I keep meaning to do a post on Robert McNamara's very long persecuted old age and what that example holds for the neoconservatives, who if Richard Perle keeps his lipids down in the south of France, and Elliott Abrams gets ahold of his blood pressure, face an unending groundhogs day of roasting conscience over the Iraq error. Scott McConnell beat me to it:
I am always somewhat interested in the amount of angst the Vietnam war caused Robert McNamara-- though he never could quite unambiguously admit he was a key originator of tragic bloody mistake.
Regrets over Vietnam was a major factor in the final decomposition of the Wasp establishment--those men who had supported the war lost their faith in it, and in many cases found it breaking their their relationships with their sons and daughters, even their marriages. Out of it grew an ambivalence about power which the neocons soon capitalized upon--harping on the Wasp "failure of nerve" and presenting themselves as tough-minded enough to lead America during a seemingly dangerous passage of the Cold War. It was an attractive posture--or it certainly seemed attractive to me when I was twenty five or so.
I wonder if Paul Wolfowitz suffers from the same sleepless nights. I doubt it, but don't rule it out entirely. I'm unaware of any major "second thoughts" from the neocons over Iraq, though Lawrence Kaplan has written the war was a mistake, and reached out to some antiwar writers (Andy Bacevich, me) in the magazine he edits, World Affairs.
This is an excellent, short take on McNamera's unfortunate legacy, and the angle of how it marked the demise of WASP power in America is worth a much longer article.
'I'm unaware of any major "second thoughts" from the neocons over Iraq' In order to have second thoughts, they would need to have had first thoughts.
" It was an attractive posture–or it certainly seemed attractive to me when I was twenty five or so." Oh my fucking god! You're kidding, right? The basic chickenhawkery of the whole neo-con bullshit didn't repel you? Wow.
Will the Iraq war be the Waterloo for the Jewish establishment, which has replaced the WASP establishment? It doesn’t appear so. In fact, the Jewish establishment is stronger than ever, now comprising 20% of the Democrats in the US Senate. (Chalk up yet another with the addition of chicken hawk Al Franken http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=2656 ). The genius of the Dems is to get elected by employing "the party of peace, change, and social justice" rhetoric, and then ratcheting ever tighter a murderous State authoritarianism that surpasses that of those they replace. The Bolsheviks followed a similar pattern in the early Soviet Union, and un-coincidentally were also hugely disproportionately Jewish. The Zionists also followed a similar pattern before showing their true faces in the Levant (although in retrospect and absent media spin, they’re true faces were revealed with the Nakba).
As the Jewish community did not encourage the US to go to war, there is no reason to think it was any way the fault of the Jewish community. Of course, antisemites don't see it that way.
What Ed says is astute. It wasn't the whole Jewish community, just the heavily influential zionist moneybags and their umbrella AIPAC and all those other powerful Jewish organizations that sing the same song. In other words the organization Jewish community did so encourage; the other's were silent, in accord with the old tribal adage not to wash dirty linen in goy public. And you know it. This is still the case, although Phil records daily how some courageous Jews are standing up in public. Gentiles like W & M and Carter and McKinney stood up first. They learned more from the Holocaust than most Jews did.
@ Ismail, I believe it is the contention of this blog that the US Jewish establishment DID play a decisive role in taking the US into the Iraq war. This blog and other resources, IMO, have in fact PROVEN that. BTW, I do distinguish between “the Jewish community” and “the Jewish establishment,” the latter of which is largely an apparatus of political Judaism and Zionism. You, on the other hand, attempt to conflate them all in order to tar opponents as anti-Semites — an old Zionist trick. And you’ve also conflated political Islam and Islamic terrorism with the entirety of the Islamic people — an old racist trick.
this is why it helps to have psychopaths in political power… when they retire none of it phases them and they probably think they did everyone a great service…
Ed you are a moron. Norm Coleman is also a Jew. Unfortunately, no seats were gained.
McNamara and the Neocons are hardly comparable. McNamara was a mistaken patriot. The Neocons are loyal to the Zionist Imperial System and not to the USA, but Ed is certainly right. Zionist subversives have more control over the US and world economy under Obama than they ever had under Bush. Controlling economic levers is far more important than dominating defense planning as anyone with half a brain in the DOD would admit. Anyway, I have two recent posts on Jewish Taqiya. They are conceptually relevant:
Not only do we control the world, we control your wife's cycle.
My message said, "chalk up yet another" [Jewish Democrat] in the US Senate. Coleman was a Republican. The percentage of Jewish Democrats in the Senate keeps growing. Jews are under 2% of the US, but 20% of the Dem Senate. There is only one black US Senator in the Democratic Party, even though African Americans are 13% of the country and an even higher percentage than that of Democrat voters. That's because the Democratic Party is Jewish supremacist/Zionists in its upper ranks, where decisions on who to run and throw money behind are made. Zionists prefer to see African Americans behind bars than in public office, which is why they ran McKinney our of office and locked her up in Israel. The racist upper ranks of the Democratic Party understands that most blacks won't be reliably Zionist/Jewish supremacist, so they discriminate against them.
Hello, we've been missing you.
If I had not had Bill Kristol as a TF, it might have taken me much longer to realize how delusional Neocons are. I remember thinking to myself after section, "What a psycho, I am sure glad this guy has no power and no influence!" From Zionist Infestation Causes US Incompetence:
You nailed ismail's identity and approach. He's a baby zionist.
thedhimmi, the ball is in your court. BYW what Ed says is hard fact. We are waiting…
We know Obama is a slave to Wall Street, and its instruments, the Fed Reserve and US Treasury. We are aware of what the early Rothschilds knew. Even Churchill knew it. Not to mention JFK. Hopefully the Jewish establishment will obtain its Karma, as it always has, eventually,,,
Well, you try; here's the least of what your type does, which should scare all Americans, courtesy of the Thors website: "The Rebbe seems to be referring to a discussion in which he participated along with Yitzchak Shamir and other Israeli government official and in which it was agreed that the Israeli negotiators would feign to negotiate with the Arabs in order dishonestly to convince the public and in particular Jews that Israel was engaging in peace talks in good faith. It is hard to give a better example of practicing taqiya (تقية) or kitman (كتمان), and as a Jewish religious scholar Schneerson would have been aware that the RAMBAM (Maimonides) gives permission to Jews to engage in prudential or precautionary dissimulation under various circumstances" Think Obama knows this? I mean, how deeply embedded it is in the AIPAC-Israeli approach to peace?