Those Who Forget the Past

by Ron Rosenbaum

  Drew’s use of the word “but” at the head of the last sentence was no doubt designed to distance her from the accusation that the neocons’ motive is to serve the interests of Israel, even as the words that follow the “but” only seem to confirm the charge.

  More explicit, and more egregious, was the hard-Left historian Paul Buhle, who wrote in Tikkun that “It is almost as if the anti-Semitic Protocols of Zion, successfully fought for a century, have suddenly returned with an industrial-sized grain of truth”—that “truth” being, of course, that the hawkish policies of the neoconservatives are indeed tailored for Israel’s benefit.

  Perhaps the most dramatic effort to expose the hidden Jewish interest underlying neocon ideas was the BBC-TV special on America’s “war party.” It was aired on the program Panorama,which touts itself as the British equivalent of CBS’s 60 Minutes, and the lead-in announced: “Tonight: Will America’s Superhawks Drag Us into More Wars Against Their Enemies?” It did not take long for the meaning of the phrase “their enemies” to become apparent. First, however, viewers were introduced to a rogues’ gallery of neoconservative interviewees, each of them filmed at an unusually close angle with the head filling the entire screen for an eerie, repulsive effect. Freeze-frame stills of the subjects were also shown, shifting suddenly from color into the look of white-on-black negatives, while in the background one heard sound effects appropriate to a lineup on a police drama. By contrast, the interviewer, Steve Bradshaw, and a number of guests hostile to the neocons were shown mostly in appealing poses.

  On the show itself, Perle was introduced as “the neocons’ political godfather,” a suggestive term whose implication was reinforced by a question put separately to him and another guest: “Are you a mafia?” As the camera panned over the building that houses AEI and the other arms of this “mafia,” we heard from the announcer that here was where the “future is being plotted.”

  And what exactly is being “plotted”? The answer was foreshadowed early on when an unidentified woman-in-the-street said of the war in Iraq: “It seems like there’s . . . another agenda that we’re not really privy to and that is what concerns me most.” Several minutes later, Bradshaw returned to the same motif: “We picked up a recurrent theme of insider talk in Washington. Some leading neocons, people whisper, are strongly pro-Zionist and want to topple regimes in the Middle East to help Israel as well as the U.S.” To shed light on this “highly sensitive issue,” he then turned to Jim Lobe, identified as a “veteran neocon watcher and longstanding opponent of anti-Semitism.”

  Lobe was used repeatedly as the show’s resident expert. A reporter with the “alternative” media who prides himself on being a nemesis of neoconservatives, he has no special credentials as an “opponent of anti-Semitism,” but the gratuitous compliment was there for a purpose—namely, to inoculate him and his hosts against the obvious charge of Jew-baiting. For that is indeed what came next. Bradshaw posed the leading question: “You think it’s legitimate to talk about the pro-Israeli politics of some of the neoconservatives?” And Lobe, looking as Jewish as his name sounds, replied: “I think it’s very difficult to understand them if you don’t begin at that point.” A few moments later, in a simulacrum of journalistic balance, Bradshaw allowed the Middle East specialist Meyrav Wurmser to deny any special neoconservative fidelity to Israel. Wurmser is an immigrant to the United States from Israel, and looks and sounds the part; she could not have been chosen with more care to verify the charge she was brought on to deny—that the neoconservatives are indeed a Jewish mafia, dragging both America and Britain into war after war for the sake of Israel.

  If there is an element of anti-Semitism at work in some of the attacks on the neoconservatives—and there manifestly is— to call it such is not, alas, enough. Even outright canards need to be rebutted, tedious and demeaning though the exercise may be. So let us ask the question: is it true that neoconservatives are mostly Jews, and are they indeed working to shape U.S. policy out of devotion to the interests of the “Likud party” or of Israel?

  Many neoconservatives are in fact Jews. Why this should be so is not self-evident, although part of the answer is surely that Jews, whenever and wherever they have been free to indulge it, exhibit a powerful attraction to politics and particularly to the play of political ideas—an attraction that is evident all across the political spectrum but especially on the Left. Indeed, the disproportionate presence of Jews in early Communist movements in eastern and central Europe became grist for the Nazis and other far-Right movements that portrayed Bolshevism as a Jewish cause whose real purpose was (yes) to serve Jewish interests. In reality, Trotsky and Zinoviev and the other Jewish Communists were no more concerned about the interests of the Jewish people than were Lenin and Stalin which is to say, not at all.

  As it happens, the Jewish affinity with the Left may be one reason why neoconservatism boasts so many Jewish adherents: it is a movement whose own roots lie in the Left. But the same affinity is to be seen at work in many of the insinuations against Jewish neocons by leftists who are themselves Jews or who profess some Jewish connection. Michael Lind, for one, has gone out of his way to assert his own Jewish “descent,” and Tikkun is in some self-professed sense a Jewish magazine. Even the BBC’s assault on the neocons featured a Jewish critic in the starring role. So passionate are these Jews in their opposition to neoconservative ideas that they have not hesitated to pander to anti-Semitism in the effort to discredit them. What about their ulterior motives, one wonders?

  It may sound strange in light of the accusations against them, but in fact the careers of leading neoconservatives have rarely involved work on Middle East issues. The most distinctive of Richard Perle’s many contributions to U.S. policy lie in the realm of nuclear-weapons strategy. Elliott Abrams made his mark as a point man for President Reagan’s policies toward Central America. Paul Wolfowitz’s long career in government includes not only high office in the State and Defense departments but also a stint as ambassador to Indonesia during which he pressed for democratization harder than any of his predecessors.

  These three, as well as the rest of the neocon circle, are and were hard-liners toward the USSR, China, Nicaragua, and North Korea. Is it any wonder that they held a similar position toward Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? If Israel did not exist, which of them would have favored giving Hans Blix’s team still more time, or leaving the whole matter in the hands of the UN? Are we to believe that the decades-long neoconservative campaign against Communism and anti-Americanism was a fantastically farsighted Rube Goldberg machine programmed to produce some benefit for Israel somewhere down the line?

  The BBC claimed to have found a smoking gun, one that others have pounced on as well. Bradshaw “In 1996, a group of neocons wrote a report intended as advice for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benny [sic] Netanyahu. It called for . . . removing Saddam Hussein from power, an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.” Perle and Douglas Feith, the latter now a high official in Bush’s Defense Department, were among those who had “contributed” to this paper.

  Yet even if the BBC had characterized the document accurately, it would not imply what the BBC (and not the BBC alone) suggested it did. The Americans whose names appeared on the paper had long sought Saddam’s ouster, an objective that was already, in 1996, the implicit policy of the Clinton administration. It would thus make more sense to say that, in preparing a paper for Netanyahu, they were trying to influence Israeli policy on behalf of American interests than the other way around. Indeed, most Israeli officials at that time viewed Iran, the sponsor of Hizballah and Hamas, as a more pressing threat to their country than Iraq, and (then as later) would have preferred that it be given priority in any campaign against terrorism.

  To make matters worse, the BBC fundamentally misrepresented the nature of the document. Contrary to Bradshaw’s claim, no “group of neocons” had written it. Rather, it was the work of a rapporteur summarizing the deliberations of a conference, and was clear
ly identified as such. The names affixed to it were listed as attendees and not as endorsers, much less authors.

  In any case, although it is true that many neocons are Jews, it is also true that many are not. Kirkpatrick, Woolsey, Michael Novak, Linda Chavez, William J. Bennett—all are of pure neocon pedigree, while other non-Jews figuring prominently in current foreign-policy debates and today called neocons include Bolton, AEI president Christopher DeMuth, and Gary Schmitt of the Project for the New American Century. These Gentile neocons are no less strong in their support of Israel than are Jewish neocons, which suggests a stance growing not out of ethnic loyalty but out of some shared analysis of the rights and wrongs of the Arab-Israel conflict.

  Just as it is undeniable that many neoconservatives happen to be Jews, it is undeniable that America’s war against terrorism will redound to Israel’s benefit as the biggest victim of terrorism. But the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, taking at a stroke three thousand lives, pushed America pretty high up on the list of terror’s victims. That blow, and the certain knowledge that the terrorists would try for even greater carnage in the future, drove us to war in 2001 just as Pearl Harbor had done in 1941.

  That earlier decision by the United States suffused Winston Churchill with joy, for England was then on the front lines with the Nazis just as Israel is today on the front lines with terrorists. At the time there were those who said we were going to war for the sake of England. For that matter, there were some who said we were going to war for the sake of the Jews: the subject is perennial. Then, as now, they were wrong.

  If any single episode exposes the famousness of the charge that neoconservative policies amount to Jewish special pleading, it was the 1990s war in Bosnia—the same conflict that served to crystallize a post–cold-war approach to foreign policy that might fairly be described as neoconservative. It had been in large part as a response to the Soviet challenge that neoconservatism took shape in the first place, so it is only natural that the end of the cold war should have invited the question Norman Podhoretz raised in 1996: was there anything left of neoconservatism to distinguish it from plain, unprefixed conservatism?

  One answer to this question may have come as early as 1992, when hostilities first broke out in Bosnia and then-President George H. W. Bush dismissed them as a “hiccup,” while Secretary of State James Baker declared: “We have no dog in that fight.” These two were not heartless men, but they were exemplars of a traditional conservative cast of mind. The essence of the matter, as they saw it, was that Bosnia engaged little in the way of American interests, which in the conventional view meant vital resources, or strategic geography, or the safety of allies.

  Then a movement coalesced in opposition to American inaction. Its leaders, apart from a handful of young foreign-service officers who had resigned from the State Department in protest and who carried no ideological labels, were almost all from neoconservative ranks. Perle, Wolfowitz, Kirkpatrick, and Max Kampelman were among those in the forefront. So ardent was I myself on the issue that Bosnia was the chief of several points impelling me to support Bill Clinton against Bush in 1992, a choice over which I would sing my regrets in these pages when Clinton turned out to care not a whit more about Bosnia than had the elder Bush.

  It bears recalling that the Bosnian cause was championed by international Islamists, and that the Bosnians themselves had been part of the Croatian fascist state during World War II, infamous for its brutality toward Jews. Logically, then, if there was any “Jewish interest” in the conflict, it should have led to support for the Bush-Clinton position. But as the bloodletting wore on, neoconservatives, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, were much more likely than traditional conservatives to support intervention. Despite the occasional, prominent exception— neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer was an opponent of intervention, conservative Senator Bob Dole a supporter—the prevailing division on Bosnia demonstrated that a distinctive neoconservative sensibility, if not ideology, endured, or perhaps had been reborn, after the end of the cold war. It centered on the question of the uses of American power, and it was held even by some who had not made the whole journey from liberalism with the original neocons.

  What is that sensibility? In part it may consist in a greater readiness to engage American power and resources where nothing but humanitarian concerns are at issue. In larger part, however, it is concerned with national security, sharing with traditional conservatism the belief that military strength is irreplaceable and that pacifism is folly. Where it parts company with traditional conservatism is in the more contingent approach it takes to guarding that security.

  Neoconservatives sought action in Bosnia above all out of the conviction that, however remote the Balkans may be geographically and strategically, allowing a dictator like Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic to get away with aggression, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder in Europe would tempt other malign men to do likewise elsewhere, and other avatars of virulent ultranationalism to ride this ticket to power. Neoconservatives believed that American inaction would make the world a more dangerous place, and that ultimately this danger would assume forms that would land on our own doorstep. Thus it had happened throughout the twentieth century; and thus, in the fullness of time, it would happen again on September 11 of the first year of the twenty-first.

  In addition to their more contingent approach to security, neoconservatives have shown themselves more disposed to experiment with unconventional tactics—using air strikes against the Serbs, arming the Bosnians or, later, the Iraqi National Congress. By contrast, conservatives of traditional bent are more inclined to favor the use of overwhelming force or none at all, and to be more concerned with “exit strategies.” Still another distinguishing characteristic is that neoconservatives put greater stock in the political and ideological aspects of conflict.

  A final distinction may reflect neoconservativism’s vestigial links with liberalism. This is the enthusiasm for democracy. Traditional conservatives are more likely to display an ambivalence toward this form of government, an ambivalence expressed centuries ago by the American founders. Neoconservatives tend to harbor no such doubts.

  With this in mind, it also becomes easier to identify the true neoconservative models in the field of power politics: Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Ronald Reagan, and Winston Churchill. These were tough-minded men who were far from “conservative” either in spirit or in political pedigree. Jackson was a Democrat, while Reagan switched to the Republicans late in life, as Churchill did from the Liberals to the Tories. All three were staunch democrats and no less staunch believers in maintaining the might of the democracies. All three believed in confronting democracy’s enemies early and far from home shores; and all three were paragons of ideological warfare.

  Each, too, was a creative tactician. Jackson’s eponymous “amendments” holding the Soviet Union’s feet to the fire on the right of emigration and blocking a second unequal nuclear agreement put a stop to American appeasement. Reagan’s provocative rhetoric, plus his arming of anti-Communist guerrillas, paved the way to American victory in the cold war. Churchill’s innovative ideas, which rightly or wrongly had won him disrepute in the first world war, were essential to his nation’s survival in the second. Could this element in neoconservatism help explain why the cause of Israel, an innovative, militarily strong democracy, is embraced by all neoconservatives, non-Jews as well as Jews?

  But this brings us back at last to the question of the neocons’ alleged current influence. How did their ideas gain such currency? Did they “hijack” Bush’s foreign policy, right out from under his nose and the noses of Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice—all members of the same team that, to hear the standard liberal version, was itself so diabolically clever that in the 2000 election it had stolen the presidency itself?

  The answer is to be found not in conspiracy theories but in the terrorist outrage of September 11, 2001. Though it constituted a watershed in American his
tory, this event was novel not in kind but only in scale. For roughly thirty years, Middle Eastern terrorists had been murdering Americans in embassies, barracks, airplanes, and ships—even, once before, in the World Trade Center. Except for a few criminal prosecutions and the lobbing of a few mostly symbolic shells, the U.S. response had been inert. Even under President Reagan, Americans fled in the wake of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, then the largest single attack we had suffered.

  Terrorism, we were told, was an accepted way of doing politics in the Middle East. More than a handful of the region’s governments openly supported it, and the PLO, an outfit steeped in terror, was the poster child of the Arab cause. Any strong response to this scourge would serve only to make the people of the region angrier at us, and generate still more terrorists.

  On September 11, we learned in the most dreadful way that terrorists would not be appeased by our diffidence; quite the contrary. We saw—they themselves told us—that they intended to go on murdering us in ever larger numbers as long as they could. A sharp change of course was required, and the neoconservatives, who had been warning for years that terror must not be appeased, stood vindicated—much as, more grandly, Churchill was vindicated by Hitler’s depredations after Munich.

  Not only did the neocons have an analysis of what had gone wrong in American policy, they also stood ready with proposals for what to do now: to wage war on the terror groups and to seek to end or transform governments that supported them, especially those possessing the means to furnish terrorists with the wherewithal to kill even more Americans than on September 11. Neocons also offered a long-term strategy for making the Middle East less of a hotbed of terrorism: implanting democracy in the region and thereby helping to foment a less violent approach to politics.