uh boy.

A one time roomate/college buddy of mine, Danny Postel, just came out with his book "Reading 'Legitimation Crisis' in Iran." As the pseudo intellectual title suggests, it's about the inter-re-action of western ideas in Iran.

Believe it or not Iranian intellectuals are talking about Marcuse, not the Koran. Then their reward for embracing (at least partially) Western ideas is that the West bombs them.

I hope and pray someone bombs Podhoretz. I also hope and pray Iran gets the bomb, since we don't start our pre-apocalyptic resource wars with nuclear states. Even Pakistan - the Taliban's big brother and mentor - becomes our 'ally' after 9-11.

I mean, when someone like the Pod-man gets all wrapped up in hysteria like this, how can we accuse Muslims of being "deluded" when they accuse the US and Israel of plotting against the muslim world? He's like the Al Sadr of the US - he's a poster boy for US (cough Israeli cough) paranoia.

Considering Iran is literally surrounded by nuclear powers (Pakistan, India, Israel) they have pretty legitimate concerns about being intimidated and bullied.

Good News: Probably won't happen. Didn't we just talk to Iran for the first time in 30 years? How is Iraq 'stabilization' going to go with Iran in a shambles? Think they're going to engage in security cooperation for Iraq after being bombed?

MJ,

You're too full of hope! In 20 months the Pod and his brethren will still matter because the media will still treat them like wise old men of Washington.

They'll matter less but so long as they're given constant access despite their lackluster track records, they will be able to force even an Democratic administration to do things they wouldn't normally do.

We're still going to have to keep an eye on these guys, sadly.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Poddy tells us why! Final paragraphs.

"I have no doubt that this ominous prospect figures prominently in the president's calculations. But it seems evident to me that the survival of Israel, a country to which George W. Bush has been friendlier than any president before him, is also of major concern to him--a concern fully coincident with his worries over a Middle Eastern arms race.

"Much of the world has greeted Ahmadinejad's promise to wipe Israel off the map with something close to insouciance. In fact, it could almost be said of the Europeans that they have been more upset by Ahmadinejad's denial that a Holocaust took place 60 years ago than by his determination to set off one of his own as soon as he acquires the means to do so. In some of European countries, Holocaust denial is a crime, and the European Union only recently endorsed that position. Yet for all their retrospective remorse over the wholesale slaughter of Jews back then, the Europeans seem no readier to lift a finger to prevent a second Holocaust than they were the first time around.

"Not so George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It now remains to be seen whether this president, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel. As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will."

I see war from the eyes of one who experienced war, and because of that I despise those who are quick to send others
to war in foreign lands for unjustified reasons. The neo con war mongers like Podhoretz, Kristol, Krauthammer etc. are a threat to our security, more of a threat than Saddam ever was. They have their war in Iraq now and its not only cost us lives, body parts and national treasure, its made us less safe in the world and alienated the rest of the planet. The crowning glory of their desire for a "robust foreign policy" (Bill Kristol) has relegated us to becoming a Rogue Nation, the thing Bush tells us we must fear.

Cowards, war mongers, profiteers, and pathological liars all, a pox on them. They should be put in a leper colony for the rest of their miserable lives.

I disagree that after "El Presidente" leaves office, the assorted neoCONS will be out in the cold, for good.

Nope, like any parasite, they will find another host to latch onto and commence to suck the life out of that person.

Plus, they have been replicating and have more than enough offspring to seed the next president and his/her staff with a whole body of new faces that are still taking orders from their spawners.

We have lost control of our government.

MJ:

Shouldn't someone fact-check this supposed "UK Report" that is the putative source of the original information? Right now all we have is Podhoretz riffing off of some unidentified "British reports" of the original.

Other than the Simon Weisenthal Center, I can only find mention of this Report -and no link at all to the original- among right-wing opinion-spouters.

Sounds a little fishy if you ask me.

-Dave Adams-

Sick puppies those old, angry, neocon white guys.

"why don't we send him, his wife, his children and grandchildren first"

Give his pathetic and worthless son John, and his son-in-law Eliot Abrams, a cowboy hat. They can do a Slim Pickens.

They're intentionally instigating upheavels in US-Iran relations too.

Take the recent spate of arrests of Iranian-Americans in Iran:

The NeoCons in the Bush administration pushed through a $75 million budget to 'promote democracy' in Iran by funding Iranian dissidents & opponents. R Nicholas Burns stated blatantly that the purpose of the funding is to overthrow the government of Iran, along the lines of the "Orange Revolution" in the Ukraine and the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon (both of which have since fizzled out & become counter-productive.)

But the Iranian dissidents and opponents warned pretty explicitly and repeatedly that the secret $75 mil funding would only hurt them, by tainting them as "agents" of a foreign government and giving ammo to the Iranian hardliners to accuse them of being traitors.(see Money can't buy us democracy or Omid Memarian's article) The Clinton Administration specifically avoided this sort of thing, calling foreign funding for Iranian dissidents "the Kiss of Death"

But despite that, the NeoCons insisted on pushing this funding through, out of their sheer ignorance and arrogance, or because they wanted to intentionally instigate a reaction against the Iranian dissidents that the NeoCons could then exploit. Instead of listening to the Iranian dissidents themselves, folks like Michael Rubin of the neocon AEI insist on ignoring the consequences of their own Kiss of Death which they have now delivered to Iranian dissidents.

Well, guess what? The Iranian intellectuals & dissidents are now paying the price as the Iranian government has indeed clamped down on them & accused them of getting foreign funding to overthrow the government, just as everyone predicted, and so we have all this news coverage about how Evil Iran is imprisoning 3 Iranian-American scholars and journalists

(incidentally, what would the US do if Iran was secretly funding people to overthrow the US government? We'd be throwing people into prison just as Iran is doing.)

Another victory for the NeoCons...another defeat for freedom.

I, as a "right-wing, Orthodox religious pro-Judea/Samaria settler Zionist" do not view the "Neo-Cons" or President Bush to particularly be "friends of Israel" or working to Israel's benefit. Most people in Israel, before the US invasion of Iraq had very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, there was a real worry about the supposed WMD's that Saddam had, but on the other hand, we were very concerned that it would be perceived, incorrectly, that the US was sending troops to fight in Israel's interest and in addition, there was general skepticism here in Israel about the plan to turn Iraq into a democracy, which was simply foolhardy.
Peres and Rabin's whole Oslo scheme was based on the very opposite...if you want an Arab to do your bidding, find a mass-murdering terrorist like Arafat, give him territory, money and weapons, and then, hopefully, he will do you want. That, like Bush's Iraq scheme, also turned into a fiasco which both Israel and the Palestinians are paying for every day.
Neo-cons like Charlie Krauthammer ended up chucking out their "principled war on terror" when Sharon and Bush bamboozled them into supporting the so-called "Disengagement" disaster which led to Israel's destruction of its flourishing Gush Katif settlement region (which also provided work to many Palestinians), leading to the endless rocket fire on Sederot plus the Gaza Civil War.

Actually, the Neo-Cons and MJ's "progressive" friends on the other, are two sides of the same coin. Both are Jews that have strong sentiments towards Israel, but they are torn by complexes about loyalty to others at the same time. Instead of appreciating America's freedoms to allow one to be Jew in America and at the same time support the Jewish state, just like Irish Americans support Ireland, Greek Americans support Greece and Cyprus, Mexican Americans support Mexico, without any complexes, both MJ's crowdn AND the Neo-Cons feel they have to prove super-loyalty to other forces and feel the need to mobilize power to push their agendas. Look for instance at MJ's Israel Policy Forum. They are always calling on people to pressure Congress and pressure the President to, in turn, pressure Israel to do what they want. MJ's crowd feels a need to pressure Israel to go along with their "progressive, socialist, anti-Colonialist" agenda, meaning capitulation to Arab terrorist regimes. On the other hand, the Neo-Cons wave the American flag and insist that what they consider to be "American values" like "free markets" and the such be forced upon other peoples who neither want it nor could appreciate it even if they got it. Israel's true interests are subordinated to this. Also, it is important to note that the Arab peoples suffer from it too. See, for example, how MJ supports Pelosi's kow-towing to the repression of the Syrian assassin regime. Also how they want Israel to capitulate to that regime. All this does is weaken the true reformist elements there and increase the repression, there and in Lebanon.
Both the Neo-Cons and MJ's crowd have gigantic plans to remake the world which are really nonsensicle. Instead of trying to let people on their own reach some sort of modus vivendi and using US influence to gradually improve things and bring peace, eventually, in a step-by-step manner, and confronting the true terrorist sponsors, the Saudis, they both want to use a sledgehammer to force the world to conform to their unrealistic ideologies.

Which of them has ever been in harms way?

In fact how many dyed in the wool neocons have ever risked their lives for their country?

Ron Byers

Podhoretz demonstrates the lack of wisdom of allowing dual citizenship.  He should be deported to Israel and not allowed back into this country.

Obviously, Podhoretz is one of those Zionist neocons who is trying to get the U.S. to fight Israel's battles for them. After all, it is Israel who is really the one's who will suffer when Iran finally gets enough plutonium to complete their nuclear weapons projects.

Sure everybody sees Military Parades in Tehran with the huge missles draped with the giant banners displayed on Al Jazeera English on cable television that say, "We Will Destroy Great Britian, France, America, etc." But should this rhetoric be taken seriously? NATO and the U.S. have massive armies compared to Iraq's 12 million man force, and how many nuclear weapons can they build in the next couple of years? Perhaps a dozen? But when Iraqi president Ahmadinejad repeatedly states that Iran will soon, "Wipe Isreal off the Map!" an Army of 12 million and a dozen nukes would easily do the job against a tiny nation the size of Israel.

I think it's high time the United States and the rest of the West stop giving Israel a blank check and let them take care of themselves. They have the military capability right now to defend themselves and stop Iran from building a genocidal nuclear arsenal, why should they ask the U.S. to do the dirty work for them and cause the Islamic world to be even more hateful toward us than they already are? I have written my Congressional Reps. and Senators and urged them to leave Iran alone. I just hope the lame duck Bush and his neocon warlords don't decide they have nothing to lose and start another war with a fanatical religion nation with which it's people will never surrender, never. Ever.

Don't assume that the Democrats are going to win the next Presidential election. Both McCain and Guilani are leading Hillary in the polls right now. Hilary just has too many negatives and may well lose the election to the Republican candidate. And she is still the most likely nominee. Everybody who wants to make sure that there is a Democratic victory needs to make sure that she does not get the nomination.

Thank you. Let me expand a bit on what I wrote here. It was stated in another thread that the "Neo-cons" came out of the Left. I read an article by Irving Kristol who stated he had been a Trotsykite in college. The view of the Left is that "Utopia (or what Jews call "messianism") can be reached if only we can get everyone to think like me, since I know what is best for mankind". In Europe, the Social Democrats and in the US, the liberal Democrats say this can be done by "persuasion" or "political correctness". In the USSR, China, Cuba, where Marxism-Leninism came to rule the roost, they believed that outright force would do the job. Neo-cons brought this Utopianism to the "Right". Thus, they feel that "free markets" and individualism, values that Americans cherish, can be exported to the rest of the world.
If I may quote the Bible, the story of the Tower of Babel shows the folly of this. There was a unitarian, totalitarian state that harnessed everyone to a gargantuan project, building the Tower. The Sages stated that if a man fell off the tower while under construction, and was killed, nobody cared, whereas if a brick fell and was broken, everyone cried. Just like Stalin's USSR. In the end, this totalitarian state had to be broken up and mankind divided into various national units, with different languages. IT IS NOT GOOD IF EVERYONE IS THE SAME. DIfferent people have different natures and different values. Individualism and "free markets" may be good for some societies, but not for others, that have a more "collectivist" mentality and a greater concern for sharing the wealth and eliminating extremes of wealth and poverty. Some societies want sexual freedom, others find this abhorrent.
The values of one society can not be imposed on another. Even American-style democracy is not necessarily transplantable at present. What is more important is "rule-of-law" and equal justice under the law. This can exist even if there is a corrupt political system and fixed elections...e.g. in Britain before the Great Reform of 1832 when they had a very restricted suffrage and rotten boroughs. Eventually, truly free elections resulted. Bush tried to impose "free elections" on Iraq and the Palestinians, without the necessary existing base of a civil society with the ingredients I mentioned above. What did he get? Terror and chaos. The Neo-cons, with their social engineering brought about the horrors the Communists brought on the USSR, China, Cuba, etc.
If I may now quote the Talmud, it states "just as people have different faces, they also have different viewpoints".
Just as it doesn't bother us if people look different, then it shouldn't bother us if people have different ideas. The idea of politics is NOT to bring Utopia as the Left and Neo-Cons thought, but to make life for everyone a little better, a step at time (I heard that this idea comes from Reinhold Niebuhr-can anyone give me a source?).
MJ, Richard Silverstein and others are constantly demanding that the US President and Congress FORCE the Arabs and Israel to make peace. I, and others, have repeatedly pointed out that this is simply not possible. The job of the US is to try to make things a "little better", end the violence, improve the standard of living of the Palestinians, one step at a time. MJ's way only makes things worse, as has been repeatedly proven.

As we should know by now, there are a great many factual errors in wingnut writing. In this case, the claim that Iran is the center of Islamofascism is preposterous. Iran has been a quiet ally in our fight against Al Qaeda and Iranians have a very low opinion Osama bin Laden. Podhoretz embraces Mark Steyn's fantasy of "Eurabia" and the false notion that schools in Britain have stopped teaching about the Holocaust and the Crusades.

I am not sure what your point was about the LEHI. The British didn't put them in power. Your comment was irrelevant to what I was trying to say about Arafat. The Oslo Agreements were not a "peace agreement". They were a cynical attempt to buy off certain terrorists and use them for cynical purposes. Arafat was a disaster not just for Israel BUT ALSO FOR THE PALESTINIANS. He and his FATAH terror gangs destroyed Palestinian society by imposing a reign of terror, acting like organized crime, ripping off the population by monopolizing business and selling overpriced, inferior quality goods. Certain Israelis, connected with the Rabin/Peres clique profited handsomely. That is why Peres and Rabin always claimed that it was "not possible to stop terrorism". They wanted Israelis to get used to the continually deteriorating security situation, while their friends were doing business with the corrupt Palestinian leaders at the same time.
EVERYBODY lost as a result of Oslo, and the biggest losers were the Palestinians.

Exact? Randomly searching through the Project Gutenberg online version of Mein Kampf, I don't find any use of the word "suck", the phrase "control of government", and several other words and phrases in the preceding quote.

"Parasite", indeed, was one of Hitler's favorite terms. In the post you question, there are things, such as references to a President in the context of American usage, rather than the German usage at the time the book was written, that seem unlikely to be from it.

Hitler certainly didn't refer to "neocons" or "El Presidente." Just what language do you find was lifted exactly? Did you mean the style of the post, perhaps, reminded you of some propagandistic writings?
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]