Pretty soon neocnservatism will face the same fate as communism, or any violent ideology not based on facts, reason, and moderate thought, but on the fantastic Utopian views conjured up by some intellectuals in their academia .
And Muravchick should go even further down in History to the real roots and sources of neoconservatism, complete contempt to us , average  human being etc.  Why did he stop at 60th ? Because we will have to read about Strauss, Trotsky etc….

the core of their ideology - remarkable faith in the uses of state power, at home and abroad. Their intellectual formation in Straussianism convinced them of the centrality of the elite management of society by philosophers, and their background in Trotskyite organizing kept a ruthless political strategy as the operating mode.   they believe that society can be managed by the state in both its political and economic life. They believe this to a lesser extent than some left socialists, but to a far greater extent than most thinkers on the right. What they miss or do not want to face is precisely what the socialists never wanted to accept: that society is made up of acting, choosing human beings with their own values and ideas and plans, and it is they and not the state who do the hard work of creating civilization, a creation that is easy to destroy through statist means but impossible to rebuild through such means; that many social forces like culture and economics are beyond the final control of state power; and in the long run, it is people, and not philosopher kings whispering in the ears of gullible statesmen, who will determine the course of history.~ L.Rockwell

sashal: I think it’s true that neoconservatism and radical socialism are overly ideological and unrealistically bent toward utopianism, but I think they differ not only in the type of ideology but in degree. The article Michael links to here is an excellent explanation of that because the author shows specifically how neocons are ideological in some ways but realistic in others. It’s also interesting to note that, contrary to what antiwar liberals are now saying, it’s the neocons who’ve been correct more times than not in our foreign policy and it’s the antiwar liberals who are now like the broken clock that finally got the time right (because as he states, those like Levin, Kennedy, and Pelosi have been pushing for disarmament and pacifist foreign policy during the past few decades even when the opposite approach of peace through strength proved to be the correct one- and those antiwar liberals have never been forced to recant their positions; instead, now that the neocon policy appears to have faltered this time, the antiwar crowd acts as though their leaders have been right all along even though a short look into recent history proves otherwise.)

it’s the neocons who’ve been correct more times than not in our foreign policy and it’s the antiwar liberals ~C.Stanley.
you must be joking, right ?
I am sorry, but I probably see much more parallels between socialism and neoconservatism then many people of the West.

So ,again, dear Christine, what were they right about?  The threat from Iraq ? The inherent friendship between Sunnis and shia( B.Kristol ), anything else ?
Sorry, might does not make it right, contrary to the neoconservatism believes…

And if you refer to the diminishing violence in Iraq, it should not surprise any casual observer. We all know the more troops on the ground , the more the superior military is engaged -the more there is the temporary success in the reducing resistance and violence. Our generals and soldiers can’t force Iraqis to start to  love each other, only Iraqis can do that and only by themselves.
Russia finally reduced violence in Chechnya. Is that a final result?-No, only temporary. It will take ages for the Chechens to forget about the bad blood between themselves and Russians( if ever)Heck, Polish people still hate Russians for what they did 200-300 years ago, and history knows plenty of that kind of occurrences…

So, to answer to your statement, no, neocons have not been right about anything ( or we can use your clock comparison at best) they have not been right in the cold war, when they overestimated the power of the USSR ( you can check in history about this), and they were spectacularly wrong about Iraq, Muslims and other Utopian democracy promotions as well….

P.S>I have the disdain to neoconservatives almost as much as to socialists/communists.  Both inhumane violent ideologies…

sashal: Read the article that Michael linked to in this post (or reread.)  I was agreeing with the author of the article on that point, because he explained how neocon policies were involved in our containment of the Soviet Union and our successful incursion into the Bosnian conflict- thus they proved wrong their critics on the left in the first case and their critics on the right in the second case. They were also right about stopping Saddam from annexing Kuwait back in 1990, and they were at least ‘not wrong’ when they warned it was a mistake to leave Saddam in power after that.

You continue to make it all about the current Iraq war, and the point is that neoonservatism predates that and was right about other things before the current conflict.

I have read it, ( You and Michael do not think so ?)
Muravchick  is lying, the success in the cold war was achieved contrary to the neoconservatives( they grossly overestimated the power of the USSR) thanks to the realists in Reagan foreign office.
As far as Bosnia, he is lying again, neocons had nothing to do with our involvement in the conflict in Yugoslavia

Sashal,
The reason we questioned whether or not you’d read the article is this:

So ,again, dear Christine, what were they right about?  The threat from Iraq ? The inherent friendship between Sunnis and shia( B.Kristol ), anything else ?
Sorry, might does not make it right, contrary to the neoconservatism believes…

Muravchick built the case for how the neoncons had influenced our Cold War policy and other foreign policy, but in your comment you ignored the points he made and brought up things about the current Iraq War.

Now that we’ve challenged you to address those points, you dismiss them as lies without supporting your claim. On what basis can you say he is lying?

Michael, Christine, have you heard about "Team B"

Team B was a group of outside experts sent into to evaluate American intelligence on the Soviet Union. Needless to say, the neo-cons they used got pretty much everything wrong:

The outside experts on Team B were led by Harvard Professor Richard Pipes and included such well-known hawks as Paul Nitze, William Van Cleave, and Paul Wolfowitz. Not surprisingly, Team B concluded that the intelligence specialists had badly underestimated the threat because they relied too heavily on hard data, instead of extrapolating the Soviets’ intentions from ideology.[1] According to some Team B members, “the principal threat to our nation, to world peace, and to the cause of human freedom was the Soviet drive for dominance based upon an unparalleled military buildup.”[2]Although the Team B report contained little factual data, it was enthusiastically received by conservative groups such as the Committee on the Present Danger, whose members included Ronald Reagan, and the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. But the report turned out to be grossly inaccurate. For example, it said that the Soviets would have 500 intercontinental Backfire bombers capable of striking the United States by 1984. In reality, only 235 were deployed. Team B also claimed that the Soviets were working on an anti-acoustic submarine, though they failed to find any evidence of one. The hawks explained away this lack of evidence by stating that “the submarine may have already been deployed because it appeared to have evaded detection.”[3]Team B was right about one thing. The CIA estimate was indeed flawed. In 1989, the agency published an internal review of the threat assessments from 1974 to 1986. The report concluded that the Soviet threat had been “substantially overestimated” every year. In 1978, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that the selection of Team B members yielded a flawed composition of political views and biases.[4] Consequently, the Team B analysis was deemed a gross exaggeration and completely inaccurate.

Team B’s assessment was incorrect to the point of garbage. But the errors always made the Soviet Union seem much more powerful and dangerous than it actually was. And when many of its members found their way into the Reagan Administration, the US wasted trillions of dollars trying to match a non-existent Soviet weapons juggernaut.This wasn’t to be their last colossal failure. In the 1990s, the neo-cons formed something called the Project for a New American Century. One of its contentions was that Iraq was a serious threat to the United States and must be dealt with immediately. Saddam was such a threat that he had to be removed immediately:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.… The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons

That last paragraph was completely wrong, of course. Not only did Saddam have no WMDs, the inspectors on the ground before the invasion said as much:

Following press reports that the Bush administration has begun supplying inspectors with intelligence, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei tells reporters that the inspection teams need “more actionable information” and that the US is still refusing to provide “specific intelligence about where to go and where to inspect.” He adds that “the inspections process will intensify to allow the inspections to speedup” if the Bush administration cooperates with inspectors. He also suggests that he does not think Iraq has a nuclear weapons program. He says: “I think it’s difficult for Iraq to hide a complete nuclear-weapons program. They might be hiding some computer studies or R. and D. on one single centrifuge. These are not enough to make weapons.” [Time, 1/12/2003; Montreal Gazette, 1/11/2003; Sun-Herald (Sydney), 1/12/2003; Washington Post, 1/11/2003] Richard A. Boucher, a spokesperson for the State Department, contests ElBaradei’s contention that inspectors have been given little to go on, saying, “I can certainly say that they’re getting the best we’ve got, and that we are sharing information with the inspectors that they can use, and based on their ability to use it.” [Washington Post, 1/11/2003]… UN Secretary General Kofi Annan orders all UN weapons inspectors, peacekeepers, and humanitarian aid workers to withdraw from Iraq. [Washington File, 3/17/2003] UN inspectors have been in Iraq since November 18 (see November 18, 2002). During their four months of work in Iraq, they inspected hundreds of sites (some of them more than once) and found no evidence of ongoing WMD programs. Their work was reportedly obstructed, not by the Iraqis, but by the US which refused to provide inspectors with the intelligence they needed to identify sites for inspection (see February 12, 2003) (see December 5, 2002) (see December 6, 2002) (see December 20, 2002) (see January 11, 2003). Of the 105 sites identified by US intelligence as likely housing illicit weapons, 21 were deliberately withheld from inspectors. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 344]

Also, Michael, who was USA president in the time of USSR invasion of Afghanistan, or how about Bosnia?
Democrats…

Just because, Muravchick wants us to think that the  neocons were instrumental in those decisions, does not make it right.
As far as military spending -it was increasing almost under any US presidency, republican or democratic

sashal, I don’t even know where to begin with that… First, you do know that the Neocons aren’t traditional Republicans? They are ideologues who’s pedigree comes from the left, but because foreign policy doesn’t follow a neat right/left axis, they’ve aligned at times with Democratic politicians and at times with Republicans.

And as far as those reports being wrong, you seem to completely reject the idea that the reason that the threats weren’t as large as they were feared to be is that the containment policies actually worked (sometimes better than we expected them to.)

Sure I do know about that,Christine, and I stated it all in the up thread.
They have  corrupted the GOP and they are mainly to blame for what is happening with republican party lately. I really miss the GOP I used to like , of the 70th and 80th

Well then why do you dismiss the Bosnia claim by saying that that decision was made by a Democratic president? Clinton was, as Muravchik asserted, influenced by neoncons toward that decision. And Reagan was influenced toward a more agressive stance toward USSR by neoncons too. What you seem to feel is that the Kissinger school of realpolitik and his move toward detente was better, but that’s not ultimately what brought down the USSR.

I disagree, Christine. They tried to exert influence, but they never were in such power to influence the decisions of American presidents as they gained under Bush Jr..
And you are absolutely (finally somebody figured that out ) correct. I am a big fan of Kissinger’s realpolitik ( does not mean I am 100% in agreement with him all the time, heck I am not agreeing with my wife 100% of the time-don’t tell her ) big fan of the principles of those politiks…

Sorry, Michael, I can not see and do not see where and how they were right about ANYTHING

Can someone else get into the debate. What I found the most ridiculous was the authors complete dismissal of the importance of detente and Nixon’s policies towards the USSR. As Sashal says, he’s lieing on this one.

This attitude was one of the things that set neoconservatives apart from traditional conservatives. To be sure, there were a few intellectuals of the Right, like William F. Buckley, Jr. and Whittaker Chambers, who shared the neoconservatives’ loathing for Communism. But mainstream conservatives were better represented by the approach of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and their foreign-policy mentor, Henry Kissinger, according to which the Soviet Union was to be seen more as another great power than as the vessel of a lethal ideology; the policy of détente was devised accordingly. This approach was embraced by such conservative icons as the Reverend Billy Graham, who hoped to convert Russians to the Gospel, and the capitalist Donald Kendall, who hoped to sell them Pepsi—without, in either case, troubling with the issue of their enslavement. Even those traditional conservatives who distrusted the readiness of Nixon and Kissinger to make deals with the Soviet Union tended to share the underlying philosophy of foreign-policy “realism.”

Without Nixon, Reagan wouldn’t ever talked to the evil USSR.  And nowhere did the author even mention that Perle was 180 degrees opposed to disarmament after the MX missile push. Perle wanted a STRONGER push against the USSR with more missiles and tanks. To refute Nixon and Kissinger in the Soviet collapse isn’t revisionist, it’s absurd. The neocon Manichean view of Communism as a evil monolith ignores the deep split detente created between the USSR and Communist China. Team B were shut out by the realist, what game did Muravchik watch?

OK, sashal, let me try this then: can you explain how you think detente would have worked? It was a good step in some ways, but without Reagan’s more aggressive stance and the effects of our interference in the Afghan conflict I don’t see how the detente policies could have succeeded.

You see, I’m not an opponent of realpolitik but I think that it was going down the track of believing that all war could be avoided through diplomacy- and that’s not actually very ‘realistic’.

And again, sashal, I disagree that the neocons didn’t have influence before and again I’d refer you to the article (Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Perle and others influencing Reagan, for example.)

Rudi,
Your last comment and mine cross posted- but I actually agree with you to an extent. I think Nixon and then Reagan BOTH contributed to the collapse of the USSR- each was the right policy at the right time, and neither could have worked without the other. Ironically, even Carter helped because his one lapse in pacifism was in listening to a neocon about Afghanistan (because it was under Carter that our support of the mujahideen began.)

Christine, USSR as any totalitarian regime is inherently doomed.
Reagan politics helped to speed up the process , but nobody harmed the USSR more then the communists themselves (and of course they put the last nail in the coffin by invading Afghanistan). With statist view on economy, central planning, etc, etc,,,

Here is from grandfather himself:
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/000tzmlw.asp
Kristol claims that “there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience.”  He lists three “theses” guiding neocon foreign policy and adds, parenthetically, “as a Marxist would say.”  (The apple certainly doesn’t fall far from the tree.  Does it  ?)  Those three theses—that patriotism is a good thing, that world government is a bad thing, and that statesmen should be able to distinguish friends from enemies—seem relatively harmless.  To be fair, Kristol is right in saying that there are no core principles behind neocon foreign policy because these three “theses” seem to have little or nothing to do with the paragraphs that follow.   Essentially, neocon foreign policy is that might makes right.  
  For “a great power,” he writes, “the ‘national interest’ is not a geographical term.”  That is, U.S. foreign policy should not be confined to safeguarding the territorial United States .  Oh, no.  We must be concerned with the entire world.  “A larger nation has more extensive interests.  And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns.”  Yes, according to Irving Kristol, neocon foreign policy applies equally to the Soviet Union and the United States, both of whom have (or had, in the case of the Soviets) “ideological interests” which trump mere territorial concerns.  Kristol further notes that since the U.S. “will always feel obliged to defend . . . a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces,” the neocons thus “feel it necessary to defend Israel today.”  Apparently only the holding of elections, not what those elected governments’ policies are, matters to neocons, and even then they’re more than willing to give some leeway to cooperative dictators.  Once again, I must give Kristol credit for being accurate in his assessment that no central principles (other than the one left unmentioned, spelled p-o-w-e-r) guide the neocons in their quest for “national greatness” (as Kristol’s equally arrogant son, William, put it).  It’s clear, though, that this power-grubbing, world-dominating foreign policy is certainly not in the interest of the average American, which is why he has to be converted against his will by the neocons.   Kristol continues to celebrate the power of the U. S. , and he notes that “[w]ith power come responsibilities, whether sought or not, whether welcome or not.  And it is a fact that if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you.”  The neocons, of course, are not content to let the world find uses for the power they’ve worked so hard to achieve.  As a matter of fact, they’re more than happy to “find opportunities to use it.”  Whether those “opportunities” are in the best interest of the country or the world is irrelevant; all that matters is that the neocons are the ones finding the opportunities and wielding the power.   Finally, in case any doubt remains as to whether the Bush administration qualifies as neoconservative—and there are still some out there who believe it remains fully within the American conservative tradition—Kristol puts all doubt to rest.  Bush and his administration, he says, “turn out to be quite at home in this new political environment, although it is clear they did not anticipate this role any more than their party as a whole did.”  Face it, says Kristol:  We’ve won, and you traditional conservatives in the Republican Party never saw it coming and still don’t know what hit you.  Unfortunately, he’s right. (http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/tennant/tennant3.html )

To say that "They were also right about stopping Saddam from annexing Kuwait back in 1990, and they were at least ?not wrong? when they warned it was a mistake to leave Saddam in power after that," is a bit silly. The US backed Saddam for a decade prior. Until you guys recognize that the government does what’s good for them — not necessarily the American public, or the people they are supposedly trying to help — you will continue to see what you are meant to see. Kuwait could have been stopped before it ever happened, but that wouldn’t have fulfilled the goal of the Bush government.

CS - The Commentary article almost completely dismissed detente. There would be no talks or Gorby without Nixon.

The neocons did love the aggressive stance in Yugoslavia, but partisan Republicans opposed Clinton’s "wag the dog" approach. In Iraq, the Presidents change, and both parties say a different tune.

Christine, Michael, I have more fun for you.

on "The Daily Show," this past August, when Kristol says invading Iran is "not a bad idea." Stewart reminds him, referring to his 2003 statement on Iraq, "You said Shia and Sunni would get along." Kristol admits: "I’ve been wrong about plenty of things."  http://www.blogrunner.com//snapshot/D/0/3/the_times_adds_an_oped_columnist/

At least, he has a deviant sense of humor towards us mortals:-"Yeah, we were wrong, so what…."

correct link :http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com/2007/12/for-more-blog-left-and-right-reaction.html

sashal: I certainly don’t agree with the neoconservative approach 100%, and since ‘neocons’ aren’t all on the same page on every issue anyway, I can find lots that I disagree with from many of them. And yes, sashal, the parallels between socialists/communists are there and are often even made by the neocons themselves (like Fukuyama making the analogy of Leninist neocons who want to use military force to quickly bring about change vs. Stalinist/Marxist ones who think the change will inevitably come eventually from within.) Those parallels are often the areas where I think the neocons are taking their philosophy too far- just as I also pointed out that realpolitik could be taken too far as well (and I believe it was with detente, had that policy been continued indefinitely.) Personally I think it’s fortunate that our policy has been shaped by both of these schools of thought, even though we haven’t chosen the correct one 100% of the time. You can correctly point out arrogance, but what is the alternative to a policy which correctly asserts that the US is a global power whether it wants to be one or not, and that if the US were to draw back its influence there are always other more malicious powers waiting to fill the power void? In short, sashal, I think I understand your criticisms of the neocon philosophy but other than embracing realpolitik I don’t understand what you believe is the alternative- and I don’t understand how or why you believe that the policies of containment were so much less arrogant since they also asserted that the US had the right to interfere in order to contain other powers.

Rudi: Yes, I’m aware that the article was one sided and brushed aside the Nixon contribution to collapse of USSR and I agree with your critique on that basis.

Christine, I do not believe there is any viable alternative to politics of the realism , seriously.
And I think I was talking with you about this before.-I do not see anything wrong when countries are trying to influence the policies and behavior of other participants in the world community , when it concerns their strategic interests, everybody does that. I just do not think the war should be employed as the  argument ( in my view wars should be waged only as the self defence , acts of revenge-Afghanistan, for  the harm done, but not as a tool to change other countries’ policies , regime changes,etc….)
Might not necessarily  makes it right. 

And of course I am not advocating to draw back our influence, I would actually  like our influence to grow, but more on the positive creative side, then warmongering destructive ( neoconservatism)

sashal: I’m not in favor of abandoning realism either, but as I pointed out already I don’t always see that realpolitik was as ‘realistic’ as it claimed to be. I also don’t see the hard distinction you make between use of force and the policies that were used for containment during the Cold War and in other attempts to maintain our sphere of influence. In the Middle East, parts of Africa, and Latin America, we definitely promoted governments which were highly oppressive to their people, and I don’t see how that is so morally superior to use of force to remove a dictator. The horrific violence in Iraq came about because we didn’t correctly predict how the power vacuum would be filled after Saddam was deposed, so it’s certainly questionable whether or not that action should have been taken under the circumstances. But at the time I favored the invasion because I believed that the other policies that had been used to contain Saddam were just as immoral as war (the children starving from the sanctions and the corruption of the oil for food program which had made it unsustainable.)

I just think your blanket condemnation of all things neoconservative goes too far, particularly since you’re not offering specific ideas about what should have been done instead (or what we should do now.)

Christine, I really , really think, that our positions are basically very close, with one distinction:

I also don’t see the hard distinction you make between use of force and the policies that were used for containment during the Cold War and in other attempts to maintain our sphere of influence. In the Middle East, parts of Africa, and Latin America, we definitely promoted governments which were highly oppressive to their people, and I don’t see how that is so morally superior to use of force to remove a dictator~CS

Dear Christine,- human lives .
 There are indiscriminately and much more human tragedies , losses, maimings are  happening in the first case scenario, then the second.
Like I said before, what is good the gift of liberation and democracy even for the opponent of the dictatorship in  any said country if the price one has to pay is the collateral loss of member of his family, friends or other damages.  Wars kill more people then authoritarian regimes.

Granted , when the genocide is raging against the whole swaths of population, like in Cambodia, or Sudan, or Yugoslavia, humanitarian help under the protection of the  military should be provided and atrocities has to be stopped( but again , not USA alone should the world police in this case )

Sorry,missed that part :
particularly since you’re not offering specific ideas about what should have been done instead ~CS

I am not as smart as Kissinger, but I would take any scenario regarding Iraq, which would not have involved direct war and destruction.
What to do now ? I don’t know. I am honest.
On one hand I would like us to get out as soon as possible, on the other hand, our troops may hold the violence down, but for how long and what is the end result?