How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency: Where the Right Went Wrong by Patrick J. Buchanan
Book Review
Where the Right Went Wrong by Patrick J. Buchanan
First Published in 2004 by Thomas Dunne Books
This Revised Edition Published in 2005
“In a Presidential debate with Al Gore, Bush had said:
’One way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, we do it this way, so should you….The United states must be humble…humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course.’
This was the conservative the nation had elected president.
But at West Point, humility had yielded to hubris. ‘The twentieth century ended with a single surviving model of human progress,’ the president told the cadets. ‘The requirements of freedom apply fully to…the entire Islamic world.’"
How did the transformation of Bush from an isolationist to empire-builder happen? In another superb book (see my review of State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America), Pat Buchanan details how the neoconservatives influenced Bush, in his judgement, to overreact to 9/11 and attack Iraq. The focus of the book is on the failures of Bush's foreign policy, but Buchanan also analyzes what he sees as huge domestic problems: the foreign trade deficit and uncontrolled government spending.
With respect to the Iraq war, Buchanan writes that the neoconservatives are influential advisers in the Bush administration as well as leading journalists who are war mongers and Zionists.
"A list of the Middle East regimes that Podhoretz, Bennett, Ledeen, Netanyahu, and the Wall Street Journal regarded as targets for destruction by America thus included Algeria, Libay, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Authroity and ‘militant Islam.’ On this list is every enemy of Israel Feith and Perle identified for Netanyahu to confront or attack in ‘A Clean Break; A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’ in 1996.
Cui Bono? Who would benefit from these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America—save oil, which the Arabs must sell to us to survive? Who would benefit from a ‘war of civilizations’ with Islam? Who, other than these neoconservatives and Ariel Sharon?"
The problem with this view, writes Buchanan, is that it is not in America's geopolitical interest to attack these regimes. Furthermore, he sees the administration and the media not asking the right questions as to why so many people in the Middle East hate America.
"‘They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government,’ President Bush told Congress. ‘They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.’
... With due respect, these answers insult the intelligence of a second-grader. Did the Japanese attack us at Pearl Harbor because we were free, rich, good , and had low marginal tax rates? What is it about us Americans that we so often lack for what the poet Robert Burns said was the greatest gift the gods can give us, ‘to see ourselves as others see us.’
We are not hated for who we are. We are hated for what we do. It is not our principles that have spawned pandemic hatred of America in the Islamic world. It is our policies.
Nothing justifies the mass murders of 9/11. Nothing. Nor need we hear out the extended plea bargains of those who slaughtered our countrymen. They deserve the rough justice they are receiving. But now that the Taliban have gone down, bin Laden is in hiding, and Iraq is occupied, we need to reflect on why Islamic peoples despise the United States so much they wish to see us dead or gone. If we wish to avert a clash of civilizations, from which we have nothing to gain, we need to listen to what they say—not what we say—about America."
Buchanan further views Bush's "War on Terror" as a huge mistake. He quotes Sir Peter Ustinov, “Terrorism is the war of the poor, and War is the terrorism of the rich.” And William Pfaff, “It was a fateful mistake for Bush to have declared his ‘war against terrorism,’ after Sept. 11, 2001. That made it a war that can’t be won.” He continues:
"Terrorism is a tactic, a technique, a weapon that fanatics, dictators, and warriors have resorted to through history... To Zbigniew Brzezinski, declaring a war on terror after 9/11 made about as much sense as it would have for Britain and France, after Hitler’s lightning invasion of Poland, to have declared war on blitzkrieg."
He analyzes the roots and effects of terror throughout history, including state terror (Stalin, Hitler, Mao), revolutionary terror (Irish uprising against British, Jewish uprising against British), war terror (Romans vs. Carthage, Red Army rampage across Europe), and anarchic terror (assassination attempts on tsars in pre-Bolshevik Russia). Terrorism, writes Buchanan, can be successful:
Empires, republics, dictators, rebels, revolutionaries, anarchists have all used terror, and terrorism has helped to win wars, consolidate tyranny, expel colonial powers, and advance national independence.
...
...[w]hile Arab armies have rarely defeated a Western army, Arab and Islamic revolutions that employ terror tactics against Westerners have rarely failed. They effected the ouster of the French from Algeria, the British from Palestine, the United States from Beirut, the Israelis from Lebanon, the Soviets from Afghanistan. Why should Islamic revolutionaries not think the same can be done to the Americans in Iraq and to the kings, sultans, and sheiks of Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Kuwait?
...
And if Iraqi insurgents and Islamic warriors are willing to die indefinitely to drive us out of that country and their world, the probability is that they will one day succeed.
Pat Buchanan advocates a much more humble and modest foreign policy (as stated by Bush prior to 9/11):
But what neoconservatives are about is the antitheses of strategy. They do not want to narrow America’s list of enemies to those who attack us. They want to broaden the theater of war and multiply our enemies, to escalate ‘the Firemen’s War’ into a war for American hegemony. Should Bush adopt their strategy, it would be us against the Islamic world with Europe neutral and Asia rooting for our humiliation. Thus, it needs to be said: It is vital to the defeat of Al Qaeda, the security of our homeland, and our critical interests in an Arab world of twenty-two nations and an Islamic world of fifty-seven nations from Morocco to Malaysia that we not let our war on terror be conflated and morphed into the neoconservatives’ war for empire. If we do, we will lose our war, isolate American, and bankrupt our republic.
‘Often clever, never wise,’ was Russell Kirks’ final verdict on the neocons. As scholar Claes Ryn writes, in temperament, they are often the antithesis of conservative and call to mind the Jacobins of the French Revolution:
'[O]nly great conceit should inspire a dream of armed world hegemony. The ideology of benevolent American empire and global democracy dresses up a voracious appetite for power. It signifies the ascent to power of a new kind of American, one profoundly at odds with that older type who aspired to modesty and self-restraint.'
The neoconservatives are marinated in conceit, and their hubris may yet prove their undoing. And ours as well. For as Burke wrote to the prideful rulers of the British Empire at the apex of their ascendancy,
‘Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precaution against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our power and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded….We may say we shall not abuse this astonishing and unheard of power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin.’
The other issues Buchanan tackles are the foreign trade deficit and the seemingly never-ending increase in government spending. He views the former as economic treason and the latter as abomination to any true 'Reaganesque' conservative.
"Conservatives, said Ronald Reagan, believe in the values of 'work, family, faith, community, and country.’ But free trade puts the demands of consumers ahead of the duties of citizens, the unbridled freedom of the individual in the marketplace ahead of all claims of family, community, and country. Free trade says what is best for me, now , at the cheapest price, is what is best for America. That is not conservatism.
Free trade does to a nation what alcohol does to a man. Saps him first of his vitality and energy, then of his independence, then of his life. America today exhibits the symptoms of a nation passing into late middle age.
We spend more than we earn. We consume more than we produce. The evangelists of globalism who once promised us our trade deficits would disappear now assure us that trade deficits do not matter.
The truth: Free trade is the serial killer of American manufacturing and the Trojan Horse of world government. It is the primrose path to the loss of economic independence and national sovereignty. Free trade is a bright, shining lie.
...
Government in the United States, state, local, and federal, today consumes 34 percent of GSP. In the absence of an unanticipated epidemic of fiscal courage, that figure will rise toward the 48 percent that is the norm in the EU. And because Europe’s welfare states are so vast, Western Europeans pay 40 percent of their income in taxes, have incomes that are 40 percent lower than ours, and unemployment rates twice as high. That is where America’s glide path is taking this generation."
Where the Right Went Wrong by Patrick J. Buchanan
First Published in 2004 by Thomas Dunne Books
This Revised Edition Published in 2005
“In a Presidential debate with Al Gore, Bush had said:
’One way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, we do it this way, so should you….The United states must be humble…humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course.’
This was the conservative the nation had elected president.
But at West Point, humility had yielded to hubris. ‘The twentieth century ended with a single surviving model of human progress,’ the president told the cadets. ‘The requirements of freedom apply fully to…the entire Islamic world.’"
How did the transformation of Bush from an isolationist to empire-builder happen? In another superb book (see my review of State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America), Pat Buchanan details how the neoconservatives influenced Bush, in his judgement, to overreact to 9/11 and attack Iraq. The focus of the book is on the failures of Bush's foreign policy, but Buchanan also analyzes what he sees as huge domestic problems: the foreign trade deficit and uncontrolled government spending.
With respect to the Iraq war, Buchanan writes that the neoconservatives are influential advisers in the Bush administration as well as leading journalists who are war mongers and Zionists.
"A list of the Middle East regimes that Podhoretz, Bennett, Ledeen, Netanyahu, and the Wall Street Journal regarded as targets for destruction by America thus included Algeria, Libay, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Authroity and ‘militant Islam.’ On this list is every enemy of Israel Feith and Perle identified for Netanyahu to confront or attack in ‘A Clean Break; A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’ in 1996.
Cui Bono? Who would benefit from these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America—save oil, which the Arabs must sell to us to survive? Who would benefit from a ‘war of civilizations’ with Islam? Who, other than these neoconservatives and Ariel Sharon?"
The problem with this view, writes Buchanan, is that it is not in America's geopolitical interest to attack these regimes. Furthermore, he sees the administration and the media not asking the right questions as to why so many people in the Middle East hate America.
"‘They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government,’ President Bush told Congress. ‘They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.’
... With due respect, these answers insult the intelligence of a second-grader. Did the Japanese attack us at Pearl Harbor because we were free, rich, good , and had low marginal tax rates? What is it about us Americans that we so often lack for what the poet Robert Burns said was the greatest gift the gods can give us, ‘to see ourselves as others see us.’
We are not hated for who we are. We are hated for what we do. It is not our principles that have spawned pandemic hatred of America in the Islamic world. It is our policies.
Nothing justifies the mass murders of 9/11. Nothing. Nor need we hear out the extended plea bargains of those who slaughtered our countrymen. They deserve the rough justice they are receiving. But now that the Taliban have gone down, bin Laden is in hiding, and Iraq is occupied, we need to reflect on why Islamic peoples despise the United States so much they wish to see us dead or gone. If we wish to avert a clash of civilizations, from which we have nothing to gain, we need to listen to what they say—not what we say—about America."
Buchanan further views Bush's "War on Terror" as a huge mistake. He quotes Sir Peter Ustinov, “Terrorism is the war of the poor, and War is the terrorism of the rich.” And William Pfaff, “It was a fateful mistake for Bush to have declared his ‘war against terrorism,’ after Sept. 11, 2001. That made it a war that can’t be won.” He continues:
"Terrorism is a tactic, a technique, a weapon that fanatics, dictators, and warriors have resorted to through history... To Zbigniew Brzezinski, declaring a war on terror after 9/11 made about as much sense as it would have for Britain and France, after Hitler’s lightning invasion of Poland, to have declared war on blitzkrieg."
He analyzes the roots and effects of terror throughout history, including state terror (Stalin, Hitler, Mao), revolutionary terror (Irish uprising against British, Jewish uprising against British), war terror (Romans vs. Carthage, Red Army rampage across Europe), and anarchic terror (assassination attempts on tsars in pre-Bolshevik Russia). Terrorism, writes Buchanan, can be successful:
Empires, republics, dictators, rebels, revolutionaries, anarchists have all used terror, and terrorism has helped to win wars, consolidate tyranny, expel colonial powers, and advance national independence.
...
...[w]hile Arab armies have rarely defeated a Western army, Arab and Islamic revolutions that employ terror tactics against Westerners have rarely failed. They effected the ouster of the French from Algeria, the British from Palestine, the United States from Beirut, the Israelis from Lebanon, the Soviets from Afghanistan. Why should Islamic revolutionaries not think the same can be done to the Americans in Iraq and to the kings, sultans, and sheiks of Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Kuwait?
...
And if Iraqi insurgents and Islamic warriors are willing to die indefinitely to drive us out of that country and their world, the probability is that they will one day succeed.
Pat Buchanan advocates a much more humble and modest foreign policy (as stated by Bush prior to 9/11):
But what neoconservatives are about is the antitheses of strategy. They do not want to narrow America’s list of enemies to those who attack us. They want to broaden the theater of war and multiply our enemies, to escalate ‘the Firemen’s War’ into a war for American hegemony. Should Bush adopt their strategy, it would be us against the Islamic world with Europe neutral and Asia rooting for our humiliation. Thus, it needs to be said: It is vital to the defeat of Al Qaeda, the security of our homeland, and our critical interests in an Arab world of twenty-two nations and an Islamic world of fifty-seven nations from Morocco to Malaysia that we not let our war on terror be conflated and morphed into the neoconservatives’ war for empire. If we do, we will lose our war, isolate American, and bankrupt our republic.
‘Often clever, never wise,’ was Russell Kirks’ final verdict on the neocons. As scholar Claes Ryn writes, in temperament, they are often the antithesis of conservative and call to mind the Jacobins of the French Revolution:
'[O]nly great conceit should inspire a dream of armed world hegemony. The ideology of benevolent American empire and global democracy dresses up a voracious appetite for power. It signifies the ascent to power of a new kind of American, one profoundly at odds with that older type who aspired to modesty and self-restraint.'
The neoconservatives are marinated in conceit, and their hubris may yet prove their undoing. And ours as well. For as Burke wrote to the prideful rulers of the British Empire at the apex of their ascendancy,
‘Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precaution against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our power and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded….We may say we shall not abuse this astonishing and unheard of power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin.’
The other issues Buchanan tackles are the foreign trade deficit and the seemingly never-ending increase in government spending. He views the former as economic treason and the latter as abomination to any true 'Reaganesque' conservative.
"Conservatives, said Ronald Reagan, believe in the values of 'work, family, faith, community, and country.’ But free trade puts the demands of consumers ahead of the duties of citizens, the unbridled freedom of the individual in the marketplace ahead of all claims of family, community, and country. Free trade says what is best for me, now , at the cheapest price, is what is best for America. That is not conservatism.
Free trade does to a nation what alcohol does to a man. Saps him first of his vitality and energy, then of his independence, then of his life. America today exhibits the symptoms of a nation passing into late middle age.
We spend more than we earn. We consume more than we produce. The evangelists of globalism who once promised us our trade deficits would disappear now assure us that trade deficits do not matter.
The truth: Free trade is the serial killer of American manufacturing and the Trojan Horse of world government. It is the primrose path to the loss of economic independence and national sovereignty. Free trade is a bright, shining lie.
...
Government in the United States, state, local, and federal, today consumes 34 percent of GSP. In the absence of an unanticipated epidemic of fiscal courage, that figure will rise toward the 48 percent that is the norm in the EU. And because Europe’s welfare states are so vast, Western Europeans pay 40 percent of their income in taxes, have incomes that are 40 percent lower than ours, and unemployment rates twice as high. That is where America’s glide path is taking this generation."
******************
Recogitare's views:
I have to say that, being a libertarian, and unlike his views on immigration (see State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America), I agree with Pat on almost every single issue. The Bush administration overreacted to 9/11. I always wondered why the Bush administration and the majority of the media did not look very deep to find the root causes of terror. Answers such as "they hate our way of living" don't cut it. Today, in part because of the neoconservatives' shouts for World War IV, America is viewed worse around the world (and not just the Islamic regions) than during the Vietnam War. We should not support Israel unequivocally on every single issue--what's good for Israel (or any other country) is not always good for America--and we should get our military out of every single Arab nation as soon as possible. Let the people there deal with their own issues that have no meaning for us. We'll still get oil and gas from the Middle East: those countries depend on it even more than we do.
With respect to the trade deficit, it is a problem, but I don't think that will mean the end of America's economic prowess as long as we stay globally competitive in other areas of the economy.
Government spending is out of control. Bush has not vetoed a single spending bill. That is shameful. Congressional Republicans are, of course, at fault too, if not more so, and I hope that they're eventually replaced by more libertarian-minded Republicans who want to stop the growth of government. I really agree with Pat on this one: unless we do something soon, we may end up like Europe where everyone pays more taxes and is poorer.
No comments:
Post a Comment