The Twilight of The Neocon Gods

Will the current plenty of world conflict strengthen or fatally weaken the influence of a neoconservative movement already damaged by the failure of it's promises for Iraq and Afghanistan?

That was one of the three big questions I asked last week. All arose from thinking about how the current crisis in the Middle East brings up doubts about Israel's (and America's) current policies and all have a somewhat universal application in that other nations are following the American/Israeli paradigm for countering fourth generation warfare groups.

When the current conflict in the Middle East first broke out, it seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity for neoconservatives. Look, they cried, appeasement really doesn't work. We were right all along. Crushing force is the only thing that will ever succeed against terrorists, insurgencies, rebellions or any other kind of asymmetrical warfare. It helped that, suddenly, they also had the backing of pro-Israeli Democrats who can be all kind of reasonable about waging the right kind of conflict in Iraq or counselling other nations to negotiate rather than bomb - but when Israel is threatened cry "bar the doors and pass the ammunition".

It helped that they could point to Israeli policy as if it were somehow outside the neoconservative sphere of influence and hold it up as an example of another State that had come independently to the same conclusions. Not one neocon talking-head has admitted that the American neocon movement is joined symbiotically to the Israeli one - many of the dramatis personae are one and the same - or tried to take the credit for that policy even though they could have benefitted somewhat from doing so. That's deliberate, and has been aided by a myopic lapdog media unwilling to point out the connections. Pretending Israel is an independent confirmation of their beliefs is far more useful.

It also, very definitely, helped that the media forgot all about covering Turkey or Iran's problems with Kurdish terrorists operating from safe havens in Iraq or the fallout from the Mumbai bombings where U.S. ally Pakistan is being shown as aiding and abetting Islamist terrorists operating in two other U.S. allies' territory - India and Afghanistan. Questions were beginning to be asked about the double standard being shown by the Bush administration and neocon spokepeople over these issues. Questions it would have been highly embarassing and damaging to have to answer.

But 17 days later, with Israel committing what appear to be outright war crimes and international approval for its actions and rhetoric dropping like a stone even among American diplomats, the neocons are finding that Israel's campaign to act tough on Hizboullah and Hamas isn't quite the PR gift they thought it would be. (Especially when Israel destroys its own excuses of 'accidents rather than deliberate atrocities' by insisting on announcing a policy of collective punishment and scorched-earth, saying the army "will totally destroy any village from which missiles are fired toward Israel".) Instead it is repeating in fast-forward the stories of Afghanistan and Iraq, neither of which have become good advertising for the neoconservative movement. The cracks are definitely showing now and pundits, although still divided, are beginning to show a consensus that the conflict will prove to be another nail in the neocon coffin.

The assault on the neocons joyride began early this time - about as quickly as predictable neocon calls to widen Israel's war to include Iran and Syria. But this time some definitely conservative voices joined liberals pointing out that the world was not a massive game of Civilisation on the "easy" setting. George Will attacked the neoconservatives over their constant push for new wars which always seem to fall short of their promises, observing "never say it can't get worse." The Cato Institute went even further in castigating the neocon guiding principle of "bomb today for a brighter tomorrow", throwing caution to the wind and describing it in terms more familiar to leftwing critics:

Now, you could marvel at the brazenness of all this: the same people who helped lead us into the biggest foreign policy disaster in 30 years trying to push another war (or wars) on us without so much as a prefatory “sorry about the whole Iraq thing, old boy.” But the current squawking also strikes me as a useful reminder of how very, very important war is in the neoconservative vision. It is as central to that vision as peace is to the classical liberal vision.

For the neoconservatives, it’s not about Israel. It’s about war. War is a bracing tonic for the national spirit and in all its forms it presents opportunities for national greatness. “Ultimately, American purpose can find its voice only in Washington,” David Brooks once wrote. And Washington’s never louder or more powerful than when it has a war to fight.

...Who we’re fighting is secondary. That we’re fighting is the main thing. To be a neoconservative is to thrill to the sound of gunfire. (From a nice, safe distance, generally.)

Andrew Sullivan, someone who the Militant Right has long defamed as a hated "librul" but is actually strongly representative of the more moderate mainstream of conservatism worldwide, weighed in with:

You might say that the mindset of the neocons is very September 12. It has not altered one jot since that day. It is as if we have learnt nothing from the debacle in Iraq about the limits of military force in changing culture and politics in countries we do not fully understand and do not have the expertise or manpower to micro-manage.

It is as if the past five years had never happened — and in the rigid, theoretical worldview of the neocons, they haven’t. But non-neoconservatives have actually observed the past few years and committed the cardinal sin of thinking about them.

Sullivan predicts that the civil war within the Republican Party between the neocon/fundamentalist axis which currently drives so much of the GOP platform and everyone else will only intensify in the run-up to nominating a candidate in 2008. Former deputy director of central intelligence for Bush, John McLaughlin, defined a large part of the debate that will frame that civil war for GOP power when he wrote in the Washington Post of the Five Lessons that should be learned from the latest Middle east conflict - and not one of them was in the neoconservative lexicon. Wayne White, Deputy Director of the State Department's Office of Middle East and South Asia Analysis until March 2005, added further fuel to the debate with an interview for Harper's magazine in which he warned of massive negative consequences as the result of following the neocon agenda in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, even though they are (mostly) sticking with the neocons on those failed adventures they are already embroiled in - Iraq and Afghanistan - worldwide, conservative leaders are singularly failing to heed the war trumpets in a wider Middle East. Tony Blair, a neoconservative in all but name, is said to be about to plead with Bush to hasten a ceasefire. His opposite number David Cameron's Conservative party are going out of their way to criticise Blair for being a US poodle and to deny neocon influence - nor are they happy about Iraq with more conservative voters (63%) favoring withdrawal than any other UK political grouping. Merkel and Chiraq, both paleo-conservatives of the European school, have distanced themselves from the American/Israeli position. (Chiraq, like all French politicians sensitive to the ways that swings in public opinion can depose those in power, always was a non-believer mind you.) Australia's Howard is likewise digging a protective ditch between himself and the White House just as fast as he can. It remains to be seen how the current conflict Israel has rushed into - one that analysts are already saying has no clear and workable strategy and has no real chance of an outcome that the neocons would approve of - will effect the balance of conservative politics in that nation.

It is clear that, worldwide and in its birthplaces of America and Israel, the neoconservative movement is in serious trouble. As usual when extremist political movements reach the end of their ability to fool enough of the people enough of the time, the really bright ones are bailing out (Buckley, Fukuyama) and the remaining "true believers" are turning upon scapegoats who are deemed to be apostate.

What seems really clear is that the chances of neoconservatism having the same monopoly on American foreign policy after the '08 Presidential election as it has for the last six years are just about nil, and the chances of neoconservatism being consigned to the dustbins of history along with the Trotskyist ideology that begat it are high and getting higher with every new failure to deliver what it promised.