Lincoln March 5, 2003
Remember the heady days - for Pres. Bush - immediately after the invasion of Iraq. Here's how Toby Harnden described the moment:
"Cementing the link between military victory in Iraq and his own presidency, George W Bush flew off a US aircraft carrier yesterday straight to another triumphant rally hailing the success of American troops."
"The main aim of his showy and slickly executed visit was to bask in the glory of a stunning military victory and reap the political benefits of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein."
Now here we are on the eve of the third anniversary of the invasion and there seems to be an internecine war going on within the ranks of the Neo-cons who provided the ideological rational for the war. On one side those who are still true believers mainly in the Oval Office and the columns of the New York Post - eg. John Podhoretz, Richard Lowery and Charles krauthammer; on the other side, the apostates who have actually thought about the situation. One of the key figures to post anti-war theses on the Pentagon door is Francis Fukuyama who recently published America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative legacy , which the New York Times described as:
"...a powerful indictment of the Bush administration's war in Iraq and the role of the neoconservative ideas - concerning preventive war, benevolent hegemony and unilateral action - played in shaping the decision to go to war, its implementation and its aftermath."
The true believers have, as is common in cases like this, not taken this apostasy lying down but counter-attacked. Take for example Podhoretz's column in Tuesday's N.Y.Post. He says: "They [the apostates] believe the enemies of the United States are motivated by a force more powerful than we reckoned - by a religious ideology that has seduced hundreds of millions of people who prefer its stark certainties to the ambiguities and confusions of Western bourgeois life."
Just listen to these arrogant chauvinist words; never mind the outcry we would hear from Podhoretz and his cohorts if we were to substitute "Christian ideology" for "a religious ideology" [Islam?]in this sentence.
Following Richard Lowery in the National Review, Podhoretz labels the apostates the "to-hell-with-them hawks." In the age-old fashion of such battles, once labeled they can be easily dismissed. But also in age old fashion, the label says far more about the labeler than the one to whom it is applied.
His next step is to associate the "hell hawks" with the abhorred "defeatist Democrats." While explaining that neither offer any "real possibility of an end to the war against Islamic radicalism, It will go on forever."
The only way to accomplish this is to "change the terms under which such people live, to offer them something to hope for besides virgins in paradise."
Having conveniently reduced one of the worlds great religions to a belief in "virgins in paradise," he makes his major assertion: "seen in this light, the Bush freedom doctrine [which is, of course, about the eighth version of the Bush doctrine with regard to Iraq since the original doctrine of pre-emption - Dan] isn't simply a starry-eyed exercise in ludicrous optimism. [His words not mine -Dan] It's a real-world solution to a real-world problem."
In case anyone still takes the apostates seriously, he hurries to associates them with the hated Michael Moore as "those who believe there is no real War on Terror."
In other words, from the point-of-view of the true believers, if you believe that there is a war on terror, your only option is to believe in the high priest of the anti-terror religion - George W. Bush.
Unlike many of us who will be demonstrating this weekend to end the war on its third anniversary, these newly-minted anti-war neocons, unfortunately like many Democrats, still believe that we can have a salutary effect in Iraq. We can't. Bring the troops home NOW.
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