Media Matters has blasted Rachel Abrams for her xenophobic racist rant against Palestinians. Yesterday all my friends were saying, Can you imagine a Muslim uttering such invective, what would happen to her and her politically-connected husband? They’d be finished. Well maybe Rachel Abrams has hurt Elliott Abrams badly, after all. As they say in Israel and Palestine, Inshallah.
I’d note that today Iraq war supporter Leslie Gelb attacks the neocons as warmongerers, at the Daily Beast.
The other night on Chris Matthews, Dana Milbank was attacking them. So this is now the conventional wisdom (from folks who I’m guessing supported the neocon central project, the Iraq war). There was a time when people ran away from the word liberal. Now it’s a pox on neoconservatism. I welcome it.
Oh here is Leslie Gelb supporting the Iraq war for his career:
My initial support for the war [in Iraq] was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility. We ‘experts’ have a lot to fix about ourselves, even as we ‘perfect’ the media. We must redouble our commitment to independent thought, and embrace, rather than cast aside, opinions and facts that blow the common—often wrong—wisdom apart. Our democracy requires nothing less.
Being a neoconservative is suddenly what they used to call a CLM at Goldman, Sachs. (Career Limiting Move).
Update. Justin Logan at the National Interest on neoconservative career-making in Washington, titled, The Neocons Never Left
The irony here is that it was with the help of people like Leslie Gelb that the neocons took over the GOP establishment. When he was at the helm of the Council on Foreign Relations, Gelb brought in a real neocon’s neocon, Max Boot, to be a senior fellow, giving perhaps the most fervid neocon around the CFR stamp of approval—the imprimatur of the foreign-policy establishment. (It should also be acknowledged that Gelb himself supported the neocons’ Iraq project, shrugging afterward in the passive voice that his “initial support for the war was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility.”)
As Scott McConnell has pointed out, neoconservatism is a career. Or as Bill Kristol remarked in 2005, the neoconservatives have done such an excellent job building institutions and infrastructure for developing the next generation of neocons that “soon there are going to be more neoconservative magazines than there are neoconservatives.” There are dozens of twenty-something, thirty-something, forty-something and older neocons throughout Washington, working at think tanks, editorial pages, in government and elsewhere. I could probably count on two hands the number of youngish national-security types I know in town who I could strain to call realists. This imbalance among foreign-policy elites helps create the mistaken impression that there are lots of neoconservatives in America generally, which there aren’t. Neoconservatism really is a head without a body.
I think the most important thing to come from all of this is: Jews Can Be Racists.
For a long time racism among Jews was seen as defensive and non threatening – horrible things had happened to Jews especially in the 20th century, so who could blame them for being racist, clannish and suspicious of the goyim.
But the jews have long since “arrived” in America; and so, like any other “group” that has left the “protected class” people are beginning to demand of “the jews” what is demanded of, say, other white americans. No one wants to hear any justification of racism coming from a Scots-Irish guy from Boston, that his great grand parents were oppressed by the English is of no consequence to the present day. That dynamic is now unfolding for the American Jewish community – people dont really want to hear about oppression that took place generations ago, especially from the most wildly successful ethnic immigrant group in the history of the country.
In a way, being “able” to be labeled a racist is really the greatest acheivement in America, as “groups” are concerned – it means you have power and are totally enmeshed in society.
gelb:They’re back! The neoconservatives who gave America clueless, unpaid-for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a near doubling of military expenditures, during the Bush years have risen from their political graves. Someone, maybe a media tiring of President Obama’s interminable plight, pulled the stake from their heart.
problem is nobody ever drove a stake thru the heart of the neocons, they are still feasting off us.
i’d say the neocons are more like a body without a head, the proverbial bulls in the china shop, smashing things to bits because they can. f*ckin’ psychotics who never matured beyond the narcissism of adolescence..
Neoconvervatism, like Zionism, is a project to mainly benefit (right-wing, Likudnid) Jewish interests, but with the help of Gentiles as surrogates at times(like Bolton, a figurehead).
How do you protect Israel without alarmism about constant threats to the general population in a far-away land like America? Gelb is the last person to whine about something he has carefully and intentionally nurtured – without any real regrets other than a dutiful shrug.
Neoconveratism is actually neoliberalism, which is hawkish on foreign policy because that’s what good for Israel(who cares about America?)
These people are a small minority, but they’re giving Jews a bad name. It’s also interesting to note that Gelb is sensitive to this topic. He used Henry Jackson as the springboard on the topic, and then added John Bolton as a more recent example. Both non-Jews. I don’t think that unintentional; he surely knows what people think of when they hear neocon and he doesn’t want to remind them.
And I can’t blame him, if I was in his shoes. Nontheless, looking at his Wiki this is what I find:
National Security Network, on the board of directors of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, member of the board of directors of the Truman Scholarship program, board of directors of the Nixon Center and the advisory board of United Against Nuclear Iran.
Nixon Center is the only realist outlet, and I think he’s there not to burn any bridges. And do note the last group he is in.
He’s rooting for the neocons, but he wants to make sure to watch his back this time around. He surely understands what it looks like from the outside.
Nonetheless, check out Romney’s foreign affairs advisers; over half of them neocons, and in the most important working groups, more than 75 % in some instances. This is a man who wants to portray himself as ‘moderate’ but takes an extreme neocon angle to get elected. Why? Watch his donors.
http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/news/the-cost-of-israel-to-the-us/item/1041-romneys-foreign-policy-advisors-are-culled-from-the-pro-israel-community
This is some kind of theater. For every fire breathing Adams another so-called moderate makes his way beneath the proscenium to reassure us that every thing is going to be alright and we can return to our apathy.