Neo-Conservatism and its Roots in Warfare State Propaganda

[andyfox]

All politicians lie. You can tell when they're doing it: their lips are moving.

And they save their biggest whoppers for when they're going to war. Truman needed the Republicans and recalcitrant Democrats in congress to get on board for the Cold War. Thus he needed to "scare the hell" (the exact words that were used) out of the American people. The bigger and badder the enemy the bigger and badder we can be. SOP, and not just for us.

That said, it doesn't mean the Soviet Union was not a real threat. It does mean that the exaggeration of that threat and the willingness to either see or pretend to see the Soviets at the bottom of everything we didn't like led to a lot of needless suffering for a lot of people.

[AlexM]

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It is obvious that almost every Demopublican's platform is an out and out lie from the begining, sadly we all keep falling for it over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

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[AlexM]

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-Was the Soviet threat really a chimera?


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No, it was a manticore.

[andyfox]

Don't be daft.

[andyfox]

This forum could use more serious Zeno posts. I'm using "more" as an adjective, not an adverb.

[Borodog]

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"How convenient for the neo-conservatives that 9/11 came along"

I believe that the war in Iraq would have occurred without 9/11 and that 9/11 was an excuse, not the reason, for the war.

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Agreed.

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That said, are you implying anything beyond that with "how conveient"?

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Not in the slightest. As we both agree, some sort of justification would have been manufactured or maneuvered to, just like the last 50 US military interventions. It's just that Osama bin Laden served them up the perfect justification for perpetual war on a spent-uranium platter.

[AlexM]

Don't be humorless.

[John Kilduff]

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"How convenient for the neo-conservatives that 9/11 came along"

I believe that the war in Iraq would have occurred without 9/11 and that 9/11 was an excuse, not the reason, for the war.

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Agreed.

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That said, are you implying anything beyond that with "how conveient"?

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Not in the slightest. As we both agree, some sort of justification would have been manufactured or maneuvered to, just like the last 50 US military interventions. It's just that Osama bin Laden served them up the perfect justification for perpetual war on a spent-uranium platter.

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The timing seems a bit odd, perhaps.

In Iraq, the justification for war now extends to keeping the peace and democratic nation-building, likely an impossible and perpetual task, considering the various Iraqi factions' animosities for each other and their struggles for power.

It also worth noting that bin Laden merely took the lukewarm war Islam was already waging against the West, and made it hotter. The recent stages of this war have been building for a few decades, but truthfully, since the time of Muhammad Islam has always been at war against the West, albeit in widely varying temeratures. The West, though, has only sometimes been at war with Islam.

What disturbs me most about the whole scenario is the Neo-Cons' faith in America's ability to rapidly transform the Middle East and to remake it in a Western democratic image. In simple terms, it just "ain't gonna happen." Yet the Neo-Cons would have us waging war there in perpetuity, eternally in search of an ephemeral goal, and at ever-increasing expenses, losses, and debts.

In sum, I think it is fair to say that the Neo-Cons are well into the process or ruining America - and I do mean literally ruining, both economically and otherwise.

[John Kilduff]

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All politicians lie. You can tell when they're doing it: their lips are moving.


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Have you actually investigated Ron Paul? He may well be the only politician to be entirely principled, and his record on Senate vote shows that he has always voted according to his principles (Constitutionality). He might even be the only politician today not to lie. If integrity and principle are your watchwords, you might wish to check Ron Paul out further.

edit: if I recall, he has also always voted against a Congressional pay raise.

[Borodog]

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The threat was real - The actually extent of and which threats were potentially most harmful or dangerous or real can be argued about. And all countries (i.e. governments and public and private entities) trump up the threat of others for various propaganda reasons that are not hard to figure out.

Usually, but not always, the threats as perceived at the time turn out to be less dangerous than judged by the people involved, but this is seldom seen at the moment and the passage of time allows for historical and objective analysis to offer up its judgment. But this is certainly easier accomplished from the comfort of a library or archive and without the tense emotional involvement of the moment, the zeitgeist of the times, and within the context not only of hindsight but with the ability to rubber-stamp your own perspective and bias on the subject of study.


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This is a dangerously apologetic, and fallacious, view of history in my opinion. Foreign military adventurism has been actively sought by the United States government practically from its founding. Any random event can and will be used as a pretext for war (USS Maine), and if no event presents itself in a timely fashion, one will be either outright manufactured out of whole cloth (Gulf of Tonkin), or maneuvered to by aggressive, belligerent foreign policy (Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor).

Saying that "the threats as perceived at the time turn out to be less dangerous than judged by the people involved, but this is seldom seen at the moment and the passage of time allows for historical and objective analysis to offer up its judgment" is just a way of saying that those in the warfare state will portray threats in as dire a light as they possibly can because it serves them to do so. If after long observation we saw that a particular poker player made ongoing and continuous miscalculations we would not make apologies and excuses for his poor play. Indeed, those in the warfare state know exactly what game they are playing, and their long term positive results (from their point of view) show that they play it extremely well.