[BlackGriffen]

This thread is dedicated to seeing if the Bush League Voters around here can handle heat coming from the other end, courtesy Pat Buchanan (I think) et al.

First up to bat, we have Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (ret) with an inside glimpse of the Neocon Pentagon:

[...]My fellow escort and I chatted on the way back to our office about how the generals knew where they were going (most foreign visitors to the five-sided asylum don’t) and how the generals didn’t have to sign in. sorry, I just thought it was funny that she called the Pentagon that - BG
[...]
In my study of the neoconservatives, it was easy to find out whom in Washington they liked and whom they didn’t. They liked most of the Heritage Foundation and all of the American Enterprise Institute. They liked writers Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. To find out whom they didn’t like, no research was required. All I had to do was walk the corridors and attend staff meetings. There were several shared prerequisites to get on the Neoconservative List of Major Despicable People, and in spite of the rhetoric hurled against these enemies of the state, most really weren’t Rodents of Unusual Size. Most, in fact, were retired from a branch of the military with a star or two or four on their shoulders. All could and did rationally argue the many illogical points in the neoconservative strategy of offensive democracy—guys like Brent Scowcroft, Barry McCaffrey, Anthony Zinni, and Colin Powell.

I was present at a staff meeting when Deputy Undersecretary Bill Luti called General Zinni a traitor. At another time, I discussed with a political appointee the service being rendered by Colin Powell in the early winter and was told the best service he could offer would be to quit. I heard in another staff meeting a derogatory story about a little Tommy Fargo who was acting up. Little Tommy was, of course, Commander, Pacific Forces, Admiral Fargo. This was shared with the rest of us as a Bill Luti lesson in civilian control of the military. It was certainly not civil or controlled, but the message was crystal.
[...]
At one point, an answer included the “fact” that the United States military would physically secure the geographic border of Iraq. Curious, I checked the length of the physical border of Iraq. Then I checked out the length of our own border with Mexico. Given our exceptional success in securing our own desert borders, I found this statement interesting.

Soon after, I was out-processed for retirement and couldn’t have been more relieved to be away from daily exposure to practices I had come to believe were unconstitutional. War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to Congress and the American people for this one were so inaccurate and misleading as to be false. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq—more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional sheikdoms, maintaining OPEC on a dollar track, and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision. These more accurate reasons could have been argued on their merits, and the American people might indeed have supported the war. But we never got a chance to debate it. [...]

Next up, Charles Goyette, talk radio DJ in Phoenix (thus a member of the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy"):

“Imagine these startling headlines with the nation at war in the Pacific six months after Dec. 7, 1941: “No Signs of Japanese Involvement in Pearl Harbor Attack! Faulty Intelligence Cited; Wolfowitz: Mistakes Were Made.”

Or how about an equally disconcerting World War II headline from the European theater: “German Army Not Found in France, Poland, Admits President; Rumsfeld: ‘Oops!’, Powell Silent; ‘Bring ’Em On,’ Says Defiant FDR.”
[...]
But the case for war was a shape-shifter, skillfully morphing into a new rationale as quickly as the old one failed to withstand scrutiny. For a year before the war, I scrambled to keep up with the latest incarnations of the neocon case. Most were pitifully transparent and readily exposed. (Besides the aluminum tubes and the trailers that had Bush saying, “Gotcha,” does anyone remember those death-dealing drones? Never have third-world, wind-up, rubber-band, balsa-wood airplanes instilled so much fear in so many people.)
Still, my management didn’t like my being out of step with the president’s parade of national hysteria, and the war-fevered spectators didn’t care to be told they were suffering illusions. So after three years, I was replaced on my primetime talk show by the Frick and Frack of Bushophiles, two giggling guys who think everything our tongue-tied president does is “Most excellent, dude!” I have been relegated to the later 7–10 p.m. slot, when most people, even in a congested commuting market like Phoenix, are already home watching TV.
[...]
I have been a Republican precinct committeeman; my county Republican Party elected me its “Man of the Year” in 1988; I have written speeches for conservative candidates and office holders; and I have been employed by statewide and national political organizations and campaigns, including the National Conservative Political Action Committee. Despite my disappointment in Goldwater for not supporting Reagan, I was there when a small band of the faithful—no more than four or five of us—gathered for a potluck dinner to support the creation of a brand-new public-policy think tank named after “Mr. Conservative.” The enterprise blossomed, and I was honored several months ago to serve as Master of Ceremonies for the Goldwater Institute’s 15th Anniversary Gala.
[...]
Criticism of Bush and his ever-shifting pretext for a first-strike war (what exactly was it we were pre-empting anyway?) has proved so serious a violation of Clear Channel’s cultural taboo that only a good contract has kept me from being fired outright. Roxanne Cordonier, a radio personality at Clear Channel’s WMYI 102.5 in Greenville, S.C., didn’t have it as good. Cordonier, who worked under the name Roxanne Walker, was the South Carolina Broadcasters Association’s 2002 Radio Personality of the Year. That apparently wasn’t enough for Clear Channel. Her lawsuit against the company alleges that she was belittled on the air and reprimanded by her station for opposing the invasion of Iraq. Then she was fired.
[...]
I’ve seen how war fever infects a people. And I was in a no-win situation, with an audience pre-screened by virtue of 11 hours a day of screaming war frenzy—unlistenable for the uninfected—that surrounded my time slot. So I knew there would be a personal price for opposing the war, and I was prepared to pay it. But as a lover of the rough and tumble of public debate and the contest of ideas, I am disappointed at what is happening in my industry. At least at Clear Channel, there’s only one word for the belief that talk radio is still a fair and fearless search for the truth: “Un-Bull-ieveable!”

Next up, an overall ideological grilling of the Neocons, courtesy Glaes Ryn, titled Appetite for Destruction:Neoconservatives have more in common with French revolutionaries than American traditionalists. -
:
-contd in post 2-

[BlackGriffen]

During his recent visit to England, President Bush enunciated a “forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.” He pledged, “We will consistently challenge the enemies of reform and confront the allies of terror.” The speech was yet another sign that a new and hugely ambitious foreign policy, conceived by intellectuals many years ago, is being implemented.

For those who have been the most influential in shaping the Bush administration’s foreign policy, the war in Iraq was not a response to 9/11. It was a step in the execution of a long-standing plan to expand America’s role in the world, especially the Middle East. In his speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, on Nov. 6, the president referred to the invasion of Iraq as “a watershed event in the global democratic revolution” and said that America needs to give the Middle East its full attention for decades to come. He not only affirmed the mentioned strategy, but also employed the ideological language in which sweeping political reconstruction had been justified from the beginning.

Though centering at present on the Middle East, this agenda is global. It existed in broad outline even before the end of the Cold War. With the implosion of the Soviet empire, Americans who had seen a need for resisting communism broke into two camps. Many liberals and conservatives felt that a national emergency was over and that America could now afford to reduce its military and other international commitments. But some of the most ardent Cold Warriors sharply disagreed. According to them, the new historical situation presented the United States, now the only superpower, with an opportunity: America should assert its power throughout the world in behalf of democracy and capitalism. It should remove questionable regimes and other obstacles to a better world.
[...]
According to proponents of this ideology, the United States is based on universal principles and has a higher mission than all other countries. America is unique, the hope of all humanity. It should bring its principles to the rest of the world—a belief that gave rise to an ideology of American empire. Having originated among intellectuals, the ideology reached political and journalistic maturity in the 1980s. Neoconservatives held key positions in the Reagan and Bush I administrations and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the Clinton administration. In the Bush II administration, they have wholly dominated foreign policy-making.
[...]
This [universalistic] kind of thinking bears a strong resemblance to that of the Jacobins, who inspired and led the French Revolution of 1789. Their ideology was summed up in the slogan “liberty, equality, and fraternity.” Equally universalistic and monopolistic, they demanded that other countries change their ways. Good stood against evil. Europe was thrown into protracted wars and upheaval.
[...]
The new Jacobins are intent on global reconstruction and rooting out “evil.” After 9/11 President Bush became their chief spokesman. Paradoxically, in his election campaign, Bush had repeatedly promised a more “humble” foreign policy and a move away from interventionism and nation building. If he had meant what he said then, 9/11 brought a metamorphosis. Neo-Jacobins who had worried that Bush might be an obstacle to their plans were delighted by the ease with which he could be converted to their cause. He adopted the neo-Jacobin rhetoric of his speechwriters with evident relish, explicitly committing America to armed world hegemony, portraying it as the savior nation: “There is a value system that cannot be compromised, and that is the values we praise. And if the values are good enough for our people, they ought to be good enough for others.”

Bush’s conversion, if indeed there was one, was no accident. Especially since the end of the Cold War, neo-Jacobin ideology had spread quickly through think tanks, magazines, newspapers, the electronic media, and the two main parties, especially the Republicans. The ideology had long been propounded by a profusion of writers and activists such as Robert Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, and William Kristol. In the president’s inner circle, it had a leading spokesman in Paul Wolfowitz. One of Wolfowitz’s old professors was Allan Bloom, with whom he had stayed in touch. Politicians and businessmen like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had been drawn into the neo-Jacobin ambit through protracted cultivation.

The new Jacobins are not content to promote and protect American and Western interests and to nurture a common ground with other countries. They have a panacea and insist that the world adopt it. Virtually all Americans recognized the necessity of an emphatic response to 9/11. The reason this atrocity did not elicit focused action against the perpetrators but became instead the justification for war against Iraq and a worldwide battle against terrorism is that neo-Jacobin intellectuals and activists had long prepared to launch such a policy. After 9/11 they could push through policies whose full implications were not obvious to their less ideological bosses. President Bush had the excuses that he confronted wholly unanticipated and unsettling circumstances and was not an intellectual and historian able fully to understand the cause that he adopted.
[...]
For Christians as for the Greeks, pride is the most dangerous human weakness as it threatens to unleash the desire for power and invites nemesis. The push for American empire is contemporaneous with a gargantuan accumulation and centralization of federal power and a precipitous erosion of traditional American checks on power. This should surprise no one. Those who assume that they know better than all others consider themselves entitled to power. As if by sheer coincidence, their every new declaration of human need, in America or the world, places more power in their hands and undermines the ability of others to shape their own lives.

I suggest that you read the rest of that one. I practically wanted to quote the whole thing.

Admittedly, the site these come from is probably paid for by a Bush opponent (Buchanan), but let's see if the Bush League Voters can shoot down the message instead of the messenger this time, mmm'kay?

BlackGriffen

[BlackGriffen]

This just in lifting quotes from a paper published by the Army War College:

A report published by the Army War College calls the Bush administration's war on terrorism unfocused and says the invasion of Iraq was "a strategic error."

The research paper by Jeffrey Record, a professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, said the president's strategy "promises much more than it can deliver" and threatens to spread U.S. military resources too thin. Record also wrote that Saddam Hussein's Iraq did not present a threat to the United States and was a distraction from the war on terrorism.

Record is a visiting professor at the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pa. The paper was published last month by the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute.
[...]
Record's report concludes that the war on terrorism is too widespread and should focus on al-Qaeda and other terrorist threats to the United States.

"The United States may be able to defeat al-Qaeda, but it cannot rid the world of terrorism, much less evil," Record writes.

Ouch.

BlackGriffen

[Nonsuch]

Here's some of the latest ...

From the pinko-commie NYT (free subscription required):

"At this point, I think that conservatives sold out their small government philosophy and replaced it with a philosophy of whatever will get them re-elected," said Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization. "Neither party is committed to smaller government and less spending. Those who are still standing for fiscal conservatism are frustrated."

That frustration is starting to boil over, and as Mr. Bush prepares his budget for 2005, fiscal conservatives on Capitol Hill are "searching for ways to stop the spending spree," Mr. Riedl said.

Several proposals are floating around. In October, Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, introduced the Family Budget Protection Act, which would require Congress to meet budget targets to eliminate the federal deficit in five years. Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, wants to reform the government's accounting practices to provide a more accurate picture of federal spending.

Some actual conservatives still lurking in the GOP ... who knew?