Neocon History Checks

Crooks and Liars -- Krugman: March of Folly

via Crooks and Liars

"Since those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it - and since the cast of characters making pronouncements on the crisis in the Middle East is very much the same as it was three or four years ago - it seems like a good idea to travel down memory lane. Here�s what they said and when they said it:

"The greatest thing to come out of [invading Iraq] for the world economy ... would be $20 a barrel for oil." Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), February 2003

"Peacekeeping requirements in Iraq might be much lower than historical experience in the Balkans suggests. There's been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia." Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and now president of the World Bank, Feb. 27, 2003

"Earlier this week, I traveled to Baghdad to visit the capital of a free and democratic Iraq." President Bush, June 17, 2006

"People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse. ... These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things." Ayad Allawi, Mr. Bush's choice as Iraq's first post-Saddam prime minister, November 2005

"My fellow citizens, not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq." President Bush, Dec. 18, 2005"

This is important because these exact same folks are now using the Isreal/Lebanon shennanigans to call for a wider (and therefore more successful) war in the M.E.

Hell, Newt is calling for WWIII.

More here.

The champions of American global empire are using the latest upsurge of violence in the Middle East to give new life to their discredited plan to extend the war in Iraq to Syria and Iran. The neo-con Weekly Standard has taken the lead in its July 24th cover issue, proclaiming that the current violence is "Iran's Proxy War" against the West.

As Standard editor William Kristol puts it, "It's our war." America's, that is.

"What's under attack," Kristol argues "is liberal democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States." The logical conclusion of this "war of civilizations" analysis is Kristol's advice to the Bush Administration: "our focus should be less on Hamas and Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real commanders -- Syria and Iran. And our focus should be not only on the regional war in the Middle East, but also on the global struggle against radical Islamism."

Hmm, so I guess Kristol is arguing that Israel shelling Lebanese suburbs is a "attack on liberal democratic civilization.", and yet...no calls for Israel to stop doing that. Strange.

UPDATE: Kristol's war mongering

Juan Cole on the overheard conversation that illustrates what an ignorant asshat our President is (short version, we celebrated when Syrian forces left Lebanon...now he blames Syria for not controlling the militia that filled their army's place...ARRGGH!!).

Billmon breaks it down further.