Heilbrunn Retreats From the Ideas in His Book

In the Washington Post this Sunday, Jacob Heilbrunn tries to run away from his book on the neocons with an irresponsible piece called Five Myths about the Neocons… Three of the alleged myths are: The Neocons are Israeli Lackeys, The Neocons Had Too Much Power and Took Over Bush’s Brain, and The Neocons Have Been Discredited by the Iraq Debacle.

Heilbrunn is wrong about all three, and his language is full of defensiveness. On the first point, of course they are not Israeli lackeys. We on the left/right have not said this. What we have said, and what his book further demonstrates, is that that Israel is absolutely central to their view of the world, Israel’s problems in the 60s and 70s made them neoconservatives, and Israel’s security was a central goal of their planning for the debacle. Glenn Kessler, the WP diplomatic correspondent, anchors the last point when he writes in his Condi bio that the war was promoted as a way to help Israel. Heilbrunn is being disingenuous when he frames the issue in the way that he does. He says the neocons have sometimes been to the right of the Israeli government. Yes, they are Netanyahuites and Sharonites, Sharon’s vision of a greater Israel is one they have not abandoned. And let us be clear, this vision of theirs has a religious component. They are by and large Jews with biblical dreams about Israel as a Jewish state.

As to them having too much power, his whole book demonstrates that they did. Ideas are powerful. Now Heilbrunn wants to disavow the central message of his book. Did they abduct George Bush? No, Bush went willingly, and he and Cheney and Rums. deserve the largest blame for the debacle. But again, it was their powerful ideas; and who is this intellectual to disavow the power of ideas?

Finally, the war has absolutely discredited the neocons. Yes it is true that they have largely gotten away scotfree, and yes as Heilbrunn notes, Bill Kristol now has a platform at the NYT. I gather that the Times is frightened of the New York Post/Murdoch’s threat to demolish the New York Times–so the Times is running right. But I would argue that the neocons have been dealt a deathly blow. Yes they will be around for a while. But they will never have so much power again. No one will let them so close to the controls again. Even McCain, the captain of a divided party with a shattered base. I could be wrong about this judgment; I recognize that, and I am eternally optimistic…

The sidebar question here is, Why is Heilbrunn running away from his own findings? Why, because he has been embarrassed by some of the inevitable conclusions, as he was embarrassed even as he was writing the book. And so he peeled back from the plain thrust of his argument–that Israel and a parochial Jewish identity was central to these dreamers–and merely hinted at "cabals" and other stuff for the last 60, post-9/11 pages of a book whose scholarly strengths lay in the 50s-80s. In this event at the Nixon Center, Heilbrunn was addressed sharply for treating the neocons as Jews; while in Tim Noah’s review in the New York Times, he was mocked for being too wrapped up in the Jewish question. These are important signals to a writer to scale back his assertions. Self-censorship is alive and well.