Operation Comeback By Joshua Muravchik

[applegrove]

Operation Comeback
By Joshua Muravchik Page 1 of 2
Foreign Policy
November/December 2006

Neoconservatives have the president’s ear, but they also have lots of baggage. To stay relevant, they must admit mistakes, embrace public diplomacy, and start making the case for bombing Iran.


TO: My Fellow Neoconservatives
FROM: Joshua Muravchik
RE: How to Save the Neocons

" We neoconservatives have been through a startling few years. Who could have imagined six years ago that wild stories about our influence over U.S. foreign policy would reach the far corners of the globe? The loose group of us who felt impelled by the antics of the 1960s to migrate from the political left to right must have numbered fewer than 100. And we were proven losers at Washington’s power game: The left had driven us from the Democratic Party, stolen the “liberal” label, and successfully affixed to us the name “neoconservative.” In reality, of course, we don’t wield any of the power that contemporary legend attributes to us. Most of us don’t rise at the crack of dawn to report to powerful jobs in government. But it is true that our ideas have influenced the policies of President George W. Bush, as they did those of President Ronald Reagan. That does feel good. Our intellectual contributions helped to defeat communism in the last century and, God willing, they will help to defeat jihadism in this one. It also feels good to see that a number of young people and older converts are swelling our ranks.

The price of this success is that we are subjected to relentless obloquy. “Neocon” is now widely synonymous with “ultraconservative” or, for some, “dirty Jew.” A young Egyptian once said to me, “‘Neoconservative’ sounds to our ears like ‘terrorist’ sounds to yours.” I am shocked to hear that some among us, wearying of these attacks, are sidling away from the neocon label. Where is the joie de combat? The essential tenets of neoconservatism—belief that world peace is indivisible, that ideas are powerful, that freedom and democracy are universally valid, and that evil exists and must be confronted—are as valid today as when we first began. That is why we must continue to fight. But we need to sharpen our game. Here are some thoughts on how to do it:

Learn from Our Mistakes. We are guilty of poorly explaining neoconservatism. How, for example, did the canard spread that the roots of neoconservative foreign policy can be traced back to Leo Strauss and Leon Trotsky? The first of these false connections was cooked up by Lyndon LaRouche, the same convicted scam artist who spends his days alerting humanity to the Zionist-Henry Kissinger-Queen Elizabeth conspiracy. The second probably originated with insufficiently reconstructed Stalinists. To say that our core beliefs remain true is not to counsel self-satisfaction. We got lucky with Reagan. He took the path we wanted, and the policies succeeded brilliantly. He left office highly popular. Bush is a different story. He, too, took the path we wanted, but the policies are achieving uncertain success. His popularity has plummeted. It would be pigheaded not to reflect and rethink.

But we ought to do this without backbiting or abandoning Bush. All policies are perfect on paper, none in execution. All politicians are, well, politicians. Bush has embraced so much of what we believe that it would be silly to begrudge his deviations. He has recognized the terrorist campaign against the United States that had mushroomed over 30 years for what it is—a war that must be fought with the same determination, sacrifice, and perseverance that we demonstrated during the Cold War. And he has perceived that the only way to win this war in the end is to transform the political culture of the Middle East from one of absolutism and violence to one of tolerance and compromise.

..................SNIP"

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3602&print=1

[applegrove]

1. They are nuts. They still believe their own propaganda. I truly think the

neocon policy of creating myth and getting the little people to follow it..I think it is a pattern they practice within their own little group. This goof thinks that neocon policies ended the soviet empire..when it was really inefficiency that killed the soviets and neocons managed to put it off until Reagan was in power. I really think the top neocons owe it to the little neocons like this person..to take em aside and say "buddy, we MYTHED YA". Instead this guy includes myth after myth in his opening paragraphs including the one about how everyone calls neocons jews. Nobody calls neocons jewish except neocons. NOBODY! So if anybody called neocons "dirty jews" it would have had to be a neocon.

[bemildred]

2. If this weasel is the best they have, they are out of luck with the "comeback".

He thinks their mistakes are "poorly explaining neoconservatism". Someone ought to tell him that you have to be competent, you have to rule well, to stay in power. A continuous diet of blather makes thin gruel when not backed up by sound policy.