Posted under Interventionism & NeoCons
Philip Giraldi dissects the Kagan’s latest interventionist screed:
The Kagans are classic neocon entrepreneurs who rely on nepotism and cronyism to work their way through the system. Kimberly studied ancient history at Yale under Donald Kagan and then married his son. She is now billed as a “military expert” by the neocon media in spite of her lack of any actual military experience. Kimberly and Fred have together attached themselves firmly to the COIN counterinsurgency strategy and to the surge tactics as well as to two of its leading proponents, General Stanley McChrystal and General David Petraeus.
Just as DC’s left-leaning domestic policy assumes that a strong central government must impose order and justice on an otherwise benighted population, DC’s foreign policy assumes it is uniquely qualified to impose order on the rest of the world – whether the world likes it or not.
Giraldi notes that even though the Kagans got everything wrong in their arguments for W’s invasion of Iraq, that hasn’t stopped them from cheering on other interventions. As Giraldi points out, war is their business, and there are many others who profit from war.
Similarly, leftists have been proven wrong about just about everything, from forced busing to welfare, but that hasn’t stopped them from promoting their agenda. Yes, they’re THAT convinced they’re right. It’s the world that’s wrong.
C Bowen (Hawthorne) on 09 Dec 2012 at 12:52 am #
It’s actually more awful than that, Harrison.
Kagan, the male in the relationship, borrows from ‘revisionist history’ to point out what the forefathers were really about (paper money and land grab speculations), and employs the technique of the Straussians in figuring out a secret code.
In league with someone like Ledeen, they make the case that the US of A was founded on revolutionary principles (rejecting Burke’s quaint delineation between the French and American revolutions –which one should, but from another angle) and has an unbroken historic mission of imperial interventionism. This is not without merit from a strictly elite, aristocratic perspective that begins in say 1770, as I sometimes point out to our Further Right friends.
Thus they weren’t wrong about Iraq, because Bush was re-elected and even so, Obama has continued the Bush program. See, they were right.
Forced busing worked because it destroyed Northern Urban Catholic-Southern White solidarity against Yankee WASPs–which candidate does that remind you of? Chicago probably held out the longest and for its sins…
I never thought the Whigs as Satanists (some do of course) but Kagan makes a convincing case.
HarrisonBergeron2 on 09 Dec 2012 at 3:54 pm #
C Bowen,
Exactly. I’ve read the Neocon argument about America’s “tradition” of interventionism at home and abroad.
There’s revisionist history, and then there’s the stuff Harry Turtledove writes. But Turtledove is at least entertaining.
Sempronius on 10 Dec 2012 at 10:23 pm #
The neocon’s appeal to what you call “revisionist history” is, unfortunately, correct.
What is bad is the uses they make of it.
P.S. Pay no attention to the yarmulke(s) behind the curtain.
HarrisonBergeron2 on 10 Dec 2012 at 11:03 pm #
Sempronius,
And not only do they hawk their fairy tales, they get politicians to act on them. Hence the tragedies in Iraq and Afghanistan. And maybe Syria and Iran next, for all we know.
Frederick Kagan: Neocon Fraudster « elcidharth on 19 Dec 2012 at 9:04 pm #
[...] The Forever Wars of Frederick & Kimberly Kagan | Conservative … conservativetimes.org/?p=12764 [...]