|
|
|
Jewish World Review January 31, 2008 / 24 Shevat 5768 Were They Really So Wrong? By Jonathan Tobin
Neocon ideas are believed to have sunk Bush, but are the alternatives realistic?
Regardless of its origins, the term is now an all-purpose term of art
to describe a group of advocates of an aggressive policy against
Islamist terrorism and support for the State of Israel. Their
supposedly nefarious influence on the Bush administration is an article
of faith for those who see them as authors of all that is wrong about
American foreign policy.
Indeed, the dust jacket of Jacob Heilbrunn's recent book on them, "They
Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons", screams that they are
"the most feared and reviled intellectual movement in American history"
and a "tight-knit cabal that ensnared the Bush administration."
The text of Heilbrunn's scathing tome doesn't quite live up to that
level of hysteria, but the fact that the publishers felt free to throw
such words around show how widely reviled anyone who can be labeled a
"neocon" is these days.
REPEATING THE PAST
But the chorus of neocon-bashers see the attempt on the part of
Podhoretz to confront Iran and to pre-empt its effort to attain nuclear
weapons as nothing short of insane. The recent release of the
government's dubious National Intelligence Estimate, which appeared to
debunk the idea that Iran is pursuing nukes merely adds to the sense
among those who write about the movement that the obsessions of the
neocons are based on fantasies.
Heilbrunn goes into great detail about the Jewish intellectual origins
of the movement. The fact that many of the most famous and most
influential neocons, such as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ambassador
Jeane Kirkpatrick or William Bennett, were not Jewish is merely a
detail.
For the author, as well as other even more extreme commentators on the
subject, neoconservatism is an idea rooted in Jewish insecurity left
over from the Holocaust, which seeks to impose a moral clarity on a
world more aptly illustrated in shades of gray than in the stark
black-and-white of the neocons.
Indeed, for writers like Slate.com's Timothy Noah, who wrote in The
New York Times recently that "to be neoconservative is to bear almost
daily witness to the resurrection of Adolf Hitler," the obsession with
avoiding a repeat of Munich is an absurdity.
Thus, even Heilbrunn cannot escape from an obsession with America's
Israel policy. While he concedes that neoconservatives, like the
overwhelming majority of Americans, see the interests of the two
democracies as largely congruent, their devotion to Israel's survival
is, in his view, a fatal flaw that's leading us astray. As Heilbrunn
writes, "none of the Democratic candidates [for president in 2008] have
uttered even a mild word of criticism of Israel." He adds ruefully that
"this, too, must be counted as neoconservative success."
The point of the anti-neocon narrative is that the verdict of history,
as written in the dust of the quagmire in Iraq, is that the neocons
were wrong — wrong about Iraq; wrong about Iran; wrong about the nature of the threat from the Islamists; wrong about identifying Israel's interests with those of America; wrong even about their earlier
warnings about the Soviets.
Yet even when we discard the allegations of conspiracies that have been
put about by foes of Israel, such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt,
the authors of The Israel Lobby, the problem with these critiques is
that the verdict of history is by no means as definitive as the neocon
critics would have us believe.
After all, neoconservatism gained notice in the 1970s specifically
because the neocon rejection of the notion that appeasement of Soviet
communism was either effective or sensible in the long run was entirely
correct. Neocon intellectuals helped rouse an America mired in memories
of Vietnam to reject the détentist policies of the "realists" of that
era.
Similarly, are the neocons today wrong about the threat from the
Islamists, and the need to spread support for democracy in the Arab and
Islamic world? If some perceive would-be Hitlers — like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Palestinian Hamas allies, as well as Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq and elsewhere — as being a clear and present danger to the West, can it be credibly asserted that this characterization is false?
It is a fact that the execution of Bush's goals in Iraq was often as
incompetent as its response to Hurricane Katrina. The goal of
transforming the region via democracy was surely too ambitious. But
that didn't mean the stakes there were not worth fighting for. Indeed,
the recent improvement in Iraq — once better military leadership and
strategies were substituted for faulty ones — shows that defeat is
nowhere near as certain as some thought a few months ago.
Moreover, what exactly do the critics of the neocons offer as an
alternative to dealing with the threat of the Islamists? Their answer
is a combination of a return to the old "realism" that dominated the
failed policies of previous administrations, which left America stuck
backing unpopular authoritarian Arab regimes, appeasing Iran, and
trying to force a peace between Israel and the Palestinians that the
Arabs don't want.
With the "realists" now taking back control of foreign policy in Bush's
last months, does anyone really believe that more pressure on the
Israelis or a rapprochement with the mullahs in Iran would yield peace
or security for anyone?
MORE RESOLVE NEEDED
Podhoretz ends his latest call to arms by asking whether Americans are
capable of "beating back the 'implacable challenge' of Islamofascism"
as their forebears defeated Nazism. Writing at a time when he conceded
the prospects for victory were "bleak," his answer was still yes.
In that sense, Jacob Heilbrunn's right when he concludes by warning
that the neoconservatives are far from done. Podhoretz's optimism will
ultimately be vindicated, if only because the alternatives to his views
are simply implausible.
Like it or not — and notwithstanding the mistakes that were made in the last eight years — America is still locked in a worldwide struggle with Islamists that can't be wished away by blaming it all on the neocons.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
Let him know what you think by clicking here.
© 2007, Jonathan Tobin
| ||||||||||
