Have the NeoCons Already Won

Have the NeoCons Already Won? By Patton Price 8/13/2003

In early April, just after the fall of Baghdad, as their President bestrode the USS Lincoln, the neoconservatives—tightly affiliated policy intellectuals and private-sector defense professionals brought together as Bush-administration political appointees—seemed to have birthed the next colossus of American foreign policy thinking. Their shared ideological commitments—based on the Manichaean political philosophy of Leo Strauss, an intellectual mentor to core neocon thinkers Wolfowitz and Perle—had coalesced at the precise time that circumstance catapulted their influence to the forefront of American politics. This intellectual core of Straussians had integrated seamlessly into an older movement with roots in rejection of 1960’s counterculture and its perceived impact on America’s role in the world. Their vaunted Bush Doctrine, with its new principle of pre-emption, had been applied in Iraq and had met with swift victory.

A small but significant criticism of the talking points of Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld and company had preceded the war, but it was soon overshadowed by the brilliance of the US’ military victory in the gulf. The Bush Doctrine, the War on Terrorism, the USA PATRIOT Act and the balance of the neoconservative platform were all more than just on the table—they were defining American policymaking. The New America Century was beginning in earnest.

That was several months ago. Since that end of “significant combat operations” in Iraq, more American lives have been lost than during the war proper. Many officials in top civilian and military leadership roles, not to mention the public, have come to understand that planning for the post-war occupation was unrealistically optimistic. It is largely the case that the media is joining the independent policy elites in questioning the motives for Operation Iraqi Freedom, even those outlets which before the war discounted the notion that its antecedents were forged by ideology. Despite the fact that 90 days ago even many pundits didn’t acknowledge its existence, neoconservatism itself is attracting scrutiny in this context. However, it remains to be seen whether the growing climate of suspicion in which the neoconservatives are operating ultimately will yield change of structural substance.

Could it be the case that just as quickly as the neoconservatives once grew to define American foreign policy, they have now lost the nation's favor? It seems possible, yes, but the neoconservative legacy will be shaped by more than public opinion, and the scope of the movement's effects will likely transcend the few individuals that have been central to its development.

Defining the Legacy

In order to predict the lasting impact of that thrust of the neoconservative movement which most recently led to the Bush Doctrine and the war in Iraq, it is important to consider those individuals who have come to represent neoconservatism independently from the philosophy itself. Likewise, "success" is not to be defined the same way for both the broader neoconservative philosophy and its contemporary constituency: even if the current crop of Pentagon hawks is shuffled out following the 2004 election, it is still entirely conceivable that neoconservative thought will have enduringly entrenched itself within American military, political and diplomatic rubrics.

The champagne buzz of military victory appears to be transitioning into the hangover of occupation, and questions about the dubious case for war are causing the President's approval rating to fall. But political sentiment waxes and wanes, and today's sure-fire trend can become tomorrow's momentum-less meme. Either way, as much as the neocons’ ascension has been tied to Bush’s it is not necessarily the case that their respective futures will be linked. The hawks’ Project has been launched, and its primary structures and principles are in the position to outlast any one political regime.

In order to gauge the impact the neocons have had on American culture and policy, it is first necessary to identify the key points of the legacy that they wish to leave. Most notable—in terms of distinguishing the neoconservatives from any other affiliation of think-tank policy intellectuals—is their focus on themes that are much broader than policy mechanics, decisions, and lawmaking. This is to speak, obviously, of a complex and dynamic movement and philosophy, but three central tenets can still be gleaned from the written proposals they produced during the collective 1990’s tenure of a tremendous roster of neocon thinkers in the DC think tank, The Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

1. The Bush Doctrine

The war in Iraq was the US’ first foray into pre-emptive warfare. This policy—an unmistakable departure from the previous principle and parlance of American military intervention—was codified in President Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy, itself largely a reiteration of Paul Wolfowitz’ classified 1992 Pentagon publication called Defense Planning Guidance. The doctrine of containment, which was the driving force behind the US’ successful deterrence of escalation of the Cold War, was thrown by the wayside with the adoption of this new policy.

Most profoundly, the Bush Doctrine reframes the American military as the centerpiece of our foreign policy, making obsolete the State Department instruments of diplomacy which had been the crux of containment’s successes. Again, despite administration attempts to define Pre-emption as a response to the events of 9/11, base application of the Bush Doctrine platform in Iraq has been trumpeted by neoconservatives since 1998. In a letter to President Clinton, PNAC signatories (including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Perle, among others) said of American invasion of Iraq: “In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.”

War is now simply our foreign policy “stick.” By eschewing diplomacy and containment, the neoconservatives have removed the central restriction traditionally placed on military intervention: that it be a last resort, employed only as a means actual self-defense. In this sense, the alarming notion is not that the President may have taken us to war based on suspect intelligence, but that he took us to war based solely on intelligence.

2. The USA PATRIOT Act

The political appointments held by neoconservatives within the Bush administration are largely within the foreign policy complex, and this has understandably steered scrutiny in the direction of foreign policy. To focus simply on the international front of the Total War [see 3 below] is to miss a concrete and absolute implementation of neoconservative principles at home: the war against American civil rights.

The USA PATRIOT Act appeared immediately following the 9/11 attacks, as an apparent sidekick to the nascent War on Terrorism. Being largely a redefinition of the balance between individual liberties and the scope of federal law enforcement and surveillance activities, the Act came to be associated with the Department of Justice—and of course with the well-known and colorful Attorney General John Ashcroft.

But while the implementation of the law is largely a matter for the DOJ, the PATRIOT Act—in keeping with the broader body of American political developments since 9/11—can trace its roots back to the now-controversial 2000 neoconservative manifesto Rebuilding America’s Defenses. Therein were laid plans for the establishment of a Department of Homeland Security (featuring that nomenclature exactly) as well as a domestic spying and information-collating program similar to the new Total Information Awareness program—in which neocon Richard Perle is playing a developmental role—begun by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

It may be alarming that so many tenets of this law, which was ostensibly passed in response to events in fall of 2001, are directly grafted from a 2000 policy manifesto. It should not, however, be a surprise that this comprehensive campaign against the liberties of the individual would come from the minds of Straussians, steeped in the philosophy that “freedom is an essential good, but it must serve the larger end of societal virtue” and "a society that does not have the self-confidence to defend its principles will fall prey to the forces intent on subverting or altering those principles." That passage of the bill was brought about in an environment of public fear was a triumph of opportunism.

3. The Total War

"This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq...this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

--Richard Perle

The notion of the “Total War,” the precise verbiage of which was originally enunciated by Richard Perle in a 2002 interview with reporter John Pilger, has long been a cornerstone of both the current crop of neoconservative officials and policymakers as well as the Straussian philosophy on which their platform is built. The basic governing principle is that old, Machiavellian notion that a flourishing society must always be at war, that a people can only be unified when facing a common threat. In contemporary and strategic terms, this “Total War” was blueprinted in Rebuilding America’s Defenses.

From enhancing force readiness and wildly increasing defense spending to rejecting—a priori and on moral grounds—the principle of multilateralism, the plan for immersion into this all-consuming conflict was appended by the caveat that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” [Rebuilding p. 51.] Clearly, on September 11, 2001, Perle and his associates got their “new Pearl Harbor,” and proved correct their assertions that such an event could be used as the staging ground for their radical plan to reframe the US’ relationship with the global community: the “Total War” became the War on Terrorism.

The War on Terrorism, more than any other neoconservative talking point, has immediately promulgated a strong cultural mandate. “Terrorism” is both the most powerful and most liberally used word in American English these days. Hollywood responded immediately with a spate of movies and television programming—like FOX’s exemplary 24—which derive their entertainment from suspense borne of the public’s cultivated terrorism fears. Like anticommunism, antiterrorism has quickly become a meme for the people as much as for the elected elite, a cultural implement as much as a political one.

Set in Stone?

The neoconservative philosophy is more complex than the three planks outlined above; its crux is the idea of National Greatness, a notion enunciated by Weekly Standard editor William Kristol. While the neocons themselves are identifiable by their status and influence in the policy community, it would be short-sighted to see their platform as simply a political doctrine: it is an evangelical ideology, one selling absolute and abstract truths as opposed to practical solutions. The Perle quote above—“…our children will sing great songs about us”—demonstrates the scope of their aspiration to a national legacy.

This legacy, while engineered by politicos, is largely a cultural phenomenon, and it is in this sense that their historical monument has been cemented. Even if the political fallout from our hasty war in Iraq claims the careers of Perle, Rumsfeld, et al., their impact on the cultural themes that frame America’s relationship with its citizens and the world remains firmly in place.

The Bush Doctrine has clearly passed its point of no return. The occupation of Iraq will likely continue for years, and the Pentagon’s eyes are already fixed on the promise of pre-emption in Iran. The President’s formalization of this idea has the basic consequent effect of law, but beyond that it has lowered the bar for justification of future conflict. The US—empirically—is no longer a nation that strikes only in self-defense, a fact which will permanently temper geopolitical relationships and behaviors. Debate about invasion of Iraq centered around the logistics and the need for international support; no room was made in the discourse for policies that appealed to the notion of containment—such as Jessica Tuchman Matthews’ broadly ignored Coercive Inspections proposal.

The USA PATRIOT Act passed in the Senate 99-1, and secret wiretaps and indefinite detentions in military prisons—with no right to conventional jury trials or access to civilian counsel—have already begun. Not only are these unprecedented restrictions of due process taking root, they are likely to be followed with “PATRIOT II,” and the implementation of the Total Information Awareness program. And—as they often do during times of war—the public has largely gone along for the ride, with clear majorities polled at different times declaring their willingness to trade liberty for the promise of security. The reality is that an environment of hysteria following historically unprecedented attacks against American civilians was exploited in order to usurp Constitutional limits to authority in ways that may well prove to be permanent—indeed the “sunset” provisions of the PATRIOT Act are due to be removed by provisions of PATRIOT II.

And the War on Terrorism has already become the defining sociopolitical meme of our time. It is an accepted and engaged hallmark of the new political culture. Even if the Bush administration loses the 2004 election because of the neoconservatives’ ideological coup within the foreign policy machine, the replacement from the other side of the spectrum will only have been chosen after proving his means and desire to fight the War on Terrorism. The campaigns of Joe Lieberman, Wesley Clark, and Bob Graham have made this their respective centerpieces. It is without doubt, however, that the nebulous, permanent, and ideological Total War, against an enemy which is by definition vague and ever-present, will need to be addressed by any viable aspirant to American Executive office, from the President to the Postmaster, regardless of what Donald Rumsfeld does for a living.

The neoconservative platform has always been one rooted and expressed in ideology, from its infancy in the late 1960’s, through its presumed death in the mid-1990’s, and certainly today. It isn’t simply policy and decision-making that the neocons have sought to change, but the basic bedrock of our political culture, and it is in this intended arena that neoconservative memes have such immediate viral traction; their lexicon has been transplanted wholesale: “Homeland Security,” “pre-emption,” “Good Vs. Evil,” the list goes on.

A July editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune—one of the first mainstream dailies to even use the word “neoconservative”—illuminated what may be the central issue raised by the ideological departure of American foreign policy over the last two years:

The neocon theory is interesting and complex. It's like a new theory for solving a scientific question. New theories need grueling examination by peers who try to knock holes in them before they are accepted as the basis for action. They also need to be explained, patiently and with precision, so the public can know what it is being asked to purchase with the lives if its kids and its money.

The neocon foreign policy agenda got neither a thorough vetting nor public explication -- because its authors apparently thought the American people wouldn't understand it or wouldn't buy it. Instead, the neocons pulled a classic, and very arrogant, bait and switch. Sooner or later, they're going to pay for it.

Whether the individuals who unleashed this hasty and calculated campaign “pay for it” (as individuals) may prove beside the point. Philosophies needn’t take root consciously or concertedly, and even without a cabal of Straussians in the driver’s seat, the debate about America’s future has been framed in their terms.

The exclusivity of powerful, absolutist ideologies narrows the spectrum of debate, which in turn assails the benefits of pluralism which are supposed to keep a democracy out of trouble. This course can only be reversed if we can frankly acknowledge its real scope and impact, Star Tribune’s “thorough vetting [and] public explication.” This period of public inquiry and introspection will not complete itself in the course of one election. It may take generations.