Thank you.

Wow. Nicely put, Retardo (however, I still can’t forgive you for the Liddy/thong debacle – you have been warned.)

One of the most well-thought out, well-put together pieces of wingnut dissection I’ve ever read in LeftBlogistan. Well done, Retardo.

Excellent! I’m gonna save this, as I wish I’d saved Digby’s recent similar article about Lee Atwater rueing the fact that nowadays “tax cuts” says the same thing that “nigger nigger nigger” used to say in the 1950’s.

Here’s another excellent article regarding the fundamentalist mindset which is along the same lines as yours, RM; I wonder if you saw it when it first came out?

http://uuworld.org/2004/01/feature2.html

Here’s that Digby article on Atwater etc. which I was mentioning above:

http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/04/10/breaking-the-code/

I must object to one point, however: Hitchens has always been an asshole.
Other than that… I got nothing else at the moment.

Yes, well put.

Bush makes me pine for Reagan’s brand of evil-empirization. Sure, he nearly destroyed life on Earth as we know it, but at least he seemed to understand that the whole point of dangerously irresponsible brinkmanship is to not go to war.

When Reagan was president, you sort of felt like Patty Hearst. Bush makes you feel like John Wayne Gacy’s mother.

A couple of years ago, I remember reading something that Slavoj Zizek wrote prior to 9/11 about the need of right-wing politicians to invent a new shadowy enemy. He posited that the new enemy would have to be one that was not connected to a specific nation, so that it would be more difficult to ‘defeat’.

He was frighteningly spot on about that one, it seems, if even the right is admitting that that’s what they did. What I hope he was wrong about is the part where he posits that the new boogeyman would never, ever go away.

Winston was listening to the telescreen. At present only music was coming out of it, but there was a possibility that at any moment there might be a special bulletin from the Ministry of Peace. The news from the War on Terror(TM) was disquieting in the extreme. On and off he had been worrying about it all day. An insurgent army (America was at war with radical Islamofacists: America had always been at war with radical Islamofacists) was moving southward at terrifying speed. The mid-day bulletin had not mentioned any definite area, but it was probable that already Falluja was a battlefield. Bagdad and Kirkuk were in danger. One did not have to look at the map to see what it meant. It was not merely a question of losing the Middle East: for the first time in the whole war, the territory of America itself was menaced.

Kristolmethodists is offensive.

I think much of this is what we’ve suspected all along, right?

Sorry, long comment…

Most people who live in the Western World have known since, like, forever that the Soviet threat during the Cold War was an illusion, although one that could be supported by a very impressive narrative containing real-world facts: that freedom is preferable to totalitarianism and that it’s better to be rich than poor. It wasn’t a complete illusion, but the response to it seemed all out of proportion to any conceivable threat it could ever pose. I mean, once you’ve developed an arsenal that can destroy the entire world all on its own, how much more militarisation do you need?

Nowhere in the Western World was this myth so deeply ingrained and so prevented from even being challenged than in the public discourse to which the average American was exposed. It always surprised me to see average , well-educated people look positively horrified when you brought up “constructive engagement” with Cuba or the Eastern Block, or socialising the costs of things like health care and education. God, even the word “socialist” was scary. You could see a world-view constructed entirely around the perminent presence of an enemy out to destroy you and around a fear that motivates you to support things that aren’t useful.

Back in the mid-90’s, when I was teaching at a university in the Caribbean, all the cantakerous academics coming from a wide-variety of backgrounds and nationalities seemed to agree on one thing – that the demise of the Soviet Union might not turn out to be such a great thing.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand how seemingly capable people like William Kristol or Francis Fukuyama persist in being so blind about these things for as long as they do. Or, I do understand…they’ll believe it as long as it’s economically advantageous for them.

Kristol might be aware of this, and doesn’t really care…he’s bought and paid for and his meal-ticket doesn’t rely on peer-review. With Fukuyama, an academic, it might slowly be dawning that his career prospects over the long-term aren’t looking good if he continues to support a narrative that has no connection to the real world.

Between the Cold War and the current Long War we had the nebulous War on Drugs.

fish –
While 1984 is an apt comparison, the Gilliam film Brazil is what I keep coming back to. Every day is Christmas, there are somewhat nebulous “terrorists” who randomly blow things up, the rich are very well off and uncaring, innocent people are incorrecty arrested, tortured and killed for having a name similar to a criminal’s, the government is obscenely byzantine…

Between the Cold War and the current Long War we had the nebulous War on Drugs.

And don’t forget “The War on Sex” That’s my favourite.

SF:

Yeah Brazil works too. Particularly the over the top self-indulgence of the wealthy as all of this is taking place. Love the plastic surgery scene…

Is not to worry, Natasha; the glorious Feckless Leader is not forgetting about smashing of China, only making profitable side venture in Iraq/n in order to clean out nest of mooses and squirrels (not to mention US Treasury) before getting on to main event, The Really Real Long War.

“When Reagan was president, you sort of felt like Patty Hearst. Bush makes you feel like John Wayne Gacy’s mother.”

Awesome comment on an awesome post. I’m stealing this right fucking now…

I hope that guy is joking about that Weekly World article. Though his joke may be like saying “Well, the Protocols of Zion are fake, but it is what the Jews would do.” (Sorry to Godwin the thread)

We can’t afford to demonize China as Teh Enemy. I’d estimate that a third of the US economy would just, well, vanish if we cut off relations with China. Japan and Korea would evaporate overnight. And China would suddenly own at least 25% of the world’s factories.

If there’s one thing the neo-cons are good at, it’s looking out for their stock portfolios. (Of course, if China ever wanted to eliminate the US as a power, all they have to do is invest in Euros instead of dollars. Boom! Why waste your nuclear arsenal when you can collapse the economy and leave the infrastructure intact? Send out the banker battalions and keep the tanks in reserve.)

I wrote about this yesterday. I’m afraid that you, Matt and even Fukuyama have completely misunderstood what Kristol, et al, were trying to do during the 90s.

Short version: of course they were looking for the next threat. That’s precisely what we needed to do in the post-Cold War era. Our geopolitical and military alignment was focused on MAD superpower deterrence and a land war in Europe. Well, when the need for that orientation ends, what comes next? Of course people were trying to figure that out.

And the notion that Kristol and Co. were Johnnies-come-lately to the Iraq and Islamist terrorism threat is just astoundingly wrong.

Bush makes you feel like John Wayne Gacy’s mother.

*That’s* what that feeling is. I see teh l4m3 has beaten me to stealing it. Bummer.

“We can’t afford to demonize China as Teh Enemy. I’d estimate that a third of the US economy would just, well, vanish if we cut off relations with China.”

This is true now but not so much then in the 90s.

Sigh sigh sigh. Back then, in my stupider days, I was a neoliberal type like DeLong, Yglesias, Drum et al. My argument against the China As Evil Empire schtick then was along the lines of: “no, they want mcdonald’s and kfc and vcr tapes and we must use such things as a carrot and stick.” Which was indeed better than a new Cold War. But instead we got rich from the carrot and forgot the stick. This is liberals’ fault. Most favored nation status was supposed to be renewed contingent to China improving its human rights record. It was not. Also, in hindsight it was massively stupid to recommend that a country of 2 billion people take up the habits of American consumption: it means environmental holocaust. Now, matters are much much worse though we cant see it as such now.

China is not a monolithic enemy and shouldnt be used as such in order to make a new Cold War. But neither should it be excused. It’s the worst of the capitalist and communist worlds combined; in many ways it is the libertarian dreamcountry where property is sacred but people are cheap and disposable. But I dont have any answers, only analysis.

Short version: of course they were looking for the next threat. That’s precisely what we needed to do in the post-Cold War era. Our geopolitical and military alignment was focused on MAD superpower deterrence and a land war in Europe. Well, when the need for that orientation ends, what comes next? Of course people were trying to figure that out.”

That is a job for military planners and war-gamers, and it comes from a defense orientation. The neocons “searched” for such threats out of an offensive orientation, to use as a cudgel in domestic politics (which is Fukuyama’s point and no, he does not misunderstand), and to strategerize a way to develop American hegemony abroad.

Taking long-view appraisals of possible threats for the purposes of defense is necessary and admirable. Cynically creating or exaggerating longterm threats for nefarious purposes, on the other hand, is abominable.

If you’ll read my post, you’ll find that Kristol and Co. were engaged in policy planning and were far from the cynical opportunists portrayed.

Perhaps you have some special insight here, but the public evidence is that they were trying to push for the US to reorient our foreign policy for the likely future challenges….and that, far from coming on Iraq and Islamism after 9/11, they’d devoted a great deal of attention to it for years. They’ve long argued that it was central to our future foreign policy.

Many on the left have argued for years that “the neocons planned this all along” (PNAC, etc). This new tack — that they’re just being opportunistic — is a shallow understanding of what occurred.

I read it, and it makes no sense. You attribute to the Left a false dichotomy in their (our) analysis of the situation. Just because Fukuyama has spilled the beans on the neocon schemes viz China doesn’t mean that neocons also weren’t scheming viz the muslim world. schemes with regard to one “threat” do not preclude schemes with regard to a different “threat”; actually, a multiplicity of schemes for a mulitplicity of “threats” perfectly dovetails with the neocon penchant for aggressive paranoia and with neocon general wankery, its habit of intellectual [sic] busyness.

If you’ll read MY post linked to in the above article on the neocon bias of nationalism, I’ve addressed this already.

But to elaborate, Fukuyama’s relevation is with regard to neocon aspirations of a “threat’s” affect on the US voter. Now my thesis is that neocons’ main purpose is to expand and strengthen American hegemony. But how to rile the populace up enough to further these ends? Certainly, the middle east is rife with anti-american and anti-israel sentiments. yet there was muslim fatigue post-Gulf War I. Clearly it wasn’t getting the job done. But that didn;t mean that the neocons didnt want to do something about the middle east, hence PNAC. But anti-muslimism didnt turn the screws quite like anti-communism did a generation before. What to do? Ahhh, China — but that didn’t mean that neocons weren’t looking to the middle east as well.

Then 9/11, then the excuse to ratchet up the tribalism, the excuse to create a monolithic enemy. Finally, something to exploit like the old fear of commies. And now, well, here we are.

As I mentioned in the post, their 1990s-era warnings in re:China were far from hysterical or red meat for the US proles. The concerns they raised were generally focused on protecting Taiwan and applying the “stick” against China’s human rights abuses. Their 2000 position paper on “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” was very far from hysterical. They essentially advocated nothing more than strengthening our East Asian/Pacific alliances. Those are pretty consistent with the dominant liberal foreign policy take.

In fact, they made precisely the same criticism of Clinton-era policy that you do: “we got rich from the carrot and forgot the stick”.

As I mentioned in the post, their 1990s-era warnings in re:China were far from hysterical or red meat for the US proles.

Oh, I see what you’re doing, now.

No, it is not the Kristolmethodist purpose to give red meat to the proles. The Weakly Standard’s circulation is small, as indeed Commentary’s was small even in its heyday. But then the neocon elite is not in the business of direct-to-the-Lesser-Wingnuts meme dispersal. Rather, neocons are read by Higher Repugs, those in government or near it, to use as they see fit. It is understood by the neocons that through the Higher Repug medium, their message will be larded with prole-friendly mannerisms. Incidentally, this dynamic is the quintessence of Straussianism, Bloom Division.

— And this is precisely, again, why Fukuyama’s admission is so important. It proves the Straussian point: as you have provided the evidence for, Kristol and crew need not directly stoke the fires, *yet Fukuyama says that was their goal*. Neocons come up with the plans, lay the groundwork. Then the Higher Repugs put it into action and make it palatable to the masses of red state idiots.

Perpetual War against the Monolithic Enemy also serves other purposes than a strategery for Republican election victories: it provides wingnuts with a means to feel better about themselves.
[…]
Nevermind stupid things like health care or civil rights — look outward not inward — we’ve got an enemy to battle!

Cette démocratie si parfaite fabrique elle même son inconcevable ennemi, le terrorisme. Elle veut en effet, être jugée sur ses ennemis plutôt que sur ses résultats. L’histoire du terrorisme est écrite par l’État; elle est donc éducative. Les populations spectatrices ne peuvent certes pas tout savoir du terrorisme, mais elles peuvent toujours en savoir assez pour être persuadées que, par rapport à ce terrorisme, tout le reste devra leur sembler plutôt acceptable, en tout cas plus rationnel et plus démocratique.

Guy Debord, Commentaires sur La Soci̩t̩ du spectacle, IX Р1988

Zizek wrote prior to 9/11 about the need of right-wing politicians to invent a new shadowy enemy. He posited that the new enemy would have to be one that was not connected to a specific nation, so that it would be more difficult to ‘defeat’.

I’ve happily read some Zizek but am by no means an expert. I’ve never come across this point especially made this plainly. In which book or essay is does it come from?

It’s worth noting that the loopy-loo brigade has been seeding the intellectual soil for a conflation of China and Islam for some time….the germ for this is probably Samuel Huntington’s loopy-loo gospel from 1993, The Clash of Civilizations”, where he introduces the world to “Islamo-Confucian societies”.

I remember tearing that thing apart in class – mostly that it’s just based on endless assertionns and anecdote with no real substance to it, but it sure fired the imaginations of a lot of Steve McQueen wannabes.

But then 9/11 happened, and it was a godsend for the wingnuts.

A little bit too much of a godsend if you ask some people:

http://pestilence.short-b.us/LooseChange2ndEditio.avi

Now, there’s some wacky shit in this little documentary, but considering what we already know about the current administration, can we really exclude from consideration the idea that they were behind the whole thing?

Look at who benefitted from 9/11 (Bushco), look who’s gotten more than filthy rich since then (Bushco), and look who’s got the most to hide (once again, Bushco). They had the motive, and they definitely had the power. I sure as shit wouldn’t put it past these slimy fucks to do some shit like this.

As a founding member of the Vast Conspiracy to Prevent the Spread of Vast Conspiracy (henceforth to be known as “VCONPVCON”), I have to say that, after seriously weighing the evidence, the idea that the current administration was involved in perpetrating the September 11 attacks is something that I will never in my life be able to huff enough nitrous to take seriously.

Criminey. Stuff like this makes the Left look insane, and should be avoided like the plague.

After all, isn’t the Bush administration already guilty of enough misdeeds that are actually plausible for you to hate them? Would you hate them somehow more if you knew that Karl Rove had personally shot Santa Claus in the face, and therefore Christmas was cancelled this year?

Sheesh.

can we really exclude from consideration the idea that they were behind the whole thing?

I think we can, yeah. Are they devious enough to do something like that? Of course. But they aren’t competent enough to pull it off and lack the balls to try.

They were not behind 9/11. And I say this as a guy who doesn’t reflexively discount conspiracy theories.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, though, the conspiracy that Fukuyama spilled the beans on, that was the subject of this post, used to be denied by wingnuts who’d accuse us of being paranoid conspiracy theorists who probably also believe in Area 51 shit and the whole x-files nine yards, when we’d bring it up. “Oh, we act in good faith” “Oh, nobody could be that evil; what do you think we are, cartoon characters?”

Of course, as Fukuyama now admits, they were and are that demented, they have and do act in that sort of bad faith.

With this bunch, it’s right to assume the worst. But your calculus must include provisions for their abilities, which are negligible as we have seen. They can fuck-up a wet dream. To pull off an inside job with 9/11 is far beyond them in this regard.
So, with sympathy — NO.

The “huge undertaking” argument is full of holes. Nothing about 9/11 needed a huge effort. It’s a contradiction to say 19 hijackers who couldn’t fly could pull it off but our people can’t.

PNAC wanted a pearl harbor event. You can find it if you use the handy dandy search thingy in your PDF reader on the Rebuilding America’s Offenses document (btw whoever produced the PDF put the author as Hectoring Hegemons – if the low level employees within the Beast get it why can’t the rest of the population?)

Bush spiked bin Laden investigations.

They were doing a terror drill EXACTLY like 9/11 on 9/11 and several times before.

FEMA was in the WTC 9/10 evening. First they said that the guy mistakenly said so to the TV press. Then Giuliani says, well actually we were also getting ready for a bio terror drill on 9/12.

NORAD intercepted 67 off course flights that year, but let 4 planes go because of drills.

Mayor Willie Brown got warned.
Rushdie got warned.
Odigo sent out warnings to their customers.

Building 7, not hit by a plane, collapsed. Larry “I bought the entire WTC complex a few months before 9/11 but that’s a coincidence” Silverstein said they pulled the building. Then he said, after 2 years of nagging him, he meant the fire fighters. Problem: NO FIREFIGHTERS IN WTC 7. Even the swiss cheese hit piece by Ben Chertoff in Popular Mechanics says so.

Massive put options on United and American Airlines.

Bush’s “must not tolerate conspiracy theories” speech at the UN.

7 hijackers found alive in the middle east.

My favorite, these supposedly living hijackers are now on the NO FLY list. Why the flip would
they be on the NO FLY list IF THEY WERE ON THE PLANES? They’d be dead.

19 Hijackers not on the flight manifests. Go look it up.

Passport of steel.

I know these people are clowns. But they’re not incompetent. They’re out to create obstacles to progress and advancement, to make the world a nauseating place to live in. As long as
the world is starving and depressed they have no competition.

— Never forget Government is Made of People. YOU GOTTA TELL ‘EM.

This admission by Francis Fokuyama is ground breaking, especially in light of the PNAC document published in September 2000 calling for a ‘new Pearl Harbor’ (and let’s not forget that Fukuyama is a signatory of the PNAC Statement of Principles). Interesting coincidence: the neocons claim that Al Qaeda have been plotting 9/11 since the beginning of the 90s. Also, the president in the early 90s was Bush Senior, former head of the CIA. On 9/11, Porter Goss. former spy and now head of the CIA, had a breakfast meeting with Mahmoud Ahmad, the alleged money man of Al Qaeda. On the same day, Bush was meeting with the Bin Laden family during a Carlyle Group meeting. Put two and two together.

Whenever I see Francis Fukuyama I read:

Francis Fuck Your Mama.

It’s because I’m a worthless liberal pervert who is going to hell no doubt.

See ya there.

ntltrmllgnc wrote:

Never forget Government is Made of People.

Government is Soylent Green??? Who knew?

More seriously, though, what the heck does your “passport of steel” comment refer to?

My favorite, these supposedly living hijackers are now on the NO FLY list. Why the flip would they be on the NO FLY list IF THEY WERE ON THE PLANES? They’d be dead.

Because there are little old ladies taking their first flight ever, as well as infants and toddlers on the infamous no-fly lists? Because those lists are complied seemingly at random? Because whoever is putting those lists together is hedging their bets?

The no-fly lists have been well-documented as causing headaches for lots of people who are not, have never been, nor are likely to ever be terrorists. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the names of the “living terrorists” were found on them, _particularly_ if they had fairly common names, or names that were close to the names of other, -known- terrorists. Or if they were known aliases of known terrorists.

Military-industrial complex?

look, over there!!!! explosions!

The pristine passport that was found on the ground after the planes hit.

Professor Steven Jones says it was thermite that brought down towers 1 and 2. I still think explosives were necessary (the towers were self-pulverizing and spewing all over) but that certainly helped.