THE NEO-CONS: HOW WE GOT INTO THE DITCH
( from the May 2006 issue of HALVASON NEWS )

They are called the neo-cons, short for new conservatives, a small secretive political movement which germinated in the classroom of an obscure German-Jewish political philosophy professor at the University of Chicago. So firmly did he imprint his ideas in the minds of his students that forty years after his death in 1973 a group of his disciples, in the opinion of the New York Times, were running the federal government. 

That professor was Leo Strauss, a man obsessed by fear that his adopted country was so vulnerable it would fall victim to totalitarian take-over the way Germany had succumbed in 1932. In his youth he had despised the weak Weimar Republic and had welcomed Hitler who promised strong government. He had been badly fooled, and it taught him to be ever vigilant for tyrants. Another trauma lingered from childhood, when family friends visited in Germany on their way to Australia, refugees from a cruel Russian pogrom. The University’s campus demonstrations of the Sixties also had badly frightened Strauss. 

In Strauss’ view American society was headed for disaster if it didn’t correct its weaknesses. He thought our government dangerously at risk by being too liberal and open. Government should operate largely in secret, concealing its inner workings. Deception wasn’t wrong if done in the national interest. Also separation of church and state was a bad idea. Church and state should work together to keep society in order. Important too, citizens should be nationalistic, and that required focusing on a foreign enemy. It unified people, kept them ready to defend the country. It was everyone’s duty to confront tyrants. 

From all accounts, Strauss’ most impressionable student was Paul Wolfowitz. Paul had come there specially to study under Strauss, after receiving a B.S. at Cornell where he learned about Strauss from his professor Allen Bloom. Bloom had studied under Strauss and later would write the best seller The Closing of the American Mind, in which he borrowed heavily from Strauss’ ideas. Paul knew Strauss’ philosophy had evolved from his experience during the Nazi era, just as his family’s somber outlook was shadowed by having emigrated from Poland, leaving behind family members who died in the holocaust. 

Paul’s father, a Cornell mathematics professor, was an ardent Zionist and promoter of Zionism who organized protests against Soviet repression of Jewish dissidents. During summers and on sabbaticals he carried his family to Israel, where he taught at a technical institute. Paul’s sister married an Israeli and became a citizen. 

A quiet sensitive youth, Paul grew up in the liberal University town of Ithaca, New York active in social justice causes, joining protests and participating in the march on Washington led by Martin Luther King, Jr. As an undergraduate he lived in a student co-op, sharing chores and maintenance duties. A friend later characterized him as a “bleeding heart.” 

Wolfowitz entered a brainy circle at the University of Chicago. Strauss’ provocative classes and the Committee on Social Thought he founded attracted top students and faculty. Today a list of them sounds like a page out of Who’s Who. To name a few: William Bennett, Alan Keyes, Stephen Cambone, James Woolsey, Leon Katz, William Kristol, Seymour Lipset, Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, John Bolton, Ahmed Chalabi, Zalmay Khalizad, the latter two major players in Iraq. 

Unassuming, mild-mannered Strauss was no public campaigner, but he held high hopes his promising disciples would communicate his warnings to others. Especially, he hoped some of them would go into government and propose the changes so greatly needed to save the country. 

Strauss retired before Wolfowitz completed his graduate studies and he wrote his PhD dissertation under Albert Wohlstetter, a prominent math professor who was a member of the University Straussian group. Shortly before Strauss died, Wohlstetter left the University for Washington to fill a position in the Pentagon. 

Within a year he sent for Wolfowitz to be his assistant. For the next twenty years Wolfowitz would work either in the Pentagon or the State Department. Richard Nixon was in his first term at the White House, and he and his foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger were carefully steering a non-confrontational course via détente. 

True to Straussian philosophy, both Wohlstetter and Wolfowitz were firmly focused on an enemy, the USSR. It was a time of Moscow’s spectacular May Day parades, miles-long displays of huge polished armament. Both men believed the USSR was dangerously underestimated and was set on world conquest. They scorned Nixon and Kissinger’s détente. It was too meek and complacent. They also opposed the anti-ballistic treaty which they were for. Wolfowitz, who had been a star reporter on his high school paper, promptly began writing a policy report criticizing the treaty – the first of many, many Wolfowitz policy reports to come. Later that year Wohlstetter recruited Richard Perle and helped position him in the office of Senator “Scoop” Jackson to assist a project to help Soviet Jews who were having trouble emigrating to Israel. Jackson was an avid hawk and Russophobic. Later Wolfowitz would join Jackson’s office. Nixon’s White House staff included two Midwesterners who later would rise to prominence. They were Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney who worked together in the Office of Economic Opportunity. 

Rumsfeld was the older and more experienced. Nixon had recruited him out of the House where he was serving his fourth term as an Illinois Congressman and where he had become acquainted with Cheney, who was there as a Congressional Aide from Wyoming. Rumsfeld had taken an interest in helping the bright novice and got Nixon to recruit Cheney for his assistant. Cheney’s Wyoming background had been as one biographer phrased it “within spitting distance of poverty.” After high school he worked six years as a power linesman before entering a community college, encouraged by his ambitious fiancé. Rumsfeld grew up comfortable in a Chicago suburb. Both men were business-minded Russophobic hawks, Cheney characterizing himself as a “proud-of-it-hawk.” 

More eager neo-cons continued to arrive in Washington, as those already positioned found spots for others. In the Cold War atmosphere, they were glad to find colleagues both high and low, who like themselves, were yearning for a showdown with Russia. 

Nixon resigned, Gerald Ford succeeded him, and was scarcely in the Oval Office when pressed to make changes. Senator Jackson and others as well as Ford’s own staff were insisting the CIA was disseminating false information about Russian capability in order to bolster détente. Ford had named Rumsfeld, his long-time friend in Congress, to handle staffing, and Rumsfeld had named himself Secretary of Defense and Cheney Chief of Staff. Ford was duly alarmed, and soon named a new CIA director. He was the former Ambassador to China, George Herbert Walker Bush. 

Soon Bush was being pressured. Would he appoint a committee to make a comprehensive assessment of the Soviet threat? Bush readily agreed. An outside historian, Richard Pipes, was asked to chair the group and Wolfowitz, Perle and several other neo-cons were assigned. The Committee on the Present Danger delivered its report in 1976 and was leaked to the press. It stated that “all evidence points to an undeviating Soviet commitment to what is euphemistically called the worldwide triumph of socialism but in fact connotes global hegemony.” It concluded the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that was undetectable.” The scary conclusions later proved inaccurate. The fast-collapsing Soviet was doing no such thing. However, the report did steer Ford off of détente and impressed a future President Ronald Reagan, and Kissinger’s prestige dropped considerably. The congenial Ford staffers who had connived so well together looked forward to four more years. But Georgian Jimmy Carter surprised them by defeating Ford, and soon the staff was dispersing. Rumsfeld began a 25-year vacation from government. Cheney returned to Wyoming and ran and won the first of five successful races for Congress. 

Wolfowitz was hired by Carter’s Defense Secretary as a deputy secretary and began writing another report. This one was titled Limited Contingency Study and its purpose was to examine possible threats to the United States. Wolfowitz focused on the Persian Gulf region. His report stated that the US had a growing stake in the region because of our need for oil and “because events in the Persian Gulf affect the Arab-Israeli conflict.” He speculated on the possibility that some country might seize the oil fields, and he fixed on Iraq as a likely one. He said the US must be able to defend the region and ourselves, and recommended that the US acquire bases. With this Wolfowitz became the first to paint Iraq as a threat to us. This was before Hussein had consolidated his leadership and was of zero interest to the Pentagon. No doubt, prompted by his memory of Strauss’ emphasis on confronting tyrants, he described Hussein as a tyrant. Whatever his real reason for fixing on Iraq, the small Arab state would thereafter never be far from his mind. At this time two retired warriors, both highly decorated veterans of multiple tours of duty in Vietnam and other hot spots, were prominently on the scene. They were Colin Powell, who over 35 years had risen from college ROTC to four-star General, and Richard Armitage an Annapolis grad who had served brilliantly both in battle and as a negotiator and trouble-shooter. Both had emerged from the Pacific quagmires despising war and determined to help prevent another. Yet both man, being professional soldiers, believed passionately on keeping the military fine-tuned for defense. Their honed skills were much in demand both in the Pentagon and in the White House. Being like-minded they had become friends, frequently working together on problems. In the Pentagon they had become acquainted with several neo-cons. They both distrusted ideology and sniffed ideology in the ozone with distaste. 

Neo-con hopes soared with the 1980 election of the Reagan-Bush team. That Reagan was Russophobic was well known. He had called the USSR the “Evil Empire.” Neo-con lobbying had won staff positions for 39 members of the Committee on the Present Danger, but most of those jobs proved to be low-echelon. Top positions went to mainstream conservatives who didn’t share the apocalyptic view of Russia the neo-cons did. They, like Reagan, wanted a strong defense, not confrontation. 

Wolfowitz remained hopeful, having been assigned to policy planning in the State Department, and he assembled some of the brightest neo-cons as assistants – Francis Fukuyama, Alan Keyes, Richard Perle and Richard Pipes. But the neo-cons were strongly disapproving of some of the policy that was approved: that Hussein was being given aid in his conflict with Iran, that Israel was thwarted in its attempt to incorporate the West Bank and Gaza Strip and forbidden to use its loan for building in the Occupied Territories. And why help the Evil Empire by lifting the grain embargo? Perle and Pipes left in disgust. 

Powell and Armitage were positioned in the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger. In Weinberger, Powell found a compatible mind. His guideline was that America should not send its combat troops overseas unless doing so was vital to national interest and only if the US had firm intent of winning and only in case the US was sure it had American support. Further, combat troops should be a last resort after other options had failed. Weinberger soon would be maneuvered out of the Pentagon by a coalition of neo-cons and hard-line hawks. His guidelines came to be known as the Powell Doctrine. 

But while Reagan steered clear of confronting Russia, he was gung ho for establishing formidable defense capability. He budgeted a whopping $1.05 trillion to be spent over five years. Much of it went into his Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed “Star Wars,” a project as fantastic as the namesake movie. Its main effect was to leave the federal government awash in red ink. Also when his defense planners boasted that a nuclear war would be winnable they reawakened anti-nuke peace protestors across America and Europe. 

Later in the Reagan administration, Wolfowitz was interrupted in his focus on Iraq when named Ambassador to Indonesia. The dictator Suharto was in power, but the Indonesian tyrant seemed to have interested Wolfowitz less than Near Eastern ones, as two human rights organizations criticized him strongly for showing indifference to the harsh repressions there and to the cruelties being perpetrated in East Timor. 

Bush succeeded Reagan as President and the neo-cons believed him to be their man. When he was Ford’s CIA director, he had seemed to embrace their world view. Cheney was named Secretary of Defense with power to make staff selections and named Wolfowitz, back from Indonesia, to be Secretary of State for Policy. Cheney now saw eye-to-eye with the neo-cons, both being strong for a confrontational foreign policy. Cheney was now on the neo-con express. In selecting staff, Cheney must not have vetted Colin Powell’s anti-war sentiments when naming him Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but he would soon learn. Wolfowitz recruited to be his assistant Scooter Libby, who he enticed out of law practice in Philadelphia. They would work closely together in decades ahead. 

Less than a year into the Bush administration, Iraq caught the Pentagon off guard by invading the small oil-rich sheikdom of Kuwait with 120,000 troops. Bush determined to oust Hussein, but wanted it legal. First he got the U.N. to slap an economic boycott on Iraq. Next he won Security Council permission to use military force if Iraq didn’t withdraw. With that Powell astonished everybody by objecting to a military entry. He argued strongly that the boycott would work in time, then Iraq could be contained. Bush, Cheney and Wolfowitz shot that down fast. 

In January of ’91 Desert Storm began. Planes from the United States and its allies began weeks of merciless pounding. In early March ground forces moved in. On the fourth day of battle Powell’s long experience told him the war was over and he suggested that General Schwarzkopf call a cease-fire. Quoting the warrior’s code against purposeless killing, he said with emotion, “We’re killing thousands of people!” Surrender followed hours later. 

Instead of welcoming the war’s end, Cheney and Wolfowitz argued forcefully for ignoring the surrender and moving on to Baghdad. Bush’s reply to that was an emphatic no. Libby later recalled how deeply disappointed were he and Wolfowitz that the war had ended at the border. Wolfowitz made one more try. He composed a comprehensive report that made the case that occupying Iraq would be a strategic move for the U.S. Cheney delivered the document to Bush, but it didn’t change his mind. 

The easy victory over Iraq and the fall of the Berlin Wall had the country feeling upbeat, almost giddy. Clearly Russia was ailing. Newspaper editorials waxed lyrical about the halcyon days ahead. Politicians were ecstatic awaiting the “peace dividend” to come. Ted Kennedy proposed cutting $210 billion from the defense budget and spending it on universal health care, education and job programs. Bush caught the euphoria and he too proposed making defense cuts. Cheney and Wolfowitz quickly and vehemently opposed reducing military spending. The USSR was stronger than ever, they argued. It was just feigning weakness to bolster its position for world conquest. 

By 1991 the Soviet collapse was unmistakable. The Cold War was over. The Evil Empire, which in fantasy was poised for world conquest, was only a paper tiger, after all. And the neo-cons’ reason for unlimited military spending was over too, it seemed. Fast action was needed if the money could be kept for the military. Cheney gave Wolfowitz approval to produce a Defense Planning Guide. The 46-page guide was a remarkable document indeed – nothing less than a plan for world domination. It stated the US must grow in military superiority to the point of dominating friend and foe alike and precluding any threat to its power. It must be prepared to use force to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, acting independently when necessary. Our military presence must be conspicuous the globe around so as to prevent the emergence of a rival to our power and control. Among the team of preparers were Libby and Zalmay Khalizad, our current Ambassador to Iraq. 

The document was leaked to the press – not by its creators who had planned to keep it secret – and it provoked a storm of outrage here and abroad. Bush had been unaware of the plan’s preparation and repudiated it. His rejection was much resented by the document’s creators, who are said to have spread the word to other neo-cons and fellow travelers to withhold support from Bush in the upcoming Presidential election. It is said to have cost him some much-needed votes in his unsuccessful run against Bill Clinton. The Bush administration had deeply disappointed the neo-cons. As for Bush, he was quoted as characterizing the neo-cons as “the crazies in the basement.” 

After Clinton’s election the Defense Planning Guide was consigned to a file case in the Pentagon. Clinton appointed one prominent neo-con, probably unaware of the depth of his mind-set. James Woolsey got the post of CIA director, often a political selection. The other neo-cons scattered widely. A number went into think tanks. Some found spots in the Pentagon. Some became consultants to the government of Israel. Others went with right-wing publications, National Review, Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard. The later, Rupert Murdock- owned, was and is edited by William Kristol and dubbed the neo-con bible. Cheney got active making contacts to measure chances of being nominated for president and finding none checked out defense contractors and became CEO of Halliburton. Wolfowitz’s ambassador experience got him appointed dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University. But that didn’t keep him from constantly speaking somewhere including before congressional hearings, writing 
articles for newspapers and magazines and penning a book. His recurrent themes were the need for invading Iraq, toppling its tyrant and democratizing the government, thus making it a model for the region; and the importance of increasing military spending so as to dominate the world. He soldiered on, undeterred by criticism that he cherry-picked facts to fit his agenda and by being dubbed even by friends, “Wolfowitz of Arabia.” Most of all he was leader to the neo-cons in diaspora. 

In 1997 Wolfowitz was one of 25 neo-cons who founded a group called a Project for a New American Century. Their stated purpose was to guide American foreign policy and to create a strategic vision for American’s role in the world. Among the charter members were Cheney and Rumsfeld, who though employed elsewhere, had kept in touch. It was the Project’s view that America needed to significantly increase defense spending in order to carry out our global responsibilities. Although announced with fanfare, it attracted scant attention. Many observers were saying the neo-con movement was dead. It was neither dead nor intimidated. In January 1998 the Project brazenly sent an open letter to Clinton asking for a preemptive US military attack on Iraq and “other potential aggressor states.” It said “The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the potential Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction.” In effect, they were asking Clinton to bypass Congress and take the country to war to take out a sovereign nation’s head of state. 

In September 2000 the Project produced a 76-page report entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century. The report was very similar to the Defense Planning Guide produced by Wolfowitz and Libby in 1992. Also heavily involved with this one were Stephen Cambone, Dov Zakheim, Mark Logan and David Epstein, all of whom would go on to hold high-level positions in the next Presidential administration. 
The report said the US must increase military spending to preserve its leadership as the world’s superpower. It must gird itself to wage simultaneous wars, perform global constabulary roles, and control space and cyberspace. Potential rivals such as Iraq, Iran, China and No. Korea must be held in check. The report recognized that “the process of transformation…is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event such as a new Pearl Harbor.” Of course, we know that exactly that size of catastrophe would befall us in just a year.