Zionist neo-cons shaping Bush's fantasy world:
The Strategist and the Philosopher: Leo Strauss and Albert Wohlstetter, By ALAIN FRACHON and DANIEL VERNET, Counterpunch, June 2, 2003 (Translated from an April 16, 2003 Le Monde article).
"Who are the neoconservatives playing a vital role in the US president's choices by the side of Christian fundamentalists? And who were their master thinkers, Albert Wohlstetter and Leo Strauss? It was said in the tone of sincere praise: 'You are some of our country's best brains'. So good, added George W. Bush, 'that my government employs around twenty of you.' The president was addressing the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC on February 23 (quote from an article published in Le Monde, March 20, 2003). He was paying homage to a think tank that is one of the bastions of the American neoconservative movement. He was saluting a school of thought that has marked his presidency, avowing everything he owes to an intellectual stream whose influence is now predominant. He was also acknowledging the fact of being surrounded by neoconservatives, and giving them credit for the vital role they play in his political choices ... Where do the intellectual origins of Bushian neoconservatism lie? The neoconservatives must not be confused with Christian fundamentalists who are also found in George W. Bush's entourage. They have nothing to do with the renaissance of protestant fundamentalism begun in the southern Bible Belt states, which is one of the rising powers in today's Republican Party. Neoconservatism is from the East Coast, and a little Californian as well. Those who have inspired them have an 'intellectual' profile. Often they are New Yorkers, often Jewish, having their beginnings 'on the Left'. Some still call themselves Democrats. They have their hands on literary or political reviews, not the Bible ... George W. Bush has brought the neoconservatives and Christian fundamentalists to co-exist. ... [Paul] Wolfowitz is for his part a brilliant product of East Coast universities. He has studied with two of the most eminent professors of the 1960s. Allan Bloom, the discipline of the German-Jewish philosopher, Leo Strauss, and Albert Wohlstetter, professor of mathematics and a specialist in military strategy. These two names would end up counting. The neoconservatives have placed themselves under the tutelary shadow of the strategist and the philosopher. 'Neoconservative' is a misnomer. They have nothing in common with those striving to guarantee the established order. They reject just about all the attributes of political conservatism as it is understood in Europe ... As idealist-optimists convinced of the universal value of the American democratic model, they want to bring the status quo and soft consensus to an end. They believe in the power of politics to change things ... As critics of the Sixties' balance sheet who are opposed to Henry Kissinger's diplomatic realism, they are anti-establishment. Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, the founders of Commentary and two of neoconservatism's New-York godfathers, come from the Left. ... In the 1970s, the Democratic Senator from Washington State, Henry Jackson (d. 1983) criticized the major treaties on nuclear disarmament. He helped shape a generation of young lions keenly interested in strategy, in which one comes across Richard Perle and William Kristol. The latter had attended Allan Bloom's lectures. From within the administration and from without, Richard Perle would meet up with Paul Wolfowitz when they both worked for Kenneth Adelman, another contrarian of Détente policies, or Charles Fairbanks, Under-Secretary of State. In strategic matters, their guru was Albert Wohlstetter. A researcher at the RAND Corporation, Pentagon advisor and a gastronomy connoisseur nevertheless, Wohlstetter (d. 1997) was one of the fathers of the American nuclear doctrine. More precisely, he engaged in the early attempts to reformulate the traditional doctrine that had been the basis for nuclear deterrence: the so-called MAD or "Mutual-Assured Destruction". According to that theory, as both blocs had the capacity to inflict irreparable damage onto each other, their leaders would think twice before unleashing a nuclear attack. For Wohlstetter and his students, MAD was both immoral--due to the destruction it would inflict on civilian populations--and ineffective: it would end up in a mutual neutralization of nuclear arsenals ... In Perle and Wolfowitz's tracks, one meets Elliott Abrams, these days in charge of the Middle-East at the National Security Council, and Douglas Feith, an Under-Secretary of Defense. They all share unconditional support for the policies of the State of Israel, whatever government sits in Jerusalem. This unwavering support explains how they have stoically sided with Ariel Sharon. President Ronald Reagan's two mandates (1981 and 1985) gave many of them the opportunity to exercise their first responsibilities in government. In Washington DC, the neoconservatives have woven their web. Creativity is on their side. Throughout the years, they have marginalized intellectuals from the Democratic center and centre-left to hold a preponderant place where the ideas that dominate the political scene are forged. Among their fora are reviews such as the National Review, Commentary, the New Republic, headed for a time by the young 'Straussian' Andrew Sullivan; the Weekly Standard, once under the ownership of the Murdoch group, whose Fox News television network takes care of broadcasting the vulgarized version of neoconservative thought. Under Robert Bartley's charge, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal have also fallen into neoconservatist activism without qualms. Their hunting grounds are also the research institutes and think tanks such as the Hudson Institute, the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute. Families play a role as well: Irving Kristol's son, the very urbane William Kristol runs the Weekly Standard; one of Norman Podhoretz's sons worked for the Reagan administration; the son of Richard Pipes--a Polish Jew who emigrated to the US in 1939 to become a Harvard University professor and one of the major critics of Soviet communism--Daniel Pipes has denounced Islamism as a new totalitarianism threatening the West. These men are not isolationists, on the contrary. They are usually very well-educated, having vast knowledge of foreign countries whose languages they have often mastered. They share nothing with Patrick Buchanan's reactionary populism, which espouses a US retreat to deal with its domestic problems. The neoconservatives are internationalists, partisans of a resolute US activism in the world ... Either by filiation or capillary action (Allan Bloom, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol and so on), Strauss's philosophy has served as neoconservatism's theoretical substratum. Strauss hardly ever wrote on current political affairs or international relations. He was read and recognized for his immense erudition of the classical Greek texts and Christian, Jewish and Islamic scriptures. He was feted for the power of his interpretive method. "He grafted classical philosophy to German profundity in a country lacking a great philosophical tradition", explains Jean-Claude Casanova who was sent to study in the US by his mentor, Raymond Aron. Aron admired Strauss greatly, whom he had met in Berlin before the war." |
