Neoconservatism Is Dead 

by Brent Budowsky

Charles Krauthammer, not content with having been proven deadly wrong in his worldview of many years, learning nothing from the bloody disasters of the policies he so aggressively promoted, now attacks Barack Obama for suggesting America should talk with enemies as well as friends.

Our first and last neoconservative president, George W. Bush, is the lead witness for the prosecution in the case whose verdict is the death of neoconservatism.

Never has any philosophy been proven so wrong, so fatal, so disastrous for our country and so deadly for our troops as the views expounded by neoconservative theoreticians.

Their ascent to power meant tragedy, failure and death. Their arrogance and their imperial grandeur has alienated what Jefferson called the decent opinion of mankind. Their tactics have been pursued with contempt for alternate views, corruption of our democratic system, and condescension toward those who know far more about military affairs than they do.

In fact, one of the great specialties of the neoconservative movement is that so many who so ostentatiously failed to serve in the military, when their time came, so sneeringly question the patriotism of others, including those awarded medals for valor in combat.

When Ronald Reagan was changing the world with Mikhail Gorbachev, there were the neoconservatives, uttering their sneering contempt for Reagan, comparing his talks with Gorbachev to Pearl Harbor, comparing his diplomacy to Neville Chamberlain.

George Bush, Dick Cheney and their fellow neoconservatives know better than Reagan about negotiating with enemies. They know better than Eisenhower about military industrial complexes. They know better than Ford about seeking diplomatic agreements to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction. They know better than Nixon about achieving breakthroughs with our major adversaries.

They are very good about hurling insults to attack their domestic enemies and very bad about supporting wounded troops, disabled veterans and homeless heroes.

Neoconservatives are very special people, in their own eyes. When things go wrong they become the party of perjury and pardons, the party of abuse of power and abuse of executive privilege to cover up their failures and crimes.

Neoconservatives champion the politics of fear, desperately seeking to frighten the people to justify their attacks on freedoms guaranteed by statute and constitution.

Neoconservatives embody the politics of profiteering, masterminding and organizing the most corrupt occupation in world history, staffed by ideological partisans, rewarding their campaign contributors, mismanaging tens of billions of lost and stolen dollars, under the imperial arrogance of a proconsul awarded the Presidential Medal Of Freedom.

Neoconservatives know better than generals with their contempt for the Geneva Convention and their actions that civilized people call torture.

Our neoconservative theoreticians believe that George Washington was wrong and George Bush is right. Even torture is done with the big lie that they are promoting freedom and democracy with their corrupt occupation, their war against the Geneva Convention, and their shadow CIA created in the bowels of Rumsfeld’s neoconservative Department of Defense.

And then they try to keep their secrets.

And then they lie about what they do.

And then they bear false witness to Congress.

And then they claim that criminal acts are protected by privilege.

And then they complain when confronted by the law.

And then they whine when juries convict their leaders of perjury and demand the first of many presidential pardons.

And then they escalate their catastrophic war over the objection of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

And now they want to continue this war in perpetuity and dump this disaster on the desk of the successor to the man who calls himself the decider.

And there they are again, today, on the op-ed pages of the newspapers, in their discredited think tanks, on their hate-ridden right-wing radio, before the smirking courtiers of the cable networks, still claiming they are right and their deadly blunders must be escalated again and again.

While they cover up their dirty laundry, and plan their next wars, and hire their criminal attorneys, and lobby for their pardons, the clock is ticking, the day is coming, when a grateful nation will celebrate their removal from the high councils of government, once and for all.

Neoconservatism is dumb, discredited and dead.