I used to be fascinated with neoconservatism because I couldn’t understand how such a whacky “philosophy” had acquired so much influence. Now I think I know the answer. Neoconservatism is a lot like libertarianism: it’s a fringe ideology that is more visible than it should be because various wealthy have embraced it (Koch brothers, Marty Peretz), it has aims that certain powerful lobbies support (Chamber of Commerce, AIPAC), and because its mythology has a natural appeal to the sociopaths and narcissists who rule us (Galtian supermen, noble lies). It’s not a perfect analogy, because libertarians are disorganized and completely inept politically, whereas neoconservatives have run a tight, politically astute ship.
I continue to be fascinated by Ahmed Chalabi, because he’s such a transparently deceptive slimeball and because it amuses me that neocons think his math PhD and three published math papers (I will grant that one of them is in a good journal) prove that he is a “mathematical genius”.
Today, Chalabi is essentially an Iranian agent of some kind and happy about the Iraq War:
Chalabi offered some mild criticism of the lack of human rights in Iran and some similarly cautious support of democratic protest in Tehran. As for the Arab Spring, he was emphatic in his support. “Iraq was the first country to go through the process,” he said. “The Arab people will long remember that.”
“We thank U.S. troops for liberating Iraq, and we say goodbye to them, and good luck,” Chalabi concluded.
So that’s how it ends — not with a bang or a whimper, either, but with a smooth valedictory from the man whom history will record as the secret instigator of the Iraq war, for which he has no apologies and, seemingly, no regrets.
David Ignatius, who wrote the above after interviewing Chalabi, treats it as a given that any sane person would have regrets and apologies over having supported the Iraq War. Yes the editorial board of his own newspaper has exactly the same view as Chalabi, that the Iraq War was a great success that we should all be proud of.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“Secret”? Am I mis-remembering that we knew who this hump was way back when? This was the guy Kristol et al wanted to install as ruler of a country he hadn’t lived in twenty-odd years? and who had a pretty shady history with Saddam himsef? My recollection is they tried to pass him off as an Iraq De Gualle
Morzer
I guess Chalabi felt that “CYA Suckaz” lacked a certain panache.
Andrew J. Lazarus
I published 11 papers (two in good journals) and all I got was this stupid blog comment.
Jinchi
Why would Chalabi have any regrets. He convinced a world superpower to overthrow a rival and to put him in a position of power, at virtually no cost to himself. It’s all upside.
If America had convinced the Iranians to invade Afghansitan and overthrow the Taliban at huge costs to themselves, would we be apologizing today?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was wrong, at least per Wiki: Chalabi had no apparent history with Saddam, having left Iraq in the mid-fifties at the age of 12. The shady history I was thinking of was a massive bank fraud in Jordan.
eemom
omg, Frank Sinatra. Never thought I’d live to see the day.
MattF
Just recall that Cosmopolitan-Magazine-style “Are you a psychopath?” questionnaire that bubbled up into the Zeitgeist a couple of months ago and then disappeared. The answer for the neo-cons and the libertarians is clearly “um, well, I guess so”. And that’s most of what there is to say about that.
Dougerhead
@eemom:
What the world needs now is a new Frank Sinatra.
dr. bloor
@Jinchi:
This. The whole fiasco has been a feature for Chalabi, not a bug.
He may or may not be a math genius, but he sure as fucking hell knows how to play a world superpower like a third-rate mark.
Samara Morgan
Chalabi is a freaking genius.
he got Murrikkka to overthrow one of its client dictators and blacken its name forever in MENA. Not to mention cannibalizing our economy to hurl a million american troops (over 10 years) into an unwinnable, immoral meatgrinder….from which some of them never returned, and from which ONE IN FIVE is returning with horrific mental scarring.
all we are gettin’ out of Iraq is the undying enmity of dar ul Islam and a countably infinite supply of spare parts for the reaver factory.
Anoniminous
The roots of the Neo-Con power go back to a little known program started by Nixon in 1970 (IIRC.) The idea was to bring Conservative students into Federal government agencies as interns so they could “learn the ropes” and create an Old Boys Network. To give three examples: one of the people helping to run the program was Donald Rumsfeld, one of the interns was a recent Ph.d., Dick Cheney, Colin Powell was seconded from the Army to also be involved in the program.
This program created a network that was latter used to write the intelligence and policy papers and build Congressional political support for the Iraqi War within the US government.
Samara Morgan
im only surprised Chalabi was a group theorist, and not a games theorist.
He sure played America.
:)
Samara Morgan
i guess all those neocon asswipes have to stop whining about the “Forever War” naow, right?
Iraq just ended.
:)
Corner Stone
@Jinchi:
At no cost? Hell, Chalabi made a fortune off the deal. For a time he was running all illicit payments in country. He was picking the winners.
Bill Murray
Margaret Thatcher published a chemistry paper back in the day. A friend of mine has an autographed copy, but not because he loved Thatcher all that much.
I’ve got more than that and couldn’t even get in forst with a stupid blog comment
Corner Stone
@Dougerhead: Like another hole in the head.
wilfred
Chalabi didn’t ‘get’ the US to do anything. That’s like saying Cheney got Bush to do things.
He fronted the neocon project, that’s all. The neocons are still around – Romney is advised by Douglas Feith and Eliot Cohen, amongst other Israel Firsters, while Obama always seems to find a place for Dennis Ross, ur-neocon and principle saboteur of anything pertaining to American interests in the Middle East.
War with Iran is coming.
Rick Taylor
What a pathetic fool Hitchens is.
JGabriel
David Ignatius:
Chalabi was certainly a factor, but institgator? I don’t know. In some ways, the Iraq War seems historically overdetermined. Without Chalabi, Bush still would have wanted to go into Iraq to prove Daddy wrong; Cheney, to make money for Halliburton; various neocons, for Hussein’s funding of Palestinian terrorists; and Curveball and other pseudonymous or anonymous sources still would have spouted lies to intelligence agencies for profit and vengeance.
Also, for someone whose instigations were allegedly secret, a hell of a lot of people seem to know about it.
.
Mino
I wonder where lots of the missing funds went? No, I don’t.
PeakVT
Another thing that has enabled Neoconservatism to be influential is that there is no naturally occurring group to counter it. People don’t pre-organize against a war that might happen if certain people get elected, which may or may not happen.
Brachiator
Libertarianism also greatly appeals to teenagers, especially when they reach the phase of thinking that all adults are full of shit and that there are always simple solutions to problems.
Most people grow up and recognize the complexity of the world. Libertarians stubbornly persist in viewing the world simplistically.
Neocons are propelled by a simplistic view of America and political power. The neocons ginned up the Iraq War in part as a response to the Viet Nam War. They were going to show the world, and American liberals, how things should be done, how a war could be won if you insisted on patriotism, on obedience to supposedly core American values, and if you wholeheartedly and without any sissified reservations, kicked the crap out of an obviously inferior, unworthy opponent. And of course, allies simply had to go along with you, and puppet authoritarian regimes had to bend to your will.
This went even beyond Kissinger Realpolitik. Neocons believe, without reservation or caution, in the delusion that the application of American power will result in what America wants and what the world needs.
Neocon economics is equally stupid.
The neocon fantasy has evolved into a bizarre rejection of the Enlightenment, and an equally bizarre clutching of religion, or more accurately authoritarian theology, and a rejection of logic, science, and all modes of thinking that demand unbiased analysis, and the possibility of doubt.
ChrisNYC
O/T — Matthew Yglesias sat back in his chair today and did a thought exercise about parks. From within the neat confines of his own mind, he has concluded that some public spaces are failures — they don’t get used. And NOBODY has noticed this problem, UNTIL MATTY CAME ALONG.
“That’s not to say we should pave all the parks. But we should be thinking of something to actually do with them. Cities are full of people, and most of the country doesn’t have Southern California weather. There’s limited practical demand for just sitting around outside.”
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/10/22/350604/public-parks-should-be-occupied/
Has he never heard of urban planning? For real, he doesn’t get that when cities put together public areas they are constantly grappling with this issue? That he has not just TODAY discovered it? What the hell is Harvard teaching these people?
handsmile
Should readers be tempted to click on Dougerhead’s link to David Ignatius’s wistful musings on the grifter Chalabi, do consider reading as well the latest prostration from the ombudsman of Kaplan Test Prep Daily, “Did the Post story do right by the Koch brothers?”
The story in question is a re-publication of a recent Bloomberg News article that detailed business dealings in Iran by Koch Bros. subsidiaries.
While he wrote that “I couldn’t find any outright falsehood in the story that would warrant correction,” I suspect you won’t be surprised with the ombudsman’s answer to his own question.
Given its status and history, I firmly believe the Washington Post is the most pernicious newspaper now published in the United States.
@Dougerhead:
Any movement in the campaign to select Corey Robin’s “The Conservative Mind” as the next assignment of the venerable Balloon Juice Reading Club?
Davis X. Machina
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: By running that correction, and running it yourself, your chances at a seat in the Washington Post Treehouse for Cool Kids, never good, have plummeted to zero.
Act in haste, repent in leisure.
JGabriel
PeakVT:
Of course they do. Think South Carolina, pre-Lincoln.
And if you want to read anything more extensive into my comparison of neo-cons with the Confederacy, I won’t argue.
.
PeakVT
@ChrisNYC: If Yglesias is indicative, mental masturbation.
Davis X. Machina
@ChrisNYC: Philosophy, in his case. He’s supposed to be thinking things, not knowing things.
RSA
Among the group of people considered thought leaders in the neocon movement, the bar for “genius” is quite low.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dougerhead: Who are you trying to get into bed?
lol
@wilfred:
Just like Social Security cuts are going to be announced ANY DAY NOW.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’d suspect it was my aunts on my father’s side, but they’re all dead.
nancydarling
Would it be uncool of me to go back to the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Crenshaw in SoCal where I ran an anti-war rally in late 2002 and early 2003 and stand there with a sign that said, “How did the war work out for you, you dumb fucks?” I think the support/opposition I got was about half and half. The mean girl in me wants to do it.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Lyrics from a Cracker song. Unless Dougerhead is really kinky.
Barkley G
Neoconservatism is a lot like Marxism. The early Neo-cons were Marxists before they became neocons. This is not to say that the ideologies are similar, but rather than manner in which they were carefully constructed is similar.
Ideologically Neoconservatism resembles Social Darwinism of the late 1800s as to domestic policy.
sparky
hmmm…given the number of wars the US finds itself in at the moment, i am rather puzzled by the insistence that the neocons lost. i’d say they won, because the goal was perpetual war, which is what the US has.
also, it’s dangerous to make analogies between political movements. neoconservatism seems more about a way of being in the world than a coherent political philosophy.
wilfred: no doubt there are many people who would like to see the US attack Iran. my guess is that will not happen until or unless the US military is either enlarged or overruled. right now, the US couldn’t manage it.
Samara Morgan
@wilfred:
yup. and he did.
Cheney and Rumsfeld fronted Bushs briefing slides with bible quotes to get him to do what they wanted.
Bush was a fucking WEC retard that believed he was saving Israel from Gog and Magog. that shit dont get a lot of publicity from american media, because who wants to admit we elected a crazy person?
its like the media never covered that Reagan was an alzheimers zombie for the last year of his presidency.
respect the office lawl.
Samara Morgan
@sparky: the war in Iraq is OVAH sparky.
And we LOST.
hahaha
lacp
The Iraq war was a great success; it just wasn’t a success for the US.
William Hurley
No surprises here.
Chalabi’s a piece of shit. He was convicted in Jordanian court – in absentia – for defrauding depositors and bankrupting the bank. No wonder NeoCon nitwits love him.
There’s also the matter of Chalabi’s loose tongue, put to use during the 2nd or 3rd year of Bush “great war” when he apparently “slipped” and gave Iranian Intel Services “vital” US info on force strength and codes to decrypt US military and “diplomatic” cables.
One cute little family fact, his nephew was the infamous “curveball”.
Amir Khalid
The vibe I got from reading about Ahmad Chalabi is that the guy was less a player than a grifter. He’d lived most of his life outside Iraq and had no real political base there, although he was prominent among its expatriates and had political ambitions. As I understand, he led some kind of self-styled government in exile.
The US lost in Iraq because it picked the wrong fight, but this was only partly at Chalabi’s instigation. He didn’t put the idea on the neocons’ heads, they’d been wanting to do it for years. He just provided encouragement, and was a crony who hoped to profit.
His version of events seems like an ass-covering exercise to me. As I recall, Chalabi made himself the Bush administration’s pet Iraqi. So the transition authority tried to put him in charge of Iraq, only to find he had no credibility to lead the nation. It’s true the transition authority was dreadfully inept, but Chalabi himself deserves some blame for what went wrong.
@Samara Morgan:
I see that you have not taken the opportunity mistermix offered you, to rethink your interaction with other commenters.
opal
Professional courtesy.
A concept which probably peaked with JFK, and had begun to wear out it’s welcome with Bush Sr.
Bill Clinton changed the questions.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: i see you still prefer to ladle out feel-good pablum for the juicitariat.
Saddam was just another America-propped client dictator until Gulf I. Like Mubarak, Saleh, King Abdullah of Jordan, the Saudi Royals, the King of Bahrain, etc. Notice how we are on the WRONG SIDE of the Arab Spring revolutions? ecept for Libya, of course. :)
Of course Chalabi was delighted to mess with that.
Everything America touched in the ME is coming back to bite us with a vengance in the Arab Spring.
The moral arc of history is long, but it tends towards justice.
i question your adab, brother. i relly do.
Samara Morgan
@lacp:
LOL truedat.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid:
LOL you could say that. the US was fighting al-Islam. no sapient muslim wants our fucking freemarket missionary democracy.
the “freed” market is a poison pill of greed and death.
what do you think the anti-usury laws were designed to prevent?
Samara Morgan
sry for the late replies.
i was at Zombiecrawl last nite.
so fun.
:)
THE
This is a comment I often hear these days, but I have to say, this is not how I recall it.
Saddam was far closer to the Soviet bloc than he was to the West prior to Gulf I. The majority of his military apparatus was Soviet manufacture: MIGs SCUDs etc. Also he had thousands of Soviet Bloc military advisors inside the country. Bush I had to negotiate their withdrawal from Iraq before the bombing started.
Samara Morgan
@THE: you are quite mad.
do you want to see pics and links?
America propped Saddam in the Iraq-Iran war because of Khomeini ousting our puppet, the Tyrant Shah.
soviet bloc affiliation was the whole rationale behind Operation Ajax and the Mossadegh coup…
now, like Rev. Wright said, all those chickens are gunna come home to roost.
Uncle Saddam was just flirting with the sovs after he fucked up royally in Kuwait.
Where was he gunna go?
Read some history for fucks sake.
SiubhanDuinne
@Samara Morgan:
pls, dont apologise
THE
Actually no.
Mostly US supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq war as did Israel.
That is what came out after the war as a result of investigations into the Iran-Contra affair. US and Israel sold used parts to Iran and the profits were channeled to support the Nicaraguan Contras.
The story is complicated because there was one incident where US did assist Saddam too. The US made satellite images available to Saddam where their European allies were frantic that Iran was about to overrun Saddam, and the West didn’t want such a clear outcome.
I read a detailed report in the academic literature after the war about the contribution that the different parties played in the war. US was around No 10 and UK around No 24 or something on the list of countries that supported Iraq.
The biggest supporters of Iraq were Saudi Arabia as his main financial backer and Kuwait (which caused problems in the Gulf I when they wanted to be repaid.)
The biggest military supporter was the USSR. Even the contemporary newspaper article I linked above supports that USSR was his major arms supplier for 20 years.
THE
And if all you can do is call me insane I suggest you go fuck yourself you stupid bitch.
THE
The Western country that was closest to Saddam before Gulf I was France. They not only sold him planes, they also sold him the Osirak nuclear reactor that Israel destroyed.
This was not unusual in the era because France often followed a foreign policy independent of either superpower.
Samara Morgan
@THE: wallah.