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BILLIONAIRE MULLAHS

Rafsanjani as the king of baksheesh.

This is the sort of information that should be shouted from the rooftops.

NEOCONS AND REAGAN FOREIGN POLICY

Yesterday, Geitner Simmons responded to charges made in the American Spectator that Neocons were seriously diverging from the foreign policy tradition of Ronald Reagan. Specifically, the implication was that if Ronald Reagan had been president after 9/11, the United States would never have invaded Iraq. There’s a lot of problems with that counterfactual thesis and Geitner dealt with many of them, if you haven’t read it yet I urge you to go back and read his post on Regions of Mind.

Ronald Reagan had a deeply divided foreign policy apparatus but it would be no more accurate to argue that neoconservatives were not a key component in shaping administration foreign policy than it would be to argue that they were running the show by themselves. Moreover while ideology was a factor in these internal disputes, personality and institutional turf battles were equally or often more important than political philosophy in determining alignments within the administration.

The Reagan Neocons, People, Positions, Policy and Power:

The Neoconservatives were numerous in the NSC and in the mid-lower levels of the appointed positions at Defense, State,CIA, PFIAB, UN and other bureaucracies having been selected like other appointees during the transition by Ed Meese and Pendleton James. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 had vastly expanded the range of presidential appointments in the upper tiers of the Federal bureaucracy and Reagan’s team were determined to fill these posts with reliable conservatives of all stripes. The Heritage Foundation provided critical personnel recommendations but the Neocon presence was also strong. The Committee on the Present Danger sent sixty members into high and mid-level posts in the Reagan administration including William Casey, Paul Nitze, Eugene Rostow, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Allen and David Packard. Nitze’s Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy, contributed Peter Wilson, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.

The Neocons had a significant power base that centered around William Casey’s special position as DCI that was buttressed by an executive order (NSDD-2) making the DCI a member of the cabinet and a foreign policy principal on par with the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State. Casey enjoyed a close political relationship with Reagan ” that amazed ” his moderate deputy, Bobby Ray Inmann; Casey also placed a close associate as vice-chairman of the National Intelligence Council and placed some of his people on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Papers from the CPD and the Committee of Santa Fe became foreign policy blueprints at the NSC, an anti-Communist bastion that included Harvard historian Richard Pipes, Chris Lehman, Lt. General Gordon Summer and RAND’s Constantine Menges, who authored the initial paper that later germinated into ” The Reagan Doctrine “. (Menges also served under Casey at the CIA as a National Intelligence Officer)

In addition to the Reagan Doctrine of supporting anti-Communist fighters across the globe, neocons can count in their policy column SDI which brought the Soviets back to the negotiating table and Richard Perle’s ” Zero Option ” bargaining position much reviled by the liberal foreign policy establishment that led to the historic INF treaty. Eventually, the neocons were routed but only after many of their ideas had been adopted by their bureaucratic rivals. George Shultz, Casey’s nemesis and a leader of the more pragmatic officials, for example overruled his own State Department on Afghan aid and saw the very tough positions taken by the neocons and hardliners as a good ” bargaining chip” for negotiations with Gromyko and Shevardnadze.

The Reagan administration contained a wide spectrum of figures on the right – Pat Buchanan,Richard Perle, Jim Baker, George Schultz,Jude Wanniski,Paul Wolfowitz, George Bush – some of whom later became bitter enemies. Libertarians, Paleocons, Neocons and mainstream Republicans all contributed to and can lay a claim to part of Reagan’s legacy. Sectarian arguments to exclude on group or another on some alleged basis are ahistorical at best.

TAKING ON MULTICULTURALISM

Clare Spark, author of Hunting Captain Ahab:Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival, has an article on HNN examining some of the sinister intellectual roots of the Multicultural approach to history. Clare’s primary source research into this topic is exceptionally deep – too deep for the standard 1500 word HNN format – she’s read the notes, marginalia and papers of the American intellectuals from the 1930’s who spearheaded this movement. In short, she’s done some groundbreaking work though you’d probably have to be an American lit specialist to appreciate the scope of her contribution.

GEITNER SIMMONS, NO MERE SPECTATOR

The host of Regions of Mind cooly dissects an anti-Neocon jeremiad from Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke in print edition of the American Spectator that argues that today’s neoconservatives are far outside the foreign policy tradition of Ronald Reagan. Geitner is right on target in his critique – the two scholars in question seem to be either constructing a polemical argument by ignoring contrary historical evidence or they are not terribly well informed about the details of Reagan administration foreign policy.

I will have some comments of my own to add to Geitner’s in an update explaining why Clarke and Halper’s thesis is a relatively weak one.

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE

I’ve found a wealth of material tonight, more than I bargained for really, on Reagan’s Foreign policy and the role of neocons in shaping it. Plus, why viewing internal conflicts over foreign affairs inside the Reagan administration as a primarily ideological struggle of Conservative realists vs. Neoconservative ideologues is not only simplistic but frankly incorrect. I’m batting it into shape to post tomorrow morning.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

Judith Klinghoffer of Deja Vu sent me some thoughts in an email on a recent New York Times ” analysis ” of how the invasion of Iraq affected the larger War on Terror:

“This absurd deception goes even beyond what Jean Francis Revel in Anti-Americanism calls “a mechanism for reversing responsibility for crime.” It is possible to argue that terrorism in Iraq (though not Iraqi sponsored terrorism) followed the overthrow of Saddam. It is not possible to argue that terrorism in Colombia, Chechnia, Nepal, Kashmir, Israel, Somalia, ect. began after 9/11 and, hence, are the result of the war on terror. Yet, that is precisely the impression Don Van Natta’s article seeks to give. “

Judith has put the contents of her email on her blog, for the full post go here.