How wrong can you be? Neocons scramble for alibis

The neocons are now scrambling madly for excuses. The Vanity Fair appearing in early December has an article on the disreputable bunch known as the neoconservatives: Neo Culpa by David Rose (excerpts available online now).

Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle was an still is the most influential among the neocons. It tells a lot about him that it was his admirers who gave him the "Prince of Darkness" nickname. As head of the Defense Policy Board and one of Rummy's main advisers, he played a key role at the Pentagon in ginning up the Iraq War. If he had any sense that there's something terribly wrong about agitating for war and killing for no good reason, he would be saying something like this:

"I was an arrogant fool. I listened to that Iranian spy Ahmed Chalabi even though the CIA had warned us about him for a long time as being unreliable. He scammed me as completely as any sucker could be scammed. And on the basis of my totally reckless and irresponsible faith in him, as well as my passion for dreaming up wars for other people to kill and die in, I cheered for war on Iraq when there was no legitimate reason whatsoever for doing it. I even helped cook up fake intelligence claims to promote it. And in doing so, I played an important part in getting thousands of American soldiers killed, tens of thousands wounded, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, all for no good reason. That pretty much makes me about as worthless a human being as a person could be. Anyone who ever listens to my advice on foreign policy in the future is a damn fool. Myself, I know I'm a war criminal and I'm ready to surrender myself to US authorities or the International Criminal Court when I'm indicted for my crimes."

But instead, Perle steps up to his responsibilities like the weasel he is and says:

Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I'm getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, "Go design the campaign to do that." I had no responsibility for that. (my emphasis)

Mistakes were made. Yeah. He's too much of a coward to even admit to his own key role in bringing about the war. The man is a disgrace. But let's give the Prince of Darkness his due. He has real reason to worry about prosecution for his role in planning the war and deceiving Congress. So it's understandable he feels the need to be exceptionally modest about his own role in the mess.

Then there's Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), aka, Neocon Central, with this piece of advice to the neocon gang on how to keep themselves in the game of starting wars: Operation Comeback Foreign Policy 11/01/06.


His main piece of advice is that the neocons should agitate for war with Iran. "Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before leaving office," he writes.

He continues by using a piece of neocon "logic" that is pure warmonger propaganda, saying that "Its rulers are religio-ideological fanatics who will not trade what they believe is their birthright to great power status for a mess of pottage." The giant hole in this argument is that its rulers are genuine "religio-ideological fanatics", then wouldn't they be following the religious ruling of their Supreme Jurisprudent that possession of nuclear weapons is against Islam? But the arguments don't matter to them, as long as they can help set up another war for other people to die in.

The most interesting single line to me in his article is: "We are, after all, a movement whose raison d’être was combating anti-Americanism in the United States." Say what? The neocons are mainly about fighting other Americans they consider operate on "anti-Americanism"? Not about protecting us from the CommunoIslamoFascistoTerrorist mortal danger? A surprisingly frank admission!

Tags: iraq war, neoconservatives, joshua muravchik, richard perle,

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