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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (92085)	4/10/2003 11:10:39 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

John, the canard that the neocons are somehow the creatures of the Likud belongs in the same comforting-but-dumb bin as the all the 'Bush is stupid, he's being led by <fill in the blank>' op-eds. Nadine, it offers no end of comfort to me to know you will always read my sentences in their most unfavorable possible light. I worked on that phrasing so I mean what I say. I don't say the neocons are the "creatures of the Likud" and I don't mean to say that. I mean to say they tend to see an almost isomorphic overlap between the interests of the Sharon government and US interests in the ME. That observation could well not apply, literally, to all members of the administration who might admit to the label "neoconservative" or who could, reasonably, be so labeled. Kagan's recent Washington Post op ed, while on a slightly different topic, suggests not all are of the same mind. But, with that qualification, I think the point is accurate. The neocons came to their assessment of the dangers of terrorism, Islamic extremism and the governments that support it well before the current Israeli government was elected. Naturally, this makes them sympathetic to Israeli fears, and unsupportive of the Arafat regime. It does not make them boosters of Greater Israel or any other particular Likud or Moledet policy. Oh, I could not agree more. But they also left several pebbles in the sand as they did so that suggest many of them are more sympathetic with Likud than with Labor. And have been for some time. So it's not true that these neocons labored in some sort of isolation to come up with a comprehensive ME foreign policy and then looked up and said, lo and behold, who would have thunk it, it resembles Likud fairly closely. As opposed, say, to being deeply counter to the interests of the people doing the voting, whose perceptions are badly skewed at the moment by being fed a steady diet of lies. Well, that's generally the position of folk who think they know other's interests better than other's do. And who then argue that we intend to do good for you whether you wish it or not. If you vote for such and such folk, that's because you believe lies; if you vote for these other folk, that's because you believe the truth. Somehow I don't think that argument will get very far in actual practice.