Iran and the Liberal Interventionists
By Edited by Michael Flynn February 1, 2012
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FEATURED ARTICLE
Whither the Liberal Interventionists?
By Jim Lobe
During the years preceding the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, several factions in U.S. politics came together to support an attack, creating tremendous public pressure for war. Under the banner of letterhead groups like the Project for the New American Century, neoconservatives, Christian Zionists, hardline nationalists, and liberal interventionists made common cause, arguing that a key aspect of the “war on terror” must be the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Today, as tensions over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program reach a crescendo, such a coalition appears far from coming together. In fact, some key liberals who supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq are pleading for caution. Read article.
FEATURED PROFILES
Peoples Muhajedin of Iran (MEK)
Although classified by the State Department as a terrorist organization, the MEK’s delisting has been the focus of an aggressive lobbying campaign supported by a host of high-profile public figures from across the U.S. political spectrum, including a crop of prominent neoconservatives.
A Casino magnate and key backer of U.S. and Israeli right-wing groups, Sheldon Adelson’s support for Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign has underscored the unprecedented power wealthy individuals have to influence the outcomes of elections since the Supreme Court’s controversial “Citizens United” ruling.
The track record of former Rep. Vin Weber, a policy adviser to Mitt Romney, includes supporting a number of pro-war advocacy campaigns, including those spearheaded by the Project for the New American Century.
Ethics and Public Policy Center
The post-Senate perch of Rick Santorum, EPPC sits at the crossroads of faith-based politics and hawkish neoconservativism.
Conservative author and sometime congressional candidate Kenneth Timmerman has a long history of pushing regime change in Iran and, more recently, a “clash of civilizations” narrative between Christendom and the Muslim Middle East.
Since stepping down from his NSC post and returning to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Ross has written on a number of issues close to his heart, like getting tough on Iran.
IPC advocates regime change in Iran by empowering opposition groups—by which it means the terrorist-designated MEK, not the Green Movement.
Foundation for Democracy in Iran
The Foundation for Democracy in Iran, whose president has alleged that Iran was involved in the 9/11 attacks, frequently attacks Iranian-Americans who don’t share its hawkish views about the Islamic Republic.
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Long a prominent member of the rightwing “pro-Israel” establishment, JINSA has floundered recently in the wake of funding difficulties and staff shake-ups.
Coalition for Democracy in Iran
Founded by AIPAC heavyweight Morris Amitay, the Coalition for Democracy in Iran is a defunct pressure group that helped push anti-Iran resolutions through Congress.
The Stanford University-based Hoover Institution has served for decades as an outside-the-beltway home for Republican Party apparatchiks and as an important source of militarist policy proposals.
Affiliated with Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, Family Security Matters offers hawkish, anti-Islamic rhetoric under the guise of “empowering” Americans and protecting families.
Failed 2008 presidential candidate and Iraq war booster Fred Thompson has become one of the latest GOP notables to endorse Newt Gingrich for president in 2012.
Boot would have the United States bomb Iran even while admitting that such a policy would ultimately fail.
Muravchik, a neoconservative ideologue based at the School of Advanced International Studies, has longed pushed for a U.S. attack on Iran, including back in 2006, when he argued in Foreign Policy that Bush would have to bomb the country “before leaving office.”
Now based at the right-wing Middle East Forum, Rosen is a former pioneering AIPAC lobbyist who was indicted for passing Pentagon secrets to the Israeli government.
Charles Hill is a former diplomat who has used his Foreign Service experience to craft a worldview friendly to neoconservatives.
ALSO NEW ON RIGHT WEB
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U.S. policymakers worry that Israel might attack Iran without giving prior warning to Washington.
Iran’s Relations with Latin America Less Than Meets the Eye
In contrast to assertions from U.S. policymakers about a Persian menace emerging in the American neighborhood, Iran has only weak and superficial ties to Latin America.
Egypt Follows Israel, Eyeing U.S. Aid without Pre-Conditions
Egypt and Israel may be at a crossroads in their relations, but each is violating the terms of its U.S. military assistance.
Dress them up in black, put some Goth makeup on them, give them a name like The Apocalyptics, and the GOP candidates for president would fit right in with the head-banger crowd.
Less Counter-Insurgency, More Asia in New U.S. Strategy
President Obama’s “strategic shift” from counter-insurgency in the Middle East to force projection in the Asia-Pacific has frustrated hawks and doves alike.
LETTERS
EDITOR’S NOTE: At Right Web we frequently receive emails that are addressed to people profiled on our website, as well as emails that presume we share the ideological persuasion of these people. We have included some such emails in this issue of Right Web News, deleting the names of the writers of those letters.
Dear Michael Goldfarb,
I am a conservative who shares many of the beliefs you do about our country, Israel, patriotism, and concern for the future of our country. There was an interesting article today about your starting a conservative online website to combat the Center for American Progress site. Let me make a suggestion, self serving though the suggestion may be…
Lease our domain name eUS.com for your new onsite endeavor. (Go to www.eUS.com for info.) eUS.com embodies just the qualities you want for your site: easy to remember and input, jump-starts your marketing efforts, and provides top-of-mind familiarity.
I believe your new venture is both needed and important. We will work with you on a lease rate.
Please contact me to discuss this further.
*******
I've read that John Bolton has written that Romney is a conservative & consequently should be supported by conservative voters. If this is accurate, Bolton has a vastly different understanding of what defines a conservative than I. I'm a practicing Catholic, pro-life, NRA, a retired WIA Viet-Nam war veteran & registered Republican who absolutely despises Romney & never, ever, will vote for he a political weathervane. Point of fact, if Romney takes the GOP nomination, or if someone else does & chooses Romney as his VP running mate, I intend to vote 3rd party or perhaps even for Obozo in my effort to deprive Romney of office. IMO the GOP establishment has disgraced & discredited itself by supporting Romney.
Captain, 101st Airborne (retired)
Colorado Springs
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Good Day.
I was reading the latest update of Center for Security Policy. I was struck by the informed writing within this piece. What also struck me is that the update presented a one-sided view of American neo-conservatism; that view was primarily from the 'right-wing' of the political spectrum. I contend that the neoconservatives are a class unto themselves; that 'left-wing' and 'right-wing' politics has nothing to do with neoconservatism.
If we dig deeper into neoconservative history, we see its strong connections with Trotskyism and Trotskyism's desire to transform the world into a utopian socialist superstate. Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, otherwise known as Leon Trotsky, saw socialism as compatible with those societies that were socially-politically-economically developed. The socialist experiment in Russia was doomed to failure as there were no pre-existing democratic structures within the goverment that pre-existed the Soviet Union, and Russia was culturally, politically, and economically backwards. The rise of despotism was inevitable as the socialist movement became Lenin's and Stalin's movements. Rather than the focus upon the welfare of the people, these phoney socialist 'republics' were despot-centric, in a parallel manner as the Czarist regime that was overthrown.
That being said, Trotskyism came to the United States in the 1920's and 1930's under the guise of liberal/progressive politics. Trotskyism leaked into the domestic and foreign interventionism of the FDR administrations. Trotskyist beliefs had their genesis in the post-WW I Woodrow Wilson Administration, when he welcomed an independent Federal Reserve Bank that was controlled by foreign banking interests, as it is today, and when he ushered the League of Nations into a web of entangling alliances with other global nation-states and their interests. The Trotskyists were rabidly anti-Soviet, and anti-communist (as it was practiced in the Soviet Union). In a sense, the Trotskyists were to the Communists as the Fabian Socialsists were to the Fascists/Nazis.
However, the promotion of global 'democracy' by interventionist military policies was placed into first gear by the New Deal, FDR Democrats. These military interventions continued through the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I/Bush II, Clinton, and Obama Administrations. Note, neoconservative interventionists began their careers within the Democrat Party of the New Deal. When George McGovern took the Democrat Party into a mode of pacifism and open challenge to the military policies of Johnson (which were pro-Israel too), the neoconservatives began to bail out, migrating to the Republican Party. Domestic politics do not matter for Neoconservatives, other than the fact that Republicans and Democrats are different sides of the same coin and hell-bent upon oppressing the people with massive taxes (that pay either for social programs or military interventions, or both), stagnant wages, and stripping away the people's civil liberties without so much as a Constitutional Amendment to accomplish those ends (as that would raise too much awareness among the people as to what is really happening to them). It is no coincidence that neoconservatives are enamored with everything 'Israel.' The American Trotskyists were aligned with the Russian 'Menshavik Internationalists', and they were overwhelmingly favored a pro-Israeli policy after the 1967 War in that region. The New Left of liberals who disavowed military interventionism were scorned by the neoconservatives/pro-Zionists. Norman Podhoretz's magazine Commentary of the American Jewish Committee, originally a journal of the liberal left, became a major voice for neoconservatives in the 1970s.
In a (2004) article, Michael Lind also wrote, “Neoconservatism… originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry ('Scoop') Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves 'paleoliberals.' [After the end of the Cold War]… many 'paleoliberals' drifted back to the Democratic center… Today's neocons are a shrunken remnant of the original broad neocon coalition. Nevertheless, the origins of their ideology on the left are still apparent. The fact that most of the younger neocons were never on the left is irrelevant; they are the intellectual (and, in the case of William Kristol and John Podhoretz, the literal) heirs of older ex-leftists.” Of interest, neoconservatives Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and Richard Perle, who were once Democrats who supported Democratic Senator Henry (Scoop) Jackson in his failed 1972 and 1976 presidential campaigns, shifted their neoconservative support tto Ronald Reagan. We all know that Reagan was a Republican hawk who promised to confront Soviet expansionism, just the aims of American Troskyist neoconservatives.
One other well known 'neoconservative' is Jeanne Kirkpatrick. In many ways she was the American answer to Britains PM Thatcher. However, Kirkpatrick joined the Young People's Socialist League (1907) of the Socialist Party of America. Her grandfather had helped to found the Populist and Socialist Parties in Oklahoma. As a political scientist, she supported the campaigns of former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey. Along with Humphrey, she was close to Henry M. Jackson, who ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 1972 and 1976. She was opposed to the candidacy of George McGovern. In 1976, she helped to found the Committee on Present Danger for the purpose of warning Americans against the Soviet Union's growing military power and the dangers of the SALT II treaty. She also served on the Platform Committee for the Democratic Party in 1976. Her socialist credentials are not the whimsy of an impressionable woman. Her family had long held these views, and she apparently navigated the political system of the United States, presumably with the help of fellow Trotskyist neoconservatives, to rise to the heights of her power in foreign policy making.
So, in closing, neoconservatism has nothing to do with true conservatism, or 'right wing' politics. Neoconservatism has its roots in radical socialist global interventionist ideology, and it has brought the US to its knees. I am a Libertarian Socialist. Trotskyism/neoconservatism lends itself to authoritarian repression in the name of the public good.
Thanks,
Thomas Lane
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I read Frank Gaffney's article in the Washington Times and like him, I support a strong military and dealing from strength on foreign policy, etc etc. However, like many conservatives and liberals, Gaffney does NOT mention the people who really control American foreign policy. THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS and relative groups like the Trilaterals, etc etc. While the CFR has people who are Democrats and GOP, the CFR has been promoting a internationalist ONE WORLD future with international socialism as the economics and system. If you want proof, read FOREIGN AFFAIRS, a publication by the CFR. Look at our history. We have had NO WIN wars since Korea and WW 2 was a mistake because FDR (CFR member) gave away eastern Europe, Manchuria and North Korea to the Soviets. The Gulf Wars are no win wars as well. We may agree or disagree with Huntsman and Paul on various issues but being critics of our foreign policy is more honest than the CFR.
Sam Taranto—-conservative since the 1960s
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