Neocons: they’re not killers
My friend Chris Brose and our own Mr. Adesnik use the occasion of the recent Foreign Policy Initiative conference to inform us that if you invite neoconservatives over to your house, they won’t pee on the rug or anything:
As it was, the conference was a pretty staid affair. Some might even call it a love-fest. There were countless expressions of support and admiration for President Obama and his new Af-Pak strategy from Kristol and the brothers Kagan, plus most of the other panelists, who aren’t neo-cons. People like CNAS president John Nagl, who probably summed up the conference best when he remarked what an amazing show of bipartisan support it was for Obama’s policy.
As if rudeness or partisanship was the gravest charge against neoconservatives! This reminds me rather of an old Mr. Show sketch in which a PR firm is hired by NAMBLA to refurbish their image, which they do by unveiling a media campaign with the slogan, “NAMBLA: We’re not killers!”
Perhaps among the fever-swamps, neoconservatives are viewed as something like cossacks, or a cabal that has “hijacked U.S. foreign policy” (note to aspiring writers: don’t ever use the term “hijacked” except in reference to an actual airplane. Otherwise, you will one day wake up to discover you are a total hack).
I like to think that marginally more sophisticated observers understand neoconservatives to be merely the maximalist wing of a foreign policy establishment inseparably wedded to an interventionist and hegemonic posture — hence their common ground with figures like Ivo Daalder, Mike O’Hanlon, et al.
Moreoever, the current generation of neoconservatives is attached neither to a broad political philosophy nor to the Republican party. Rather, they seek to promote an aggressive foreign policy under whomever’s aegis.
Hence their initially tepid support for George W. Bush, and numerous critiques of the Republican party throughout the 1990’s, when it seemed more concerned with reigning in spending than in expanding democracy. And thus the support among the current permutation of neoconservatives for President Obama (or, for that matter, Rep. Jane Harman), an executive who — like many others, it has turned out — seems largely congenial to their worldview.