Why No McClellan of the Neocons? Or the Clintons?

by on May 28, 2008 6
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Scott McClellan is a good man, is all I have to say. He's a whistleblower of a sort, he's put country ahead of party and chain-of-command. He even describes how Bush was converted to the neocon delusion, that peace in Jerusalem is on a road running thru Baghdad.

My big question is, Why haven't we seen a neocon defection of this scale? Why not a Clintonite defection? We Clinton-critics always waited for someone to bust out of that toxic White House and blow the whole story from bimbo suppression to the Travel Office. Didn't happen. I think the answer is, Bush is dead meat; while even as Bill left office, the Clintons were a going concern and plotting their own restoration; they offered a real future to a lot of people, and their adherents didn't want to blow it. They felt like they'd get congressional seats or appointments from the once and future king, and they were right. Bush has nothing to offer McClellan. Of course now that Clinton Inc. seems to be drying up, maybe we'll get the tell-alls. (Though I'd throw in the intimidation factor. What happened when Linda Tripp was about to go public? Monica left a list of the "body count" on her desk at the Pentagon, all the people who'd died being too close to the Clinton machine. Makes you think twice...)

As for the neocon defections, Fukuyama was halfhearted, and Scott McConnell was eloquent but he was never really a capo. The reason the neocons don't defect is they really are religious: true believers, with a Jewish-outsider overlay. I think Jacob Heilbrunn's failure to go for the jugular reflects Jewish prohibitions. But I'm hopeful. Some day we're going to get the full-on Whittaker Chambers...

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in American Jewish Community, Iraq, Neocons, US Politics

{ 6 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Stephen Frug says:
    May 28, 2008 at 2:18 pm

    …a good man, is all I have to say. He's a whistleblower of a sort, he's put country ahead of party and chain-of-command.

    Rather belatedly so. I sorta think that the time limit on "good man" has elapsed, and now he's just still competing for "not 100% complicit in the worst US Administration in history".

    SF

  2. peters says:
    May 28, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    He's a gentile. That's the big news I think. Look what happened to Carter and W&M. Who wants to have their life ruined? This means it's getting a bit safer to speak.

  3. Atomic Punk says:
    May 28, 2008 at 4:29 pm

    Would you put Paul O'Neill in that camp?

  4. Charles Keating says:
    May 28, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    According to the blurbs and pundits on cable TV he names Chaney, KR, and I forget the other, but another gentile, as
    key influences on Bush, who he describes as smart enough to be President, but totally lacking in imagination and, in affect, "intellectual curiousity." He says Bush's consultants for national security sold him a bill of goods he didn't question. Anybody have the book yet, or know more…..? Does he mention the names we on this blog all know, the neocon 24? Does he mention the involved thinktanks? Americans want to know….

    All input appreciated.

    Atomic Punk is right: He's (another) Gentile.

    He could have blew the insidfer whistle sooner, and in a less
    calculated way. But, I agree with Phil, his book is something to
    praise anyway.

    Next? Is there an insider patriot in the room?

  5. Ed says:
    May 28, 2008 at 7:10 pm

    "Why haven't we seen a neocon defection of this scale? Why not a Clintonite defection?"

    Both the ideological Left and Right are epically evil, but I have found the Right to historically be more honest about its intentions and in its follow through, whereas the Left is far more disingenuous and calculating. For example, Hitler basically announced to the world his ill-intent towards certain segments and countries in advance, openly threatened them along the way, and then followed through pretty much along the lines he had laid out, whereas Stalin and the Communists professed to be humanitarians seeking social justice and equality, and hid behind that smokescreen for decades as they quietly murdered millions.

    As Left-liberals, the Clintons followed the passive-aggressive Stalinist model, quietly killing some 500,000 Iraqis through sanctions without making a big stink about it, and sanctimoniously justifying their over-the-top, Christian-hatred motivated reaction to Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia with a lot of feel-good Leftist rhetoric about preventing ethnic-cleansing and genocide. In the case of Bush and Iraq, it was pretty clear to most shrewd observers that he was boldly using WMD and 9/11 as a pretext to invade, and was almost doing it with a nod and wink. Cocky, like Hitler. Only after things started going awry did he and his Neocon agitprops start desperately spinning humanitarian rationales and justifications for the invasion.

    Obviously, the Left has historically been more dangerous than the Right in the same way that a treacherous “friend” who will stab you in the back at the crucial moment is more dangerous than someone who you know to be your enemy, around whom you will always keep up your guard.

    This is why the Clintons are having so many problems today, and a weak point for the Democratic Congress that was elected by implying it would pull us out of the war: many liberals have figured out that most elite Democrats are shameless back-stabbers and Party hacks, who, like Stalin, have subordinated all their professed principles to the quest for power, but continue to mask their betrayals with humanitarian rhetoric and “progressive” promises.

    Fortunately for Democrats, the Trotskyite Neocons have brought this phony Left-wing humanitarian cover into the GOP, and so we have both parties in the two-party system operating in the Stalinist mode (a phenomenon that I call Red-fascist Washington); Stalinism is natural for the Left, but unnatural for the Right, and so will diminish voter turnout more in the latter.

    McClellan is like an honest Nazi coming clean in his memoirs. Notice, there were more honest Nazis who came clean after it all fell apart than there were Stalinists. In fact, many on the Left still believe the Communist lie. How many explicitly Nazi parties are alive and operating today, vs. how many Communist ones?

  6. 5 dancing shlomos says:
    May 28, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    "the Trotskyite Neocons"

    good write. too much for me to do more than skim. only problem i have is the use, by many, of " Trotskyite Neocons". i doubt the wolfowitzes, perles, ledeens, liebermans, feiths, zakheims, wurmsers, millers, et als, have a clue or care about trotsky. their jewish state is all they have in mind (plus a strong usa to provide for a strong israel and to destroy israel's hates).

    i call em jewcons – jews in usa camouflage conning america.