[...] We suffer from neoconitis and we badly need a cure. The disease was diagnosed by Roger Cohen, writing in the New York Times. "Neocon", he pointed out, "has morphed into an all-purpose insult for anyone who still believes that American power is inextricable from global stability and still thinks the muscular anti-totalitarian US interventionism that brought down Slobodan Milosevic has a place." [...]Once upon a time I voted Democratic. According to this, I could have been a Neo-con in those days.
Neoconservatism is no conspiracy. As a school of foreign policy it has roots in the wing of the Democratic party led by Henry "Scoop" Jackson and the Campaign for a Democratic Majority in the 1970s. "Neocon" was an insult coined by the socialist Michael Harrington about those of his comrades who refused to follow George McGovern, Jimmy Carter and the "new politics" crowd in their embrace of détente and abandonment of antitotalitarianism. Undermining cynical and self-defeating "realism" and embracing democracy-promotion are two of the preconditions for a "progressive foreign policy". To the limited degree we have achieved either, Jackson and the neocons can be denied their share of the credit only by doing violence to the historical record. [...]
Tags: neo-cons, Scoop Jackson
No comments:
Post a Comment