David Brooks: The neo in neocon means "Jewish" and other nonsense.

[Timefortruth]

There must be worry of exposure in the neocon circles, they are attempting to redefine themselves.

What is most telling about this piece is that he accuses those who follow the issue of forgetting convenient acts. But he conveniently forgets the fact that all the major players in the administration have affiliated themselves to the PNAC, in public, with their own signatures. Oh well, baiting anti-Semitism is far more effective than arguing the facts.

The Era of Distortion
By DAVID BROOKS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/06/opinion/06BROO.html
<skip>
The full-mooners fixated on a think tank called the Project for the New American Century, which has a staff of five and issues memos on foreign policy. To hear these people describe it, PNAC is sort of a Yiddish Trilateral Commission, the nexus of the sprawling neocon tentacles.

We'd sit around the magazine guffawing at the ludicrous stories that kept sprouting, but belief in shadowy neocon influence has now hardened into common knowledge. Wesley Clark, among others, cannot go a week without bringing it up.

In truth, the people labeled neocons (con is short for "conservative" and neo is short for "Jewish") travel in widely different circles and don't actually have much contact with one another. The ones outside government have almost no contact with President Bush. There have been hundreds of references, for example, to Richard Perle's insidious power over administration policy, but I've been told by senior administration officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they assumed office. If he's shaping their decisions, he must be microwaving his ideas into their fillings.
<more>

[Loonman]

1. Brooks is a buffoon and shrub apologist

Yeah, Brooks, it's all about the Jews and conspiracy-theory liberals.

Idiot.

[bryant69]

2. Thy've been trying this old saw for months

As if this is the first time a group of people holding the same basic ideas have been labled. It's total nonsense, but it must be doing something for them cause they keep bringing it up.

For the record I don't oppose Paul Wolfowitz and Daniel Perle because of their religion, but because they are frickin' nuts.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Timefortruth]

3. Amen, also is Cheney Jewish?

That is a rhetorical question, but seriously,to make this about antisemitism wouldn't the mother of all neocons have to be Jewish?

[aquart]

6. I think Daniel Perle is the murdered reporter.

This is a different Perle.

[Loonman]

11. Daniel Pearl

n/t

[bryant69]

12. Ooops

You are right--I meant Richard Perle.

Sorry for the mistake.

[rman]

20. Richard Perle, 'Prince of Darkness' - "just wage total war.."

.. as opposed to "trying to piece together clever diplomacy"

Member of the ultra right-wing US/Israeli thinktank "American Enterprise Institute", former head of Defense Policy Board.

[Cocoa]

23. yep, I've heard this many times

but I disagree with "it must be doing something."

I think the neocons are suffering, big time. I saw a panel of them on C-span a week ago and they looked depressed and surly. They're usually very cheerful and cocky.

[aquart]

4. I knew this was coming.

Perle and Wolfowitz? Their names make me shudder. (Like hearing that it was Jack Ruby who killed Oswald.)

Wait. I thought Cheney signed the PNAC thingie. Cheney's a Jew? We have a Jewish Vice President???????????????????/

Is it possible that something isn't Kosher?

[Timefortruth]

5. Something isn't Kosher, LOL! nt

[tishaLA]

7. Read Talking Points Memo

JMM has an excellent column about this today. It's really unfair to cut and paste his stuff, but here is a sampling:

Pressure groups exist in politics. The loose association of people generally termed 'neoconservative' use the term to describe themselves. And while no group is monolithic in its thinking, they generally think of themselves as a group and act in that fashion. We can get into a discussion at some other point about the fine points of intellectual history and note that intellectual or ideological movements are as much social constructs tethered to specific institutions as they are coherent and consistent textbook philosophies which remain the same over time. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The point is that this is an ideological group in American politics. The people who are a part of it see it as such, as do its critics and opponents. And yet many now want to use blanket criticisms of anti-Semitism to stigmatize and ward off any and all criticism.

<snip>

Not only is this dishonest. It's a conscious cheapening of the charge of anti-Semitism that should be roundly and vociferously criticized.

<snip>

The aim is to discredit any notion that neoconservatism plays any significant role in Bush administration foreign policy --- a demonstrably ridiculous point. Brooks does this by mixing in all sorts of code words about ‘conspiracies’, ‘jews’, radio communications through dental filings and the like to stigmatize as ridiculous what is actually a serious issue and ripe field for serious debate.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_01_04.html#002372

[Jacobin]

10. oops, posted mine just after you did

Josh nails it.

[Jacobin]

8. Here's what TPM has to say about Brooks's piece

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/

One the greatest rhetorical and moral challenges of opinion writing is how to respond to or critique aggressively dishonest or tendentious arguments. One part of you wants to discuss the underlying issue with its complexities and ambiguities intact --- and every issue has complexities and ambiguities. But, in battles of ideas, decibels and clarity matter. And, to take up a different sort of metaphor, the niceties of conflict resolution are hardly appropriate or sensible if you’re trapped in a dark alley with a couple mafia goons.

A case in point is the increasingly brazen tendency for conservative columnists to label any critical discussion of neoconservatism as a form of anti-Semitic diatribe.

snip

Here’s another example, from Tuesday’s column by David Brooks in the Times …

In truth, the people labeled neocons (con is short for "conservative" and neo is short for "Jewish") travel in widely different circles and don't actually have much contact with one another. The ones outside government have almost no contact with President Bush. There have been hundreds of references, for example, to Richard Perle's insidious power over administration policy, but I've been told by senior administration officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they assumed office. If he's shaping their decisions, he must be microwaving his ideas into their fillings.

It’s almost the definition of anti-intellectualism.

Here’s a particular example from the second graf of Brooks’ column …

Theories about the tightly knit neocon cabal came in waves. One day you read that neocons were pushing plans to finish off Iraq and move into Syria. Web sites appeared detailing neocon conspiracies; my favorite described a neocon outing organized by Dick Cheney to hunt for humans.



This is really classic. First, a demonstrably accurate point, neocons pushing for forcible regime in Syria followed by some story about Dick Cheney’s hunting trip to hunt humans.

How do you respond to something like this?

Sort of like …

So many crazy stories out there. One minute people are claiming that jumbo-jets are flying from New York to Paris. The next day we hear that flying saucers are beaming people up to space and spiriting them away to Mars …

[oc2002]

9. Just another example of The Daily Diatribe in the NYT..

The editorial article itself is very imaginative in finding ways to distort facts. It is a simple attempt to link anti- neocons to anti semetics, and a realy poor one at that.

The NYT management must see some value to these articles, perhaps playing up to the Jewish comunities fears?

[Jacobin]

13. David Brooks is a paid "neo-con denier"

Makes up spin and prattle to deny the very existence of the PNAC group (which of course includes fundie Christians and Jews), in the hopes of making their disastrous policy decisions disappear.

[jonoboy]

14. so sick to the stomach of their lies..never have they been so blatant

[MysticMind]

15. the term neocon is dumb anyway..

Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz etc have always been conservative.

[Jacobin]

17. Actually, many of them were formerly Stalinists.

and began merging interests with the conservatives fifteen or so years ago.

The story begins in the early '70s, when the neocons finally left the arms of the Democratic Party for the more ideologically friendly embrace of the GOP. The most important biographical detail about these refugees wasn't the fact that they were Jewish (many were; some weren't) or that they started their political journey on the far left (some did; most didn't). The essential point is that they were Democrats, strangers in the strange land of the GOP. They had no popular base of their own, and thus no leverage inside the party's political machinery. Their views on domestic issues -- civil rights, social spending, the separation of church and state -- but them at odds with prevailing sentiment within their adopted party, especially its Goldwater wing.

To be sure, there were some commonalities -- intense hatred for the Vietnam protestors and everything they represented being the most deeply felt. But the cultural gulf between the neocons and their new allies on the right was still immense. Like turncoats throughout history, they were in danger of ending up distrusted by both sides.

To make matters worse, the neocons had competition. In ecological terms, they were trying to invade a niche that had already been filled by an earlier generation of intellectuals (Kissinger being the most notorious) who had established themselves as the foreign policy brains of the Republican Party. Add the fact that most of these thinkers were non-Jewish (Kissinger being the most notorious exception) and tended to see the Arabs, not the Israelis, as America's most important clients in the Middle East, and you had all the makings of an intellectual version of West Side Story: Sharks versus Jets.

The GOP itself, however, was in upheaval. Control was passing from the East Coast internationalists (the long-time patrons of the realists) to the Goldwater conservatives -- a group whose intellectual approach to U.S. foreign policy could best be described as one long howl of rage. By the mid-'70s, the party was deep in the throes of an unfinished revolution, with the Ford Administration caught squarely in the middle.

As Kissinger's sun began to set, power passed to a group of administration officials who had their feet planted firmly in both ideological camps -- men such as Donald Rumsfeld, the once and future Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, Ford's Chief of Staff, and George Bush, the CIA Director. They became the neocons' original sponsors within the GOP.

To generalize, this group (with the exception of Bush) tended to be Midwestern and middle class -- heirs to the older Main Street conservatism of Bob Taft and Everett Dirksen, although also sympathetic to the newer Sunbelt conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan. They were corporate/bureaucratic rather than conservative/activist, hardline where issues of American power and prestige were involved, but much less doctrainaire (at least at the time) about economic policy and what would later be called the "social issues" -- affirmative action, abortion, etc. They were, in effect, the center of gravity of a Republican Party in transition.

They were not (again, with the exception of Bush) particularly knowledgeable about foreign policy. Like the Goldwater Republicans, their roots were in the party's pre-World War II isolationist wing, not the internationalist wing of the Rockefeller and Dulles brothers. They were in the market, you might say, for a foreign policy world view -- and a set of policy advisors to fill in the details of that world view. This the neocons were in a position to provide.

snips from Whiskey Bar, billmon's blog, which is down at the moment or I'd post a link

[MysticMind]

19. they were conservative Democrats

Whose parents may have been Stalinists.

[Jacobin]

21. Early on they were Stalinists

They morphed into the Repuke party. It's documented, which is how they got their name.

Check out the history of these beasts. They are fascinating if frightening.

[rman]

24. actually they were socialist (at least that's what they called themselves)

and they operated in US socialist circles.

Then they became anti-communist and eventually ended up at the opposite end of the political spectrum.

Having socialists denounce communism lends some legitimacy to the idea that communism = evil.
I think it's not a coincidence that a cultural movement away from "leftist" ideas, perfectly fits the apparent goals of neo-conservatism; to consolidate all state power in corporations. They started that movement, and they started at the Left.


To call communism "Stalinism" is as inacurate as calling democracy "Hitlerism" - both were dictators who came to power under said political systems. If you want to associate an individual with communism, you'd better mention Lenin as opposed to Stalin.

[Timefortruth]

22. In fact they are quite distinguishable from traditional conservatives.

That's why a new term was employed to describe them.

[rman]

26. "neo" doesn't mean they became conservatives recently;

neo means they belong to a new kind of conservatism, which is positioned to the right of the Right.

They prefer to be called neo-Reaganites; proponents of a new kind of Reaganist political view.

[Cocoa]

27. it's a good word

and an important one these days, given our foreign policy.

[Palacsinta]

16. Cerebral vortex

Yeah, I read Brooks' column this AM and felt (again) like my head was going to explode (again.) Thank God I went straight to "Talking Points" and read Josh Marshall.

[rman]

18. let me help Brooks out here: neo = new...

con = conservative, or alternatively con-artist

The fact that relatively many of these neocons are somehow affiliated with Israel is another matter.

[camero]

28. or "revived"

I thought it meant classical or old styled. He makes that definition so that he can say that any of their critics are anti-semites.

Brooks is a liar.

[HootieMcBoob]

25. Irving Kristol defines neoconservatism

Irving Kristol defines neoconservatism in this article from last August. It ends with this paragraph:

The older, traditional elements in the Republican party have difficulty coming to terms with this new reality in foreign affairs, just as they cannot reconcile economic conservatism with social and cultural conservatism. But by one of those accidents historians ponder, our current president and his administration turn out to be quite at home in this new political environment, although it is clear they did not anticipate this role any more than their party as a whole did. As a result, neoconservatism began enjoying a second life, at a time when its obituaries were still being published.

And then there's this tag:

Irving Kristol is author of "Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea."

Brooks should tell his boss that the idea he and his friends came up with is really nothing more than an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Brooks has really gone off the deep end with this one.

The Neoconservative Persuasion
From the August 25, 2003 issue: What it was, and what it is.
by Irving Kristol
08/25/2003, Volume 008, Issue 47

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/000tzmlw.asp:dunce:

[Stephanie]

34. That's perfect

Please send it to the NY Times ombudsman. This kind of crap in the paper of record is intolerable.

[tom_paine]

29. Clearly the Mighty Wurlitzer has issued an announcement

As the top priority of the Busheviks is to seperate the Jewish Vote from the Democrats (ironically bringing them to the grandsons of Hitler's Angel, Prescott Bush) it is clear that the word has gone out to member of the Party-Loyal Right-Wing Sub-Media and of course the many members of that Totalitraian Institution who have infiltrated the Formerly Free Press (what is one of the reasons do you think that it's FORMERLY FREE?) to hammer on the anti-Semitism angle.

These people are as disciplined as Nazis.

[tishaLA]

30. This Brooks column

has made Daily Howler postpone its Zell's Bells stuff it had lined up! Bob dismantles Brooks with his usual insight, rigor, and humor.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh010604.shtml

[regularguy]

31. My letter to this pud:

Subject: You get to choose your own reality.

I, for some masochistic reason, have chosen a reality wherein an not-quite-elected president cynically lies and exploits national tragedy to attack a country which is not threat to us. To further indulge my feverish dream-of-choice, I imagine that there is a group of Republicans who have been pushing this course long before the lies and the tragedy and (in my partisan chosen reality only, of course!) hold many influential positions in the current administration. I realize that treating my chosen reality as any better than anyone else's reality makes me an anti-semite, but I might want to check with my Rabbi before publicly admitting to this. Also, I think the "neo" in neocon actually is used to differentiate them from the old style Republicans (Regan, Dole, Bush Sr.) who would actually mix their cynicism with a bit of decency and honesty. I'm glad that we could have this little chat, please try a bit harder in your next column.

Cheers,
XXXXXXXXXXX

[Stephanie]

32. The Times should apologize for this - have they NO standards

They hire the mouthpiece of the neo-cons and then let him tell whatever lies he likes.

This piece is grotesque in its twisted relationship with the truth. For instance, David attempts to conflate two unlike accusations.

In these communities, half-truths get circulated and exaggerated. Dark accusations are believed because it is delicious to believe them. Vince Foster was murdered. The Saudis warned the Bush administration before Sept. 11.

The Foster case was thoroughly investigated and determined to be a suicide. September 11th has NOT been thoroughly investigated yet, two years later, because the Bush administration refuses to cooperate and has in fact impeded the investigation every step of the way. We don't know yet whether the implication about the Saudis is true. It certainly has not been proven false. Release the 28 pages. Release the August 6 briefing. Then we might know.

What a cheap method of attempting to confuse the reader. Does this meet the Times' journalistic standards? Where's the brand new ombudsman?

Here's another sly prevarication:

There have been hundreds of references, for example, to Richard Perle's insidious power over administration policy, but I've been told by senior administration officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they assumed office.

Perle chaired the Defense Policy Board, until he was demoted to a mere member of the Board due to his outrageous conflicts of interest (advising companies on how to profit on the imminent Iraq invasion while agitating for the invasion at the same time). The Board MEETS in the Pentagon:

If you could slip past the soldiers toting M-16s at the door, the Pentagon's 17 miles of corridors ...

So it was alarming when one secret agency's work spilled into the open recently, only to be dismissed by almost everyone involved. Meeting last month in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's private conference room, a group called the Defense Policy Board heard an outside expert, armed only with a computerized PowerPoint briefing, denounce the Saudis for being "active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/08.22A.war.council.htm <Time Magazine>

Obviously there are many, many other people Perle would have met with who are not named Bush or Cheney. He obviously met with Rumsfeld. Maybe Powell. Certainly Wolfowitz, Feith, and others.

Notice also that Perle is said to have had no significant meetings with Cheney/Bush. Oh, there were meetings. Just not significant ones. And those "senior administration officials" will be the judge of that. Thanks Dick! And good one, David!

And this! Mind-numbingly deceptive:

the Project for the New American Century, which has a staff of five and issues memos on foreign policy

PNAC may have a staff of five, but Brooks fails to mention the many prominent members of the current administration who are signatories to those "memos," starting with Dick Cheney. The report Rebuilding Americas Defenses runs 90 pages - this is a "memo"? And I doubt that Perle and Wolfowitz were actually "on staff" at PNAC, unless Perle was running the copier. Check out the signatories to the PNAC's Statement of Purpose, which include Cheney, Libby, Jeb Bush, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

Just a few of the deceptions Brooks employs in his desperate attempt to deflect attention from PNAC. I can't believe the Times printed this. Have they no decency?

[Stephanie]

33. Just a few "full-mooners" who've had the temerity to write about PNAC

Links to all of these articles, and more, can be found in the PNAC Archive in the Bush/Conservatives folder:

NY Times Op-Eds 03/02/03 (Dowd, Friedman)
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
"It's the Kissinger plan" - Mother Jones - March/April 2003
Guardian 2/26/03 - "Decisions, decisions" (re designs for US hegemony
New Nat'l Sec'y Strategy: Pre-emptive Strikes (NYT, WP, Guardian)
A think tank war: Why old Europe says no - SMH (from Der Spiegel) 3/7/03
The Bush lies pushing the world to the brink-Robert Scheer - Salon 3/5/03
The president's real goal in Iraq - Atlanta Journal Constitution 9/29/02
The Plan - ABC News Nightline 3/10/03
Lunch With The Chairman (Perle) - Seymour Hersh-New Yorker 3/17/03
Invading Iraq not a new idea for Bush clique - Philadelphia Daily News Jul-14-03
Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11- CBS News 9/4/02
7/13/2000 Guardian: Anger at peace talks 'meddling'(Perle sabotages talks)
A Wilful Blindness - George Monbiot - London Guardian 03/11/03
9/11 gave life to U.S. imperial ambitions - Japan Times - 3/14/03
Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming Pres. - Herald-9/15/02
A world safe for democracy, or perpetual war? - Star Tribune 3/16/03
Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world? - TAP 3/18/03
White House Claims: A Pattern of Deceit-Inst. for Public Accuracy 3/18/03
The Men From JINSA and CSP - The Nation, August 15, 2002
This war is brought to you by ... Asia Times 3/20/03
(Perle) Also Advising Global Crossing - NYTimes-03/21/03
Pentagon Strategy Creates Rift Among Hawks - Alternet 3/21/03
Pre-emption: Idea With a Lineage Whose Time Has Come | NYT | 3/23/03
US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy - UK Guardian 8/02/03
The Madness of Empire - The American Conservative
The Wraps Come Off Bush's Colonialist Agenda - LA Times 3/25/03
Practice to Deceive - Wash. Monthly -Joshua Micah Marshall 4/03
Defense Adviser Perle Resigns - WP 3/27
Pentagon Adviser Is Stepping Down (Perle) - NYT-3/28
Woolsey: U.S. faces 'World War IV' - CNN - 4/3/03
Road to Baghdad Paved by 'Scoop' Jackson - Seattle PI 4/6/03
Neoconservative clout seen in U.S. Iraq policy-Milwaukee Journal Sentinal
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
How neoconservatives conquered Washington - Salon 4/9/03
Bush ready to fight war on two fronts - Guardian 4/13/03
Privatization in Disguise - The Nation 4/10/03
The Strategist and the Philosopher (Strauss) - Le Monde (via truthout)
Hawks Rip Into Mideast Plan - LA Times
Whose war is this? | Pat Buchanan USA Today 09/26/2001
Why look in the crystal ball? - Terry Jones, Guardian 5/4/03
Perle Briefed Seminar on How to Profit From Iraq - AP 5/7/03
Consulting and Policy Overlap (Perle) - LA Times | 5/7/03
Strong Must Rule the Weak, said Neo-Cons' Muse (Strauss) - Truthout | 5/8/03
The Philosopher (Strauss) - Boston Globe | 5/11/03
Radio Interview with Jeet Heer, on Strauss - WNYC 5/22/03
SELECTIVE INTELLIGENCE - S. Hersh, The New Yorker 5/12/03
Father Strauss Knows Best - NYT | 5/4/03
A PNAC Primer: How We Got Into This Mess - Bernard Weiner, Counterpunch
Five steps to the world according to Bush-Neil Mckay Sunday Herald 6/1/03
A mission in Iraq built on a lie - Sydney Morning Herald 6/16/03
The spies who pushed for war (OSP) - Guardian, 7/17/03
Seymore Hersh - Who Lied To Whom (New Yorker Mar 2003)
Are Neocons cooking their own goose? - Sacramento Bee 7/27/03
Get real | Guardian 8/26/03 Stephanie
This war on terrorism is bogus | M. Meacher, UK Guardian, 9/6/03
Empire Builders - Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US power | Christian Science Monitor
MN Startribune: Iraq: It was never about Sept. 11
THE STOVEPIPE by SEYMOUR M. HERSH | The New Yorker - 10/27/03
Cheney's hawks 'hijacking policy' | SMH (Australia) 10/30/03
War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal (Perle) | UK Guardian

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=110&topic_id=80&mesg_id=80&page=

[oasis]

35. The PNAC archives is a treasure trove of information. Thanks. (eom)