From Leo Strauss to nowadays Neocons

[The Cat]

From Nietzsche to Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt & The Neocons -3/3

Was Strauss a Fascist? by Scott Horton (July 2006).
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/07/letter_16.html

It seems almost impossible to imagine a German-Jewish refugee in France, a man who describes his religious upbringing as “Conservative, if not Orthodox” actually embracing the political philosophy of his persecutors. (...) Strauss was a Middle European intellectual living in a period where liberalism looked exhausted and unable to function, and many of his contemporaries, and indeed many of Strauss’ mentors, were engaging with fascist thought. Specifically, we should consider that the two contemporary thinkers who appear to have exerted the greatest influence on Strauss at this time – Heidegger and Schmitt – were each entering into a dalliance with fascism. (...)

The aspect of fascism that most appealed to Strauss is also evident from the letter: it is the reliance on thoughts of classical antiquity, particularly of the early imperial era of Rome, as they were distorted in the political mirror of the thirties - most effectively by the Italian fascists. (...)

The Löwith letter is profoundly revealing of the nature of Leo Strauss’ conservatism. It places his conservatism outside of the Anglo-American tradition that links to figures like Locke, Hume and Burke. Instead, it springs from a traditional Continental European variant which is deeply rooted in religion and in the notion of a benevolent (though sometimes not particularly benevolent) authoritarian leader legitimized by religion...

Strauss, Lessing and the Spinozastreit
For Strauss, the Enlightenment and its embrace of reason over faith as a political lodestar was a monumental wrong turn in European intellectual history. Moreover, Strauss was particularly convinced that the American Republic was built on a shaky foundation. In his dissertation, Strauss dwells at length on the so-called Spinozastreit that erupted in late 18th century Germany, involving Jacobi, Samuel Reimarus and the shining twin stars of the German Enlightenment, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn. Considering Lessing’s towering position in the period as an advocate of tolerance (and notably also as an aggressive and convincing advocate for the emancipation of the Jews), Strauss has a hard time assailing him (...)

The particular vehicle that Strauss chooses for this purpose is reinterpretation of a less well known, but nevertheless important Lessing work. Ernst und Falk: Gespräche für Freimauer (1781) are the “Masonic Dialogues” in which Lessing quotes Benjamin Franklin and hails the American Revolution and the values it announced as the beginning of a new era for politics premised on reason and tolerance. (...)

Lessing’s preference for reason over faith, and particularly, his enthusiastic embrace of the American Revolution, lie at the undeniable center of the work. And they form precisely the perspective that Strauss struggles to debunk throughout his dissertation. All of which helps explain Strauss’ homesickness for Germany, and his lack of enthusiasm for the English-speaking world in general, and America in particular...

Further influences on Leo Strauss' Nietzschean Power State:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavelli
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Koj%C3%A8ve
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Trilling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan

Some liberal people that Strauss disliked and opposed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Samuel_Reimarus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthold_Ephraim_Lessing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Mendelssohn

I suggest that people make a research over what it means to be illiberal or anti-liberal:
The end result would be that they stand against most everything America was built on!

[The Cat]

How the Neocons wanted Ahmadinejad to win...

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/6/11/0116/19921

“I’m sometimes asked who I would vote for if I were enfranchised in this election, and I think that, with due hesitance, I would vote for Ahmadinejad,” Pipes said. The reason Daniel Pipes is not concerned about the prospect of another term for Ahmadinejad is the same reason you shouldn't be overly concerned. Even serving as the president of Iran, Ahmadinejad has no power over the military and he cannot set foreign policy. He is not authorized to make decisions related to nuclear energy. Those types of decisions are made by the Supreme Leader and the unelected Council of Guardians.

It's not a good sign when a country has a raving nut for a president, but Ahmadinejad's crazy talk and provocative language mean almost nothing. Pipes and his allies knew this all along but that didn't prevent them from using Ahmadinejad as a poster-boy for the Clash of Civilizations.

It's easier to avoid efforts at peace if you've convinced yourself that every conceivable approach is doomed to fail and that all Iranians are equally implacable and dangerous. If Iran=Nazi Germany, it doesn't matter whether it changes a minister here or there. Better to keep a scary face on the thing so it is easier to mobilize the public against them. That is precisely why it is important that Ahmadinejad lose. Without him making things easy for the warmongers, we might actually make some progress. And progress is not what Pipes and his pals are interested in.

It's not just Daniel Pipes, but a whole bunch of Neocons such as: Danielle Pletka, Martin Peretz, Ilan Berman and Michael Rubin.

See also:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/1 ... 14698.html
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/t ... nejad.html


Now, the warning voice of Zbigniew Brezinski (former US national security adviser) about such policy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-ga ... 26247.html

Zbigniew Brezinski : These neocon prescriptions, of which Israel has its equivalents, are fatal for America and ultimately for Israel. They will totally turn the overwhelming majority of the Middle East's population against the United States. The lessons of Iraq speak for themselves. Eventually, if neocon policies continue to be pursued, the United States will be expelled from the region and that will be the beginning of the end for Israel as well.

Nathan Gardels: Don't the deaths of so many innocent civilians in Qana in the south of Lebanon -- like the massacre in Haditha, Iraq, by American troops -- send a message to Arabs and Iranians that the "new Middle East" coming from the U.S. and Israel will amount to occupation, carnage and bloodshed? Even Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize, told me recently that Iranians would rather suffer the mullahs for now than the horrors they see in Iraq.

Brzezinski: This is precisely why neocon policies are recklessly dangerous both to America and Israel. (...) The new element today is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian problem, the Iraq problem and Iran from each other. Neither the United States nor Israel has the capacity to impose a unilateral solution in the Middle East. There may be people who deceive themselves into believing that. The solution can only come in the Israel-Palestinian issue if there is serious international involvement that supports the moderates from both sides, however numerous or few they are, but also creates the situation in which it becomes of greater interest to the warring parties to accommodate than to resist, both because of the incentives and the capacity of the external intervention to impose costs. (...)

The notion that the U.S. was going to get a pliant, democratic, stable, pro-American, Israel-loving Iraq is a myth which is rapidly eroding. That is why the U.S. needs to start talking with the Iraqis about the day of our disengagement. We shouldn't leave precipitously. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (Zalmay) Khalilzad told me that four months would be precipitous. I agree. But we should agree that the U.S. will disengage at some period beyond that. (...)

Sometimes in international politics, the better part of wisdom is to defer dangers rather than try to eliminate them altogether instantly. To do that produces intense counter-reactions that are destructive. We have time to deal with Iran, provided the process is launched, dealing with the nuclear energy problem, which can then be extended to involve also security talks about the region.

In the final analysis, Iran is a serious country; it's not Iraq. It's going to be there. It's going to be a player. And in the longer historical term, it has all of the preconditions for a constructive internal evolution if you measure it by rates of literacy, access to higher education and the role of women in society.

The mullahs are part of the past in Iran, not its future. But change in Iran will come through engagement, not through confrontation. If we pursue these policies, we can perhaps avert the worst. But if we do not, I fear that the region will explode. In the long run, Israel would be in great jeopardy.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/fo ... ead=149232

Zbigniew Brzezinski: The revolution in Eastern Europe, the Solidarity movement in Poland, or the other movements in the Czech Republic and Hungary, and so forth, were for democracy. And there are aspects to what is happening in Iran which are similar for democracy. But the movements in Eastern Europe were also intensely nationalistic. That is to say, they were opposing foreign domination, foreign imperialism, direct control from another capital, namely from Moscow. That element is not there in Iran.

We're dealing with a country which is very nationalistic. Parts of that country may not be as hostile to us as the ayatollahs have been over the last 30 years. But they're not struggling against a foreign domination. And that makes the movement somewhat weaker. It isn't quite as united as in Eastern Europe. And thus, in Iran, we have two different forces at work. You have those who are for more democracy, but who are also nationalistic. And there are those who are supporting the regime, who in many respects are like our neocons -- very similar to our neocons. They're Manichean. They look at the world as divided into good and evil, and many of them see America as the personification of evil. So, that makes it much more complicated, and makes our role much more sensitive (...)

I think Obama has redefined America's relationship with Islam. And thereby, he has weakened the capacity of the ayatollahs to present us as a satanic force. But we should have no illusions that Iranian nationalism is going to be easy to deal with. And even if Mousavi wins, for example, we'll still have a complicated problem in the nuclear area. But hopefully, the nature of the dialogue, the atmosphere will change for the better. (...)

Eastern Europe became intensely pro-Western, pro- American, and so forth. I think we should have no illusions about this. The Iranians have a long historical memory. They look at the West, and particularly at America and Britain, with somewhat critical eyes. They have grievances against us, and they feel that we have done things to them which they weren't entitled to have happened.

So, I think the accommodation will not be easy. But once we no longer have a Manichean, black-and-white, good-and-evil type of a regime confronting us in a hostile fashion, it will be easier to deal with the specific problems that we confront. One of the paradoxes here domestically is that many of the people who call for the most energetic involvement by Obama in the process, they simply would prefer to have an American-Iranian showdown.

Whereas, in fact, if there is a change of regime in Iran, there's a greater chance of accommodation. And I think that is to be fervently wished for. But that requires patience, intelligent manipulation, moral support, but no political interference.

[The Cat]

The Torture Memos (II).

I'll be transferring here the prosecution over tortures from the 'Farewell to Bush' thread because it's truly a Neocon affair, not only a Bush one. For those who would like to know my posts on the subject in the Bush thread, it really started with this:

The American Constitution vs The Neo-Constitution
viewtopic.php?p=26214#p26214
The Banana Republicans
viewtopic.php?p=26254#p26254
Bush/Cheney big corporations ties
viewtopic.php?p=27614#p27614

The Prosecution of George W. Bush
viewtopic.php?p=30980#p30980
How the nazification of America is being implanted by Straussian Neocons
+ a warning article from Fritz Stern
viewtopic.php?p=34819#p34819

How Ronald Reagan became a leftist ideologue
viewtopic.php?p=36157#p36157
Senator Levin' Torture Report: A Round-Up
viewtopic.php?p=37454#p37454

[The Cat]

Attorney General Eric Holder may probe Bush-era torture anyway (4 pages article).
http://www.newsweek.com/id/206300

Daniel Klaidman:
....Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision." (...)

It was soon clear to Holder that he might have to launch an investigation to determine whether crimes were committed under the Bush administration and prosecutions warranted. The obstacles were obvious. For a new administration to reach back and investigate its predecessor is rare, if not unprecedented. After having been deeply involved in the decision to authorize Ken Starr to investigate Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, Holder well knew how politicized things could get. He worried about the impact on the CIA, whose operatives would be at the center of any probe. And he could clearly read the signals coming out of the White House. President Obama had already deflected the left wing of his party and human-rights organizations by saying, "We should be looking forward and not backwards" when it came to Bush-era abuses.

Still, Holder couldn't shake what he had learned in reports about the treatment of prisoners at the CIA's "black sites." If the public knew the details, he and his aides figured, there would be a groundswell of support for an independent probe. He raised with his staff the possibility of appointing a prosecutor. According to three sources familiar with the process, they discussed several potential choices and the criteria for such a sensitive investigation. Holder was looking for someone with "gravitas and grit," according to one of these sources, all of whom declined to be named. At one point, an aide joked that Holder might need to clone Patrick Fitzgerald, the hard-charging, independent-minded U.S. attorney who had prosecuted Scooter Libby in the Plamegate affair. In the end, Holder asked for a list of 10 candidates, five from within the Justice Department and five from outside. (...)

After the prospect of torture investigations seemed to lose momentum in April, the attorney general and his aides turned to other pressing issues. They were preoccupied with Gitmo, developing a hugely complex new set of detention and prosecution policies, and putting out the daily fires that go along with running a 110,000-person department. The regular meetings Holder's team had been having on the torture question died down. Some aides began to wonder whether the idea of appointing a prosecutor was off the table.

But in late June Holder asked an aide for a copy of the CIA inspector general's thick classified report on interrogation abuses. He cleared his schedule and, over two days, holed up alone in his Justice Depart ment office, immersed himself in what Dick Cheney once referred to as "the dark side." He read the report twice, the first time as a lawyer, looking for evidence and instances of transgressions that might call for prosecution. The second time, he started to absorb what he was reading at a more emotional level. He was "shocked and saddened," he told a friend, by what government servants were alleged to have done in America's name. When he was done he stood at his window for a long time, staring at Constitution Avenue.

[piggy]

Attorney General Eric Holder may probe Bush-era torture anyway

Typical dummycrat tactics .................smoke and mirrors to cover-up & avoid the PRESENT and REAL threat to not only the reputation but security of USA.

Wonder why Holder doesn't 'probe' the lying usurper's identity, place of birth, eligibility for office of potus, etc?

Holder is as corrupt as his messiah.


.

[The Cat]

Attorney General Eric Holder may probe Bush-era torture anyway

Typical dummycrat tactics .................smoke and mirrors to cover-up & avoid the PRESENT and REAL threat to not only the reputation but security of USA.

Wonder why Holder doesn't 'probe' the lying usurper's identity, place of birth, eligibility for office of potus, etc?

Holder is as corrupt as his messiah.

Do you venture such because he's a black guy too? Is Sotomayer incompetent because of her 'empathy' from Hispanic background?

Now, the real threat to the reputation and security of the USA is when the Neocons make torture and restrictions on freedoms as part of the American values. The torture memos were basically anti-constitutional and the opposite of what the Fathers laid down. How patriotic!

The Rush and Cheney Show Accelerates Military Desertion of the GOP, by Jon Soltz.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-soltz ... 08187.html

For decades, the conventional wisdom was that the Republican Party was the party of the military. And while no party has or ever will monopolize military support, certainly Republicans had a good amount of support from some big names - from Eisenhower to Powell.

In recent years, however, as Republicans have abandoned ideals that make our military strong - no nation building using our Armed Forces, looking for strong alliances to join us in action, operating on a moral high ground when we do use force, and commitment to a strong enough and large enough force - we've seen big names head towards supporting Democrats - from General Wesley Clark and Major General Paul Eaton to General John Shalikashvili, General Joseph Hoar, and General Hugh Shelton. Oh, and Colin Powell.

That shift towards Democrats, and especially President Obama and Hillary Clinton during the primary, is about to be fast tracked, as Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney take control of Republican messaging, ideals, practices, and policies. (...) For all I disagree on with Senator John McCain, he may have been the Republicans best hope at stemming the trend, by at least voicing opposition to torture, and standing firm on Pentagon waste and bloated contracts, worried more about practical equipment that could help our troops in the field. Now, with Senator McCain vanquished within his own party by those who weaseled their way out of service in Vietnam, no one seems to be in the way of taking the Republican Party full-tilt to the anti-military-ideals fringe. (...)

Well, don't look now, but our friend Sam Stein at reported here: General David Petraeus said this past weekend that President Obama's decision to close down Gitmo and end harsh interrogation techniques would benefit the United States in the broader war on terror. General Petraeus goes on to say that he believes we need to stay within the Geneva Convention, and that closing Gitmo "sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees."

Of course, this flies in the face of the Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney crowd - those who believe that we're safer when we do things that serve as great recruiting tools for al Qaeda. There's no doubt that General Petraeus would be a powerful nominee for Republicans in 2012. One has to wonder, however, if with Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh calling the shots, the GOP is a Dream Party for him.

This is all too well underlined by the fact that Colin Powell endorsed Obama in 2008!

[The Cat]

How tortures became the best recruiting device for radical Islamists.

Former Interrogator Rebukes Cheney For Torture Speech (VIDEO), by Ryan Grim.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/2 ... 07483.html

A former top interrogator is responding forcefully to the case Dick Cheney made on Thursday in favor of torture (what the former VP and his allies refer to as "enhanced interrogation methods.") (...) "At the prison where I conducted interrogations," responded Alexander, "we heard day in and day out, foreign fighters who had been captured state that the number one reason that they had come to fight in Iraq was because of torture and abuse, what had happened at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib." Alexander put the number making this claim at 90 percent. (...)

Cheney, said Alexander, fundamentally misunderstands the way America is viewed around the world. The American principles of freedom and democracy are cherished in the Muslim world and the idea, at least, of America is still a seductive one. But it is the behavior of the Bush administration at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and secret prisons around the globe that undercuts that image, allowing Al Qaeda to make the argument that America isn't what it stands for. "Remember," said Alexander, "one of Al Qaeda's goals, it's not just to attack the United States, it's to prove that we're hypocrites, that we don't live up to American principles. So when we use torture and abuse, we're playing directly into one of their stated goals."

[Salad In]

Are others besides The Cat allowed to leave a comment or is it just The Cat who is allowed to respond to his own responses?

[Mindstorm]

Are others besides The Cat allowed to leave a comment or is it just The Cat who is allowed to respond to his own responses?

Hey, Salad In -- anyone can leave a comment if they wish to do so.

[Salad In]

Are others besides The Cat allowed to leave a comment or is it just The Cat who is allowed to respond to his own responses?

Hey, Salad In -- anyone can leave a comment if they wish to do so.

I feel it might be bad form to break in on the conversation The Cat is having with himself. Soon enough he'll have to take a breath

[The Cat]

Are others besides The Cat allowed to leave a comment or is it just The Cat who is allowed to respond to his own responses?

Playing the ostrich simply won't do nor will elude anything, but how convenient isn't?

Maybe you'd answer to which of these you adhere so not eluding the questions on American values at stake:

http://www.democrats.com/neocon-torture ... is-melting

1. "America Doesn't Torture."
That's what George Bush and his administration still insist (Liz Cheney, Dana Perino). Of course we all saw the Abu Ghraib photos. We know roughly 100 prisoners died, and roughly 30 deemed manslaughter by the U.S. Three dozen more have "disappeared".

2. "Torture by Americans is Sacred."
Pat Buchanan says "there is a higher moral law... That's what Dr. King was all about." Rep. Peter King says Jay Bybee deserves a medal. In other words, whatever brutality America commits out of fear or hatred is by definition sacred. The Nazis believed that too. Go tell it to a judge.

3. "Waterboarding Is Not Torture."
(Karl Rove, Condi Rice, Michael Mukasey, Newt Gingrich, Pete Hoekstra, National Review, Federalist Society, David Rivkin, Andy McCarthy, John Eastman, Lamar Smith, Ann Coulter - also see #1) Sure - tell that to the Japanese soldiers we prosecuted for waterboarding after World War II; some were hanged. Or the U.S. soldiers we court-martialed in the Phillippines. Or the Texas sheriff sentenced to 10 years in prison under Reagan. Heck, tell that to the Spanish Inquisition and Pol Pot.

4. "Torture Prevented Another 9/11 and Saved American Lives."
(Liz Cheney, Mark Thiessen) Bush said that as well in 2006, claiming the torture of KSM in March 2003 prevented a 9/11-style attack on the Library Tower in Los Angeles. But that attack was stopped in February 2002, more than a year before KSM was captured.

5. "Torture Gave Us Other Valuable Intelligence."
(Michael Hayden, Michael Mukasey) That's Dick Cheney's current defense and his argument for declassifying two memos that allegedly prove his case. But as all Cheney-watchers know, this is simply an exercise in "cherry picking" evidence that he likes while suppressing evidence he doesn't - especially the CIA Inspector General's report concluding torture didn't work. The only valuable intelligence from AZ and KSM was obtained by FBI interrogators without torture, while subsequent CIA torture mainly produced lies.

6. "Torture is Legal if We're Scared."
(Joe Scarborough, Charles Krauthammer) Wrong! The Convention Against Torture allows no exceptions. Besides, we didn't start torturing for 11 months after 9/11 - just when we needed to manufacture reasons to invade Iraq. And if it was legal to torture foreigners, it would be legal to torture Americans.

7. "The Torture Lawyers Interpreted the Law in Good Faith."
(George Will, Mara Liasson, David Broder) That assumes they didn't know waterboarding was torture (see #2). It assumes they didn't know torture doesn't work, but Pentagon experts at JPRA told them it was torture and it didn't work. It assumes there were no lawyers who objected, but every JAG did. State Department lawyer Philip Zelikow objected in a memo, but they destroyed every copy. The FBI even tried to prosecute CIA torturers but Attorney General John Ashcroft blocked them.

8. "A Torture Investigation Would Paralyze the CIA."
(Porter Goss, Mark Thiessen, Michael Scheurer) Those who really care about the CIA (The unanimous Senate Armed Services Committee, DNI Dennis Blair, David Boren, Bob Baer, Mel Goodman) insist torture caused immense damage to the CIA. Before Bush-Cheney, the CIA was never in the interrogation business - that was the job of skilled interrogators at the FBI and the Defense Department, who will now be back in charge.

9. "A Torture Investigation Will Help The Terrorists."
(Porter Goss, Bill Kristol) The idea that U.S. torture was secret became moot after the Abu Ghraib photos were published in April 2004.

10. "New Presidents never investigate the crimes of their predecessor."
Gerald Ford prosecuted Nixon's Watergate cronies, including John Mitchell. The last new president to investigate his predecessor was ... George Bush! He investigated White House staff for allegedly stealing W typewriter keys, and President Clinton for his completely legal pardon of Marc Rich. Bushlover Sean Hannity wanted to prosecute Clinton and Janet Reno.

11. "Only banana republics prosecute previous administrations."
(Karl Rove, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Mark Steyn, Chris Wallace, Bob Schieffer) No, only banana republics allow political elites to commit crimes with impunity. Democracies insist that no one - including political elites - are above the law.

12. "Key Democrats approved torture."
(Porter Goss) Speaker Pelosi was one of only four Democrats who received secret CIA briefings. She adamantly insists they were never told prisoners were being tortured. Marcy Wheeler has the details.

13. "Congressional Democrats funded torture in 2007-08."
First, they didn't know much about Bush's waterboarding program until the Torture Memos were finally released in April 2009, because the Bush Administration refused to answer Congressional subpoenas.

14. "A criminal investigation of torture would tear America apart."
Then why do solid majorities of Americans support investigations not only for torture, but also wiretaps and politicization of the Justice Department? Let the rightwing chorus scream all it wants, even Teabag for Torture - the American people couldn't care less.

More inside...

Or, maybe you'd rather skip them away altogether, hiding your head and conscience where the sun don't shine...

Thanks anyway for allowing me to respond to you... Some couldn't!

[Chiclets]

For the mighty Cat

[Muhammad bin Lyin]

How the Neocons wanted Ahmadinejad to win...

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/6/11/0116/19921

“I’m sometimes asked who I would vote for if I were enfranchised in this election, and I think that, with due hesitance, I would vote for Ahmadinejad,” Pipes said. The reason Daniel Pipes is not concerned about the prospect of another term for Ahmadinejad is the same reason you shouldn't be overly concerned. Even serving as the president of Iran, Ahmadinejad has no power over the military and he cannot set foreign policy. He is not authorized to make decisions related to nuclear energy. Those types of decisions are made by the Supreme Leader and the unelected Council of Guardians.

It's not a good sign when a country has a raving nut for a president, but Ahmadinejad's crazy talk and provocative language mean almost nothing. Pipes and his allies knew this all along but that didn't prevent them from using Ahmadinejad as a poster-boy for the Clash of Civilizations.

But he is indeed that by his own desire and intentions.

It's easier to avoid efforts at peace if you've convinced yourself that every conceivable approach is doomed to fail and that all Iranians are equally implacable and dangerous. If Iran=Nazi Germany, it doesn't matter whether it changes a minister here or there. Better to keep a scary face on the thing so it is easier to mobilize the public against them. That is precisely why it is important that Ahmadinejad lose. Without him making things easy for the warmongers, we might actually make some progress.[ And progress is not what Pipes and his pals are interested in.

It's not just Daniel Pipes, but a whole bunch of Neocons such as: Danielle Pletka, Martin Peretz, Ilan Berman and Michael Rubin.

See also:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/1 ... 14698.html
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/t ... nejad.html

Well, I'm sure you realize that the day the US makes peace with the ISLAMIC REPUBLIC of Iran, this will be the final legitimizer of the Iranian revolution thereby thwarting the Iranians who wish for regime change to something far less "Islamic". If the west establishes full ties, this tells the Iranian people that their government and system is completely legitimate and accepted by everyone, thereby making the Iranians complacent enough with these Mullahs. This is the part you nor the author sees.

Now, the warning voice of Zbigniew Brezinski (former US national security adviser) about such policy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-ga ... 26247.html
Zbigniew Brezinski : These neocon prescriptions, of which Israel has its equivalents, are fatal for America and ultimately for Israel. They will totally turn the overwhelming majority of the Middle East's population against the United States.

Excuse me, but when has it been FOR the United States? It's always been against the US, who's kidding who?

The lessons of Iraq speak for themselves.

After less than a decade Iraq is conclusive? Ridiculous. What happens if that country turns the corner as it seems to be doing and becomes a democratic and economically viable country? what will people say than? where does this arbitrary time table come from where we say that success muct come in X amount of years? Who invents that? See what these people do? Their terrible and they have done nothing but take a tough situation and willfully make it worse with their words and propaganda. these are NOT Americans, regardless of whether they think they are or not.

Eventually, if neocon policies continue to be pursued, the United States will be expelled from the region and that will be the beginning of the end for Israel as well.

Well, as of right now, their presence has only expanded, although I'd like to see us one day leave altogether and let the Middle East turn into Africa after the oil is either gone or people don't need so much of it anymore.

Nathan Gardels: Don't the deaths of so many innocent civilians in Qana in the south of Lebanon -- like the massacre in Haditha, Iraq, by American troops -- send a message to Arabs and Iranians that the "new Middle East" coming from the U.S. and Israel will amount to occupation, carnage and bloodshed?

What actions sparked this? Was it inevitable and unavoidable? Yes. It became that way.

Even Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize, told me recently that Iranians would rather suffer the mullahs for now than the horrors they see in Iraq.

Who causes those horrors? History will tell us.

Brzezinski: This is precisely why neocon policies are recklessly dangerous both to America and Israel. (...) The new element today is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian problem, the Iraq problem and Iran from each other. Neither the United States nor Israel has the capacity to impose a unilateral solution in the Middle East. There may be people who deceive themselves into believing that. The solution can only come in the Israel-Palestinian issue if there is serious international involvement that supports the moderates from both sides, however numerous or few they are, but also creates the situation in which it becomes of greater interest to the warring parties to accommodate than to resist, both because of the incentives and the capacity of the external intervention to impose costs. (...)

Does this author know about "hudna"? I'm guessing not.

The notion that the U.S. was going to get a pliant, democratic, stable, pro-American, Israel-loving Iraq is a myth which is rapidly eroding. That is why the U.S. needs to start talking with the Iraqis about the day of our disengagement. We shouldn't leave precipitously. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (Zalmay) Khalilzad told me that four months would be precipitous. I agree. But we should agree that the U.S. will disengage at some period beyond that. (...)

No sh!t Sherlock. Didn't even Bush himself say the US will leave when the situation on the ground dictates that? And the situation has drastically improve. But if we would have listed to assholes like this joker, and Obama, we would have pulled out with our tail in between our legs, Iraq would be in turmoil and assholes such as this commentator would only say "it was inevitable anyway" and cheesily go back and blame Bush. Well, apparently it WASN'T inevitable and Bush was right to stick to his guns.

Sometimes in international politics, the better part of wisdom is to defer dangers rather than try to eliminate them altogether instantly.

30 years later in Iran?

To do that produces intense counter-reactions that are destructive. We have time to deal with Iran, provided the process is launched, dealing with the nuclear energy problem, which can then be extended to involve also security talks about the region.

LOL

In the final analysis, Iran is a serious country; it's not Iraq. It's going to be there. It's going to be a player.

Iraq's not going to be there? what is the matter with this person?

And in the longer historical term, it has all of the preconditions for a constructive internal evolution if you measure it by rates of literacy, access to higher education and the role of women in society.

The mullahs are part of the past in Iran, not its future. But change in Iran will come through engagement, not through confrontation. If we pursue these policies, we can perhaps avert the worst. But if we do not, I fear that the region will explode. In the long run, Israel would be in great jeopardy.

So how do we "engage" Iran to give up it's Nuclear weapons desires? I just gotta love people like this who are honestly this naive.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/fo ... ead=149232

Zbigniew Brzezinski: The revolution in Eastern Europe, the Solidarity movement in Poland, or the other movements in the Czech Republic and Hungary, and so forth, were for democracy. And there are aspects to what is happening in Iran which are similar for democracy. But the movements in Eastern Europe were also intensely nationalistic. That is to say, they were opposing foreign domination, foreign imperialism, direct control from another capital, namely from Moscow. That element is not there in Iran.

We're dealing with a country which is very nationalistic. Parts of that country may not be as hostile to us as the ayatollahs have been over the last 30 years. But they're not struggling against a foreign domination. And that makes the movement somewhat weaker. It isn't quite as united as in Eastern Europe. And thus, in Iran, we have two different forces at work. You have those who are for more democracy, but who are also nationalistic. And there are those who are supporting the regime, who in many respects are like our neocons -- very similar to our neocons. They're Manichean. They look at the world as divided into good and evil, and many of them see America as the personification of evil. So, that makes it much more complicated, and makes our role much more sensitive (...)

I think Obama has redefined America's relationship with Islam. And thereby, he has weakened the capacity of the ayatollahs to present us as a satanic force. But we should have no illusions that Iranian nationalism is going to be easy to deal with. And even if Mousavi wins, for example, we'll still have a complicated problem in the nuclear area. But hopefully, the nature of the dialogue, the atmosphere will change for the better. (...)

Well, obviously none of that happened, naive fool.

Eastern Europe became intensely pro-Western, pro- American, and so forth. I think we should have no illusions about this. The Iranians have a long historical memory. They look at the West, and particularly at America and Britain, with somewhat critical eyes. They have grievances against us, and they feel that we have done things to them which they weren't entitled to have happened.

So, I think the accommodation will not be easy. But once we no longer have a Manichean, black-and-white, good-and-evil type of a regime confronting us in a hostile fashion, it will be easier to deal with the specific problems that we confront. One of the paradoxes here domestically is that many of the people who call for the most energetic involvement by Obama in the process, they simply would prefer to have an American-Iranian showdown.

Progress Obama has made with this tact? Zero.

Whereas, in fact, if there is a change of regime in Iran, there's a greater chance of accommodation.

LOL, gee, ya think? No kidding? LOL

And I think that is to be fervently wished for. But that requires patience, intelligent manipulation, moral support, but no political interference.

What do you think intelligent manipulation is? My God, how do these people get respected enough to write such stupid opinions? and like I always say, opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one.

[The Cat]

I feel it might be bad form to break in on the conversation The Cat is having with himself. Soon enough he'll have to take a breath

This 'conversation' is rather the one that America is having with itself
and breathing will come easier when responsibles are called at the bar.


But, right here, we can witness that -the Nazification of America- enacted by the Neocons has still many adepts.

by Naomi Wolf (April 2007, excerpts).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment

George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise. Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.......

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. (...) all our other wars had an endpoint (...) this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield.........

2. Create a gulag
Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place (...) soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well. This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising. With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now.

Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

3. Develop a thug caste (see #10)
The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad.

4. Set up an internal surveillance system
In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. (...) In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny. In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. Harass citizens' groups
The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. (...) A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life. (...) Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list. It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off.

7. Target key individuals
Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.

The Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them. (...) Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

8. Control the press
Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason
Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". (...) In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors". And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means.

10. Suspend the rule of law (also #3)
The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens. (...) The New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law.

It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction. (...)

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone. (...)

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison.

It is a fact, noted by Fritz Stein and others, that the actual demonization of liberals as found relentlessly in conservatives and neocons sites, has only equivalents in the Fascist statism of Mussolini, Franco and Hitler, as well as under far-leftists such as Stalin's goulags or Pol Pot...

Neocons tried, and are still trying, to reproduce the perturbing conditions of early 30s Weimar, favoring the rise of Hitler! Archtung!


14 signs of Fascism

[The Cat]

What do you think intelligent manipulation is? My God, how do these people get respected enough to write such stupid opinions? and like I always say, opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one.

Maybe you should get informations on how the Neocons were conned by Ahmed Chalabi, an Iranian double agent, to invade Iraq...

How Chalabi conned the Neocons (5 pages)
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature ... 4/chalabi/

Neocon and Chalabi blunder helps destabilize Iraq, by Martin Sieff (April 2004).
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publi ... 6495.shtml

Bye.

[Muhammad bin Lyin]

What do you think intelligent manipulation is? My God, how do these people get respected enough to write such stupid opinions? and like I always say, opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one.

Maybe you should get informations on how the Neocons were conned by Ahmed Chalabi, an Iranian double agent, to invade Iraq...

How Chalabi conned the Neocons (5 pages)
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature ... 4/chalabi/

I know that. Big deal? In fact, this gives the Neocons a defense that they were mislead and were truly acting in what they believed to be the country's safety and best interests. What's the matter with you? Are you one of those freaks that thought the Neocons pulled off 911? I'll bet you are. So how do you feel now when your entire conspiracy idea was nothing but a piece of crap that only stupid Muslims should have believed in? I expect that out of Muslims, but not from non Muslims. But, as always, the bullhorn never turns inward. They just forget how horribly wrong they were and move on to the next conspiracy. Pathetic.

[Muhammad bin Lyin]

Dear Cat, do you want to tell me how America can be Nazified with elections every 4 years? These are the same people that used to say that Bush was like Hitler and would find an excuse for a third term. Well, he DIDN'T. But none of these assholes want to speak up loudly when they turn out to be completely wrong, they just want to shout into their bullhorn when they think they are right. That's the kind of people these people are.

Basically, you can't be a most excellent Nazi if you know you only have 8 years max. These people are such morons.

[The Cat]

Tortures aren't conspiracy theory.

And they always are a sure sign that a dictatorial compound is on the making.

This making is quite underlined with the articles I posted.

That's how a closing of democracy gets its way.

[Muhammad bin Lyin]

Tortures aren't conspiracy theory.

I didn't say THEY were. So they tortured and I disagreed with that. Does that make them Nazis and Hitler? Come on. And besides, Bush and Cheny are gone now. So who's going to feed your conspiracies now? What happened to their planned "Reich". Go ahead, answer it. You're the reckless accuser and now you need to back your accusations up.

[Muhammad bin Lyin]

Tortures aren't conspiracy theory.

And they always are a sure sign that a dictatorial compound is on the making.

And where are the "dictators" now? See? See how silly it sounds now? Sounded all good at the time, right? So how does it sound now?