O’Hanlon of Brookings Sorts Out the Wrong Neocons From the Right Ones

by on July 24, 2008 4

Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution was a big promoter of the Iraq War (Glenn Greenwald has machicolated him definitively). And today he was on NPR talking about ideology. Reporter Scott Horsley, noting that McCain calls himself an idealist realist, had said that the word neocon has become “radioactive” in Washington. But O’Hanlon explained that there were wrong neocons and right neocons. The bad ones were the ones at the Pentagon who chose to do the war on the cheap, without enough forces etc. I guess he meant Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Shulsky et al. (God I love repeating those names!). The good ones, O’Hanlon was saying by implication, were the neocons who dreamed up the idea of going into Iraq in the first place. A great idea, badly executed. When is the media going to stop giving cover to the authors of this disaster? The next time someone says, There should have been more troops, ask them why they didn’t go in?

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Beyondoweiss, Iraq, Neocons

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

  1. LeaNder says:
    July 25, 2008 at 6:36 am

    "A great idea, badly executed."

    And line of thought, I instinctively hated the first time I saw it. It distracts attention from the central question: Was it legitimate to start the war? Was it legitimate to blow Saddam's real, supposed or alleged connections with terrorism out of all proportions?

    As it is a central human flaw, its always others who are guilty, if something goes wrong.

    There is a huge risk in preemption based on flawed evidence, it may create exactly what it allegedly fights. Justice no doubt is an essential in universal ethics.

  2. Joachim Martillo says:
    July 25, 2008 at 7:31 am

    Greenwald writes:

    Twenty years from now, the Michael O'Hanlons and Ken Pollacks and various Kagan Family members of today are going to be viewed the way the Robert McNamaras of the Vietnam era came to be perceived: as coddled, sheltered monsters who — from a safe and sterile distance — viewed and endlessly cheered on "war" as some abstract, intellectualized and fun game to play at think tank parties, totally oblivious to the savagery and havoc it wreaked on other people's lives. Perhaps in old age, they'll write some self-flagellating, McNamara-like mea culpa. But nobody else needs to wait until then to describe what they actually are.

    Why wait for self-flagellation? The Bush administration thanks to the efforts of the Jabotinskian and Friedmanite intelligentsia (Neocons and Neoliberals) has put in place an excellent structure to make sure people like O'Hanlon, Kristol, Feith, Dershowitz, Wolfowitz, Adelson, Addington, Lieberman, Cheney, etc. are properly flagellated in the near future.

    These guys also believe in extraordinary rendition and torture. (Remember Friedman loved Pinochet's methods.)

    I am sure Syria or Iran would be happy to accommodate their beliefs and would welcome them as part of such a program once the new president takes office.

    Relations with Iran and Syria would almost certainly improve as a result, and getting rid of these guys would be good for both an Obama as well as for a McCain administration.

    Turning the architects of the project to undermine the Constitution over to Iran or Syria would have a salutory prophylactic effect.

    It would be a long time for another psychopathic intelligentsia advocated torture or extraordinary rendition.

  3. charles Keating says:
    July 25, 2008 at 5:27 pm

    Let me know if the impeachment hearings today, replayed on c-span tonight, make into your mainstream media. If you watch c-span, note that our congress people cannot accuse BushCo directly, so they will use terms like "the executvie branch" etc–this a holdover from the same law forbidding direct verbal attacks on the King of England.

    http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Hundreds_gather_for_imperial_presidency_hearing_0725.html

  4. samuel burke says:
    July 25, 2008 at 8:50 pm

    here are two members of the jewish zionist community playing interviewer and interviewe trying to goad the world into an iran hating frenzy…good ole fat fred kagan has been eating rather well lately it seems.

    let israel resolve its own friggin problems.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCeJby6NSVs

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