The Great Neo-Con Con
The NeoCons are giving conservatives a bad name. When are the
conservatives going to say "No more" ?
By Mick Youther
Four years ago, I didn’t even know what a NeoConservative was—and now
they’re running our country. George W. Bush may be President, but the
NeoCons are calling all the shots.
• “[NeoCons] want Bush to expand the war, broaden the theater of
operations, multiply our enemies, and ignore our allies. If Bush
should adopt this strategy, it would be America and Israel against the
Arab and Islamic world with Europe neutral and almost all of Asia
rooting for our humiliation.”-- Patrick J. Buchanan, The American
Conservative, 3/1/04
• “Iraq is just one battle in a larger war, bringing down the regime
in Iran is the central act, because Iran is the world's most dangerous
terrorist country.”-- Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise
Institute—the de facto headquarters for neconservative policy, quoted
in NeoCon 101, csmonitor.com
• “In 1989, following the end of the Cold War and just prior to the
Gulf War, ***** Cheney, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz produced the
'Defense Planning Guidance' report advocating U.S. military dominance
around the globe. …the plan called for the U.S. to be dominant over
friends and foes alike.”-- The Sunday Herald, 9/15/02
• “[Rumsfeld] says he has told the Pentagon to ‘think the
unthinkable’. [Cheney] has said the US is considering military or
other action against ‘40 to 50 countries’ and warns that the new war
may last 50 years or more… […and Bush adviser, Richard Perle says] ‘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.’"--John Pilger, Daily Mirror, 1/29/02
I’ve noticed two important things about the NeoConservatives.
First—they have been wrong on just about everything they have ever
said about Iraq, and second—they are not Conservatives. They
infiltrated our government in the guise of Conservatives, and they
continue to enjoy the support of Conservatives; but they are not
conservatives.
• “Our ‘neoconservatives’ are neither new nor conservative, but old as
Bablyon and evil as Hell.”-- Edward Abbey (1927-1989), Author and
Environmentalist
• “The oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50 and $100 billion
over the course of the next two or three years…We’re dealing with a
country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively
soon.”-- Assistant Secretary of Defense and the mastermind responsible
for Operation Iraqi Freedom—Paul Wolfowitz, in Congressional
Testimony, 3/27/03
• “[The war] could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”--
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Feb 2003
• “We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.…I think it will go
relatively quickly… weeks rather than months.”-- Vice President
Cheney, 3/16/03
• [Six months later] “I think has been fairly significant success in
terms of putting Iraq back together again…and certainly wouldn't lead
me to suggest or think that the strategy is flawed or needs to be
changed.”--Vice President Cheney, MSNBC, 9/14/03
• “Neo-con interventionist foreign policies are only breeding
resentment, creating even more enemies, and putting our children and
grandchildren into a financial black hole so deep they may never get
out…. There is nothing conservative about the U.S policy in Iraq.”--
Rep. John J. Duncan (R-TN), 9/24/03
• “Does [Conservative] describe an administration that has undermined
some of our most basic freedoms, gutted laws designed to conserve our
natural resources, and led the nation into a war based on fear rather
than fact? …If you think you are a conservative, look at the track
record for this administration and ask yourself if it fits the
conservative profile of smaller government, a balanced budget and
limited foreign entanglements.”-- Joan King, The Gainseville Times,
12/9/03
• “…If the neoconservatives retain control of the conservative,
limited-government movement in Washington, the ideas, once championed
by conservatives, of limiting the size and scope of government will be
a long-forgotten dream.”-- Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), 7/10/03
Conservatives need to ask themselves which they would prefer—enduring
four years of a liberal President who wants their children to have a
good education and healthcare; or to stay the course and pour all of
America’s blood and treasure into the NeoCon’s perpetual war machine.
I’m sorry Conservatives, but you were fooled and America has suffered
for it. Instead of a conservative President, you got a War
President—controlled by war profiteers. So remember:
• “Fool me once... Shame on.. Shame on you....Fool me...Can't get
fooled again.” (You know what he meant.)-- President George W. Bush,
MSNBC-TV, 9/17/02
Conservatives, don’t get fooled again.
Mick Youther is retiring from Southern Illinois University to devote
the next few months to Regime Change in America. You can email your
comments to
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