!

Now if the Right Wing hates our freedom, How much you hate the Right Wing? (When you get the time - know your very busy)

Hang Tough~

I think what's going on her is the perception I can post anything I like and it stands untouched. I know we aren't suppose to talk about actions the moderators take but I will say Arne and Sandra edits me when appropriate, I sometimes get a little to passionate and say inappropriate things but after the fact usually appreciate to be de-assed.

Iraq War's Two Constants
By Robert Parry
August 13, 2005

The Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq War has had two constants – deception and wishful thinking – a dangerous mix of falsehoods used to justify the conflict and unrealistic expectations about success.

This pairing has brought the United States one of the most unnecessary military disasters in its history. Yet the Bush administration is sticking with the same tactics, more deceptions and more wishful thinking – from claims that the Iraq War has reduced terror threats worldwide to optimistic talk about upcoming troop withdrawals.

But a difference between now and earlier in the war is that the spin is growing more obvious as Americans catch on to the tricks that have led to the deaths of more than 1,850 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

It’s also become increasingly clear that the future of the Iraq War may rest on whether U.S. citizens can devise some creative way to challenge the administration’s course in Iraq and enforce some accountability on those responsible for the catastrophe.

Trapped

As the U.S. death toll in Iraq surges, America’s 138,000 soldiers find themselves trapped in a military dilemma with none of the available options likely to bring success. Training of poorly motivated Iraqi government troops has progressed slowly while the resilient Iraqi insurgents have grown only more lethal.

This military dilemma traces back to George W. Bush’s original decisions about launching the invasion in March 2003. The self-described “war president” checked the decision box on force levels that would require almost every wish to come true.

But the dream of a “cakewalk” didn’t materialize. U.S. troops weren’t showered with rose petals. Instead, a surprising number of Iraqis showed a readiness to fight, causing some U.S. military experts immediately to sense that the invasion had the potential for turning into a debacle. [For a real-time report on those early doubts, see Consortiumnews.com “Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down.”]

Bush got it wrong in two ways. He didn’t commit enough troops to win using the conventional tactics of overwhelming strength. But he sent in too many soldiers for effective special-forces operations, which rely on highly trained units blending in with indigenous troops and avoiding the appearance of an occupation army.

Since then, as the occupation has floundered, Bush has proved incapable of adapting to the military challenges. He has come up with few new ideas, except in the area of public relations where he has glossed over the battlefield difficulties and relied on a new round of emotional arguments to keep the American people in line.

Bush’s pro-war case, which once centered on false claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda, shifted to the assertion that Iraq had become the front line in the war on terror – even though it wasn’t before – and that any withdrawal now would embolden the enemy.

“Our troops are fighting these terrorists in Iraq so you will not have to face them here at home,” Bush explained in a radio address on June 18, 2005.

But Bush’s insistence that U.S. forces must fight “terrorists” in Iraq to prevent them from carrying out attacks in the United States and Europe never made any sense.

Not only could terrorists easily assign a few operatives to attack targets outside Iraq, but Western intelligence agencies agree that the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the civilian casualties there have been recruiting boons for al-Qaeda. It appears, for instance, that the mass-transit suicide bombings in London on July 7 resulted from a plot by local Muslims driven to extremism by watching the bloodshed in Iraq. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's Grimmer Vision."]

Democracy’s Flag

Bush also has argued that planting the flag of democracy in Iraq will somehow inspire political moderation throughout the Arab world.

“A free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will deliver a serious blow to their hateful ideology,” Bush said about Islamic extremists during a press conference at his Crawford, Texas, ranch on Aug. 11.

This theory linking democracy with political restraint has become a staple of Washington’s conventional wisdom, but it lacks real-world proof. Indeed, its fragile logic was shattered when Iranian voters went to the polls in July and shocked Tehran’s political establishment by electing a hard-liner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as Iran’s new president.

Iran’s vote demonstrated that elections don’t always translate into moderation, a reality recognized more than two centuries ago by America’s Founding Fathers. Throughout the history of democracy – even dating back to the ancient Greeks – popular passions often have prevailed over cool rationality.

In his revamped P.R. push, Bush also continues to misrepresent the political realities inside Iraq. Bush argues that the conflict pits Iraqis who want a Western-style democracy against enemies of freedom who are obsessed by an ideology of hate that’s bent on world domination – or as Bush has said, “they hate our freedoms.”

This black-and-white analysis sets up a framework that offers little choice but to battle to the death in an apocalyptic war between good “democrats” and evil “terrorists.” If Bush’s analysis is correct, American troops will be fighting and dying in Iraq and around the Islamic world for generations.

Alternative Analysis

But there is a different – and less alarmist – way to view Islamic extremism. It’s not that Muslims “hate our freedoms,” it’s that many hate what the United States has done in the Middle East, especially its support for corrupt dictatorships, like the Saudi royal family. While terrorism is not justifiable, Muslims do have justifiable grievances.

As for the Iraq War, it makes more sense to view the conflict as a civil war between competing ethnic and religious groups with only an overlay of external Islamic terrorism.

In this analysis, the once-powerful Sunnis, who thrived under Saddam Hussein and who have largely rejected the U.S.-imposed political changes, are on one side. They are getting some support from Islamic extremists infiltrating into Iraq to fight the Americans.

On the other side are the Shiite majority and its Kurdish allies, groups that were persecuted under Hussein but now dominate Iraq’s provisional government. They’re backed by the U.S. military, which is bearing the brunt of their war against the Sunnis.

Under this analysis, a continued U.S. military presence points toward two likely results: an increasingly brutal repression of the Sunni minority whose cities, like Fallujah, will face destruction from American firepower – and a continued influx of foreign Islamic militants determined to kill Americans.

However, a U.S. military withdrawal might not create the catastrophe that Bush and his supporters predict, if the less alarmist analysis is true. Instead, the Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis might be forced into practical negotiations for resolving their differences.

While it’s true that the sectarian violence still might degenerate into a full-scale civil war, the conflict – without the lethality of American military equipment and with less reason for non-Iraqi fighters to join in – might avert some extremes of violence.

Once an independent Iraqi government does take shape, it will have a strong self-interest in rooting out foreign Islamic extremists, much as Hussein’s government did.

The departure of American troops also would eliminate a chief recruiting pitch that terrorists have exploited to get young Muslims to strap bombs on themselves. Without the American presence – and assuming progress on other problems such as the Israeli-Palestinian dispute – the appeal of Islamic extremism might fade rather than grow.

Freed from the Iraq War, American special forces also could refocus their attention on capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders.

Demanding Victory

Yet, it is a mark of the political crisis in the United States that no major leader – Republican or Democrat – has dared chart a course toward prompt American withdrawal from Iraq.

Bush, who has made refusal to admit error a political trademark, shows neither the inclination nor the imagination to make any significant changes in his Iraq policy. At his press conference on Aug. 11, Bush responded with platitudes to a vigil outside his Crawford ranch by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq.

“I grieve for every death,” Bush said. “It breaks my heart to think of a family weeping over the loss of a loved one. I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place.”

Meanwhile, many leading Democrats have adopted as their clever Iraq War mantra the slogan: “failure is not an option.” But words demanding success don’t guarantee success. Throughout history, political leaders have doomed many brave armies with orders of “no retreat” or “fight to the last man.”

Indeed the phrase “failure is not an option” is really just another way of expressing wishful thinking. The unspoken part of the sentiment is that “If we say failure is not an option, then we’ll succeed.” But tough talk is still no substitute for realism.

What to Do?

So what are the American people to do if they want to force an end to this war?

Impeachment of Bush is widely regarded as impossible given the Republican control of the House and Senate and the strength of the conservative news media in newspapers, magazines, talk radio, television and the Internet. But impeachment may be the only political option left if the American people hope to force a U.S. withdrawal before 2009.

Also by making Bush’s impeachment a focus of the congressional campaigns in 2006, the American people would be given a chance to impose some measure of accountability for the gross mismanagement of the Iraq War.

Without some accountability, it’s also likely that Bush’s neoconservative advisers will remain influential in Washington, biding their time for a comeback. Bush may be leaving in three-and-a-half years, but the neoconservatives who surround him have no plans to surrender the influence they have accumulated in Washington over the past 30 years.

In that period, the neocons have mastered how to manipulate the American political process, using tactics such as “perception management” and concentrating on the control of information as it flows through the nation’s capital. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]

But as the Iraq War riles more Americans, even some leading neocons are trying to shift the blame. For instance, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, who was a prominent advocate for the invasion, has begun pointing the finger at inept military leaders.

Bush and the neocons appear to share the same immediate goal. They are desperate to buy some more time by again applying the two constants of the Iraq War – deception and wishful thinking.

So, as the U.S. death toll soars, Bush and his advisers are back to their old tricks – spinning the facts and hoping for the best.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/081305.html

Do you think that even crossed anyone's mind Marine?

Don't be paranid, not good for the heart and soul Bro' - not healthy at all!!!

Hang Tough~

Only trying to respond to a couple of posts you and ghost made Tom. Seem you two though you was unfairly being picked on, eh?

I just couldn't bear the thought of you two boys feeling persecuted so I tried to help out. You know how lifers are Tom, always trying to protect their troopies.

Again, as explained by Bacevich, the mindset during the '80s and into the '90s became deeply Neoconic in which influenced many Americans who, in my opinion, become more attracted to being a soldier in the world's greatest military force on this planet and found it 'cool' to be a part of the BushForce of today.... forcing western democracy onto other foreign countries against their will. That's the mentality that I am speaking about.... the brainwashing of young minds that "it's good" to spread freedom and liberty via BushCo's corrupt governing hand.



http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/interve...5/0422necon.htm

Andrew Bacevich* on the Neocon Revolution and Militarism
By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch.com
April 22, 2005

(Though the label neocon has increasingly become one of opprobrium, Bacevich suggests that "the heat generated by the term also stands as a backhanded tribute, an acknowledgement that the neoconservative impact has been substantial." As indeed it has � to the misfortune of us all. He suggests as well that "one aspect of the neoconservative legacy has been to foster the intellectual climate necessary for the emergence of the new American militarism.")


In our own time -- and especially since the ascendancy of George W. Bush to the presidency -- "neoconservative" has become a term of opprobrium, frequently accompanied by ad hominem attacks and charges of arrogance and hubris. But the heat generated by the term also stands as a backhanded tribute, an acknowledgment that the neoconservative impact has been substantial. It is today too soon to offer a comprehensive assessment of that impact. The discussion of neoconservatism offered here has a more modest objective, namely, to suggest that one aspect of the neoconservative legacy has been to foster the intellectual climate necessary for the emergence of the new American militarism.

By their own lights, the neoconservatives of the 1990s did not qualify as warmongers, but once having gotten a whiff of gunpowder during the Persian Gulf War of 1990�91, they developed a hankering to repeat the experience. The neoconservative complaint about Operation Desert Storm was that President George H. W. Bush and his commanders had failed to press the attack. In their eyes, the war demonstrated that the U.S. military was a superb instrument wielded by excessively timid officers, of whom General Colin Powell was the ultimate embodiment. "One of the [Gulf] war's important lessons," wrote one neoconservative, "is that America's military leadership is far too cautious� Now the success of that campaign has had the effect of enhancing the prestige of our military leadership while doing little or nothing to change its underlying attitude to fighting. Thus today and tomorrow it may feel even less inhibited in opposing the use of force than it did before the Gulf war." Indeed, promoting the assertive use of American military power became central to the imperial self-definition devised by second-generation neoconservatives.

Using force to advance the prospects of peace and democracy implied that the United States ought to possess military power to spare. The fourth conviction animating second-generation neoconservatives was a commitment to sustaining and even enhancing American military supremacy. Recall that throughout the 1990s, even before Osama bin Laden declared his jihad against America, U.S. defense spending remained at Cold War levels despite the absence of the Cold War.

As the 1990s unfolded, neoconservatives pressed their case for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity," emphasizing the use of armed force to promulgate American values and perpetuate American primacy. Most persistently, even obsessively, neoconservatives throughout the Clinton years lobbied for decisive U.S. action to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. From a neoconservative perspective, the Iraqi dictator's survival after Desert Storm exposed as nothing else the cynicism and shortsightedness of the realists who had dominated the administration of George H. W. Bush and who had prevented the American army from completing its proper mission -- pursuing the defeated Iraqi army all the way to Baghdad. Topping the agenda of the second-generation neoconservatives was a determination to correct that error, preferably by mobilizing America's armed might to destroy the Baathist regime. "Bombing Iraq Isn't Enough," declared the title of one representative op-ed published by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in January 1998. It was time for the gloves to come off, they argued, "and that means using air power and ground forces, and finishing the job left undone in 1991."

Neocons yearned to liberate Iraq, as an end in itself but also as a means to an eminently larger end. "A successful intervention in Iraq," wrote Kagan in February 1998, "would revolutionize the strategic situation in the Middle East, in ways both tangible and intangible, and all to the benefit of American interests." A march on Baghdad was certain to have a huge demonstration effect. It would put dictators around the world on notice either to mend their ways or share Saddam's fate. It would silence doubters who questioned America's ability to export its values. It would discredit skeptics who claimed to see lurking behind neoconservative schemes the temptations of empire, the dangers of militarism, and the prospect of exhaustion and overstretch.

Above all, forcibly overthrowing Saddam Hussein would affirm the irresistibility of American military might. As such, the armed liberation of Iraq would transform U.S. foreign policy; not preserving the status quo but promoting revolutionary change would thereafter define the main purpose of American statecraft. After all, wrote Michael Ledeen well before 9/11, stability was for "tired old Europeans and nervous Asians." The United States was "the most revolutionary force on earth," its "inescapable mission to fight for the spread of democracy." The operative word was fight. According to Ledeen, Mao was precisely correct: revolution sprang "from the barrel of a gun." The successful ouster of Saddam Hussein could open up whole new vistas of revolutionary opportunity.

Keep in mind, as any of you may read this thread's entirety how our own country romances violence in many ways. Remember how much and how easy we feed acts of violence into our children from the time they are very young, and able to watch tv. What you will find is the astonishing connections as to how Neocons acts and thinks, and it is this mentality, that of which I now call Bush mentality, which molds and drives our young into being a warrior for wearing the US military uniform. Ira Leonard explains how violence in America has been perceived and accepted as simply a matter of fact without hardly any questions.

***********************
America the Warrior Society
(9/27/04)

The American ideal, then, of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This ideal has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden � as an unpatriotic act � that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood.

James Baldwin, "Here Be Dragons," 1985
************************



http://alternet.org/story/15665

Violence is the American Way

By Ira Leonard, AlterNet. Posted April 22, 2003.

"Increasingly, Americans are a people without history, with only memory, which means a people poorly prepared for what is inevitable about life -- tragedy, sadness, moral ambiguity -- and therefore a people reluctant to engage difficult ethical issues."
-- Elliot Gorn, "Professing History: Distinguishing Between Memory and Past," Chronicle of Higher Education (April 28, 2000).

In August 2002, President George Bush began to drum up a war fever in America with a view to toppling Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein, alleged to be the possessor of weapons of mass destruction. Bush did so without providing the evidence, the costs, the "why now" explanation, or long-term implications of such a war.


[And only the opposition of the French, Germans, Russians, and Chinese finally forced some Americans to raise questions about what was actually being planned. This, coupled with the anti-war demonstrations on February 15th, 2003 by millions of people in 350 cities around the globe, delayed President Bush from actually launching this war against Iraq by mid-February 2003.

Nothing, however, seemed to stop the bush administration's drive for war. Nor did the failure of American diplomatic efforts to get authorization from the United Nations' security council seem to bother the members of the congress, virtually all of whom remained silent or in support of war. The incessant polls showed that a majority of the american population continued to support a p