One of the reasons the neocons are despised is that they have not been forthcoming about their true agendas. As I have pointed out, Douglas Feith completely suppresses his ultra-Zionist history in his book War and Decision. Also, he states in that book that the Iraq war was all about defending America against the real threat of Saddam and Al-Qaeda–and that spreading democracy had nothing to do with it. “I did not think that a U.S. president could properly decide to go to war just to spread democracy.” His book several times disavows that this motivated him.
I don’t believe him. I think the neocons had transforming the Middle East as an agenda all the time. Writing two four years ago in the Harvard Israel Review, Feith’s son Daniel, then a Harvard student, praises the heck out of Israel and Benyamin Netanyahu, the Likud politician for whom Doug Feith once worked, and concludes his piece on a fairly triumphant note:
A successful war on terrorism could mean a lasting peace between Israel
and a new Palestinian leadership. This, combined with the possibility
of a democracy in Iraq having a domino effect in the Arab world, may
create conditions in which Israel need not deter its neighbors’
would-be aggression with military might.
This is standard neocon hogwash, from someone who seemingly wasn’t volunteering to fight that good war himself. Daniel Feith is piping it in 2006 2004, a year after the war began. (My belief that Daniel is Douglas Feith’s son is based on these facts: Daniel says he’s from Bethesda; that’s where Douglas Feith lives; and . Douglas Feith thanks a Daniel Feith in his
book’s acknowledgments.) My point here is that the domino theory of spreading democracy to make Israel safer–and to remove the imperative that Israel give up land to the Palestinians–is one that Doug Feith was espousing in 1996, and his son is espousing in 2006 eight years later. Now Feith claims this was far from his real motivation. Who do you believe?
Also: As Jacob Heilbrunn pointed out in his book, it is slightly pathetic that the neocons’ sons all seem to have taken a blood oath to carry on the battles of their fathers. Irving and Bill, Norman and John. Where is the oedipal rebellion? Where is the independence? It feels clonelike and automatic..
Thanks to Joachim Martillo for the tip.
