Here's the table of contents:
September 24, 2007 Issue
Easy Out
By Gregory Cochran
Don’t overestimate the logistical impediments to a quick withdrawal.
A Separate Peace
By Leon Hadar
Iraq will move forward when America leaves it behind.
Open Fire
By Paul W. Schroeder
Americans still don’t understand that the Iraq War didn’t go wrong. The war was wrong.
Once More into the Breach
By Justin Logan
Will the neocons’ Iranian PR campaign bomb?
After Tocqueville
By Chilton Williamson Jr.
Can democracy expand across the globe when it’s dying at its source?
Run for the Border
By W. James Antle III
Rudy and Romney pose as Minutemen.
Breaking Planks
by Michael Brendan Dougherty
Giuliani wins, social conservatives lose?
In the Shadow of the Valley
The School for Scandal
By Steve Sailer
Paul Haggis’s “In the Valley of Elah”
By Richard B. Spencer
Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Case by Stuart Taylor Jr. and K.C. JohnsonSneak Preview
October 8, 2007 Issue
Sycophant Savior
General Petraeus protects official Washington from its greatest fear: admitting it was wrong.
by Andrew J. Bacevich
For some reason, this isn't the whole table of contents. For example, the new biography of Dick Cheney by Stephen Hayes is reviewed by Gary Brecher.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
17 comments:
What strikes me about the paleocons is that along with Liberals their world view was shattered by 9/11 and they've spent their remaining time trying to deny the reality in front of their noses.
After 9/11 and the "miracle" of the quick victory over the Taliban (which unfortunately vindicated fast-cheap Rumsfeld over the doomsayers predicting a slaughter of the Americans), someone's ass needed kicking and Saddam who'd picked a public fight with the US over inspections would do just as well as anyone else.
If nothing else, Iraq remains the central battlefield (according to Osama/Zawahari) between the US and AQ (and also, the US and Iran). One side will "win" and the other will "lose" and losing for the loser has serious consequences.
Far from being some nefarious "neo-con" plot, Iran and it's allies North Korea and Syria are moving aggressively to cooperate in nuclear facilities. That noted neo-con warmonger Hillary confirmed in the Dem debate last night that Israel took out joint North Korean-Syrian nuclear facilities of some kind.
Moreover, the GWB Admin is deeply divided with passive GWB favoring kicking the can down the road on Iran's nukes. Considering that Iran's leadership, both NutJob and the Mullahs are NOT like us in any meaningful way, it's highly likely that unless some miracle occurs and Iran's nuclear program taken out by air/naval forces, we'll lose at least one US city.
Iran's leadership is NOT like the kind of mostly atheistic, rational, materialistic, modern, and bourgeois people who read American Conservative. They are often polygamous, tribal, faction ridden, extremely violent (and leading many of them violent lives, personally executing rivals/prisoners), and deeply religious in a way unfathomable to the readership or authorship of American Conservative. Iran's leaders do not believe but rather "know" beyond ANY doubt that God moves them directly to destroy America. Of course they fear nothing because they "know" without any doubt that God will move to destroy America through themselves.
The central problem with GWB is that he is passive and lazy, rather than overactive, and the American political scene demands constant and unceasing risk aversion. Like the couch potato afraid of exercising and hurting himself and thus suffering heart disease, the biggest risk is not doing anything and simply waiting for Iran to nuke us.
Which of course they will. It will make perfect sense to them (and they won't believe for a second that the US will dare do anything about it). Certainly the atmosphere in the US: avoid ANY political risk and leave it for the next guy to deal with.
Does anyone seriously think that Iran's leadership would feel any risk from any candidate excepting perhaps Rudy or McCain if they handed nukes to AQ or Hezbollah? Will they fear Hillary? Obama? Edwards? Romney?
Please. AC is simply non-responsive to what to do about the risk of Iranian nukes. It isn't particularly serious.
Can we at least get a little, "Gosh, sorry about Iraq, but..." before you go into the neocon shilling about the next imminent threat?
Iran's leadership is NOT like the kind of mostly atheistic, rational, materialistic, modern, and bourgeois people who read American Conservative. They are often polygamous, tribal, faction ridden, extremely violent (and leading many of them violent lives, personally executing rivals/prisoners), and deeply religious in a way unfathomable to the readership or authorship of American Conservative.
Bullshit.
Re: Conservatism (of America)
Hey, Steve, the US Dollar Index (its value measured against a basket of currencies), as of early this morning, is at 78.20. So, we are heading toward the 77's. Which is uncharted territory. In other words, not very conservative economic policy at all.
This week on CNBC, the "path to prosperity" network, there was at least one contrarian profundity that slipped past the gatekeepers: No nation has ever devalued its currency as a path to prosperity.
Duh.
Yet listen to the creepy CNBC hosts talk about the potential "upside" to the tanking dollar. And how the financial future of the globe is INEVITABLY Asia! Asia! Asia! (sort of like how amnesty was INEVITABLY going to pass)
These sellouts are globalist lowlife without a patriotic bone in their body.
Add the CNBC creeps to the law firm that was videotaped instructing people at a seminar during the summer on how to avoid hiring American citizens.
And add them both to the crowd that is methodically suppressing enforcement of our borders and planning to merge us with Mexico and Canada.
Do we see a pattern here? With fellow citizens like these, who needs enemies?
anonymous said:
"What strikes me about the paleocons is that along with Liberals their world view was shattered by 9/11"
I think some paleocons, perhaps blinded by hostility to the Israeli lobby, do deny that Islam has 'renewed its strategic offensive against the West', as William Lind accurately phrased it, and is a real danger, especially to Europe.
In extreme cases this leads to paleocons believing Leftist claims that 9/11 was a Mossad plot, and similar nonsense.
Overall though, 9/11 and its aftermath, particularly the disaster of Iraq, has vindicated the Paleocon view that, whatever the seductive claims of the gods of the marketplace, the gods of the copybook headings will always return.
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm
The US will not intervene in Iran because our bankers (the Chinese) will not allow it.
I think some paleocons, perhaps blinded by hostility to the Israeli lobby, do deny that Islam has 'renewed its strategic offensive against the West', as William Lind accurately phrased it, and is a real danger, especially to Europe.
Islam is a threat TO Europe because mass immigration has put it IN Europe. Then political correctness and multiculturalism allowed it to bed down. Mass immigration; pc; multi-culti -- a certain group not a million miles away from the Israeli lobby has been thoroughly in favour of all three for some time now.
If anything the last 6 years have been an almost complete vindication of the paleocon world view. Paleocon's never shared the liberal view that we can all "just get along," but unlike neocons, paleocons seem to have maintained a little perspective. Sure militant Islam is nasty and a threat, but it's not THE threat. In the big picture it will be immigration, the rise of China and the integration of Europe that are going to really shake up life in the US, not the bluster of 3rd world illiterates.
Shouldn't it be "Gary Brecher"? I thought that was a pseudonym.
anonymous: Moreover, the GWB Admin is deeply divided with passive GWB favoring kicking the can down the road on Iran's nukes... The central problem with GWB is that he is passive and lazy, rather than overactive, and the American political scene demands constant and unceasing risk aversion...
I hope you've misunderestimated Dubyah.
I hope that he'll be true to his word, and order up several thousand [or several tens of thousands of] extra cruise missiles & bunker busters, and that he'll wipe the mullahs off the face of the earth before he leaves office.
Actually, I'm starting to wonder if maybe the bombing will start on Wednesday, November 5, 2008, just because Dubyah is such a fundamentally nice guy, and he doesn't want to saddle either the GOP or the DEM candidate with the responsibility of taking a position on a bombing campaign prior to the election.
Anyway, that's what I hope.
But if Dubyah leaves office without having taken care of matters in Iran [and Syria], then it all will have proved to have been for naught - just one long, dreary, colossal waste of eight years' worth of political capital.
On the other hand, I just don't see Dubyah & Cheney leaving this mess for their successors to inherit - so I've still got my fingers crossed.
PS: Please don't allow these effete, panty-waist, metrosexual losers at AmConMag to tarnish the reputations of true, red-blooded American paleocons.
Give us a break, will ya?
Some clarifications/corrections to the first post:
Our “quick victory over the Taliban”:
- We’re still 6yrs into our victory in Afghanistan with no end in sight
- Osama Bin Laden is still broadcasting AQ inspirationals and is the person directly responsible for 9/11, mocking Bush’s “dead or alive” threat
- Much of the Afghanistan outside Kabul and is not safe, Karazi has to rely on US bodyguards because his internal security is so bad
- AQ has strengthened in N. Pakistan and represents the biggest threat in destabilizing this nuclear power
- Even after our glorious victory over AQ, the same Neocon propaganda sees AQ everywhere and as great a threat as ever
Regarding Iraq:
- Saddam, relatively secular and pro-Western, and Osama were declared enemies with deep hatred for each other.
- The US created the chaotic vacuum in Iraq that allowed AQ in and presents hundreds of thousands of relatively easy US hard targets for Islamic extremist to hit daily. Bush and the Neocons have fractured Iraq into a relatively stable Kurd state and at least two volatile Sunni-Shite states trying to ethnically cleanse as much territory as possible. Bush/Neocons have effectively ceded much of the feeble new Iraqi national government as well as key oil-rich areas of Iraq to Iran’s sphere of influence.
- AQ is not going to “win” anything in Iraq. They are currently being expelled by Sunni Iraqis with US help. They are dangerously destabilizing foreign elements that are a long term liability to the emerging states in Iraq. The sooner stable states arise out of the chaos we unleashed, the sooner strong leaders with hard target assets and vested interests will be motivated and enabled to rid themselves of these opportunistic terrorist.
- There is nothing in Iraq for the US to win. We have wasted a lot of blood, treasure and goodwill on bad policy and leadership. At this point we’re minimizing the damage Bush and the Neocons created.
Neocon plot:
- It’s not a nefarious plot. Neocons are just one of many special interest groups promoting their particular goals. They just happen to be unusually powerful, dangerously grand in their aspirations, delusional in their interpretations of the world and unwilling to compromise with history or events on the ground.
- Despite protestation or marketing positioning, Hillary as well as most leading Republican and Democratic candidates have generally supported this war at every critical juncture and vote. They have only a hallow fig leaf of rhetorical deniability.
- Hillary’s confirmation of Israeli’s bombing of a purported Korean-Syrian nuclear facility is untrustworthy without any verifiable proof. This especially in light of the established Neocon strategy of using outright lies, fabrications and distortions to lead America into their ill-fated adventures (WMDs, Iranian Quds Force killing Americans in Iraq, etc).
Iran
- Persians civilization is much more Western than the traditional nomadic Arabs. We accept the reality of having to work with countries Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt which are a lot more despotic, radically Islamic and linked to terrorism than Iran.
- The vilification of Mohammed Ah&%!medajad has reached comic proportions largely based upon a disputed translations of statements about Israel’s fate and the Holocaust. Whether you believe his rhetoric or not, he has rejected these accusations. He is not the insane, unstable fanatic our elites and media caricaturize him as and it’s suspiciously annoying so many try to silence him via vitriolic ad hominems.
- The fundamental problem with Iran is that they are too like us. They want to be the dominant superpower of their region instead of contenting themselves with internal rule via a corrupt oligarchy rule like Arab nations. This is just another chapter in Iran’s history trying to escape domination by superpowers like Russian, Britain and now America. Outside Israel, Iran is the most democratic, highest educated and most advanced civilization in the ME despite decades of economic, political and military isolation and threats by the US.
- I don’t trust or particularly care for Iran, Islam or Ah&%!medajad and see where their interests conflict with America’s. I would prefer a non-nuclear Iran, but no one has offered any reasoned solution – just silly propaganda. The risks are much greater from an unstable nuclear Pakistan and most any Arab nation.
I only became aware of Gary Brecher thanks to isteve.com. I don't know if you had anything to do with getting him into the American Conservative, but I am grateful to you for making me aware of his existence.
Here is a link to a rare type of blog: one written by a Jewish guy who opposes the Neocons, AIPAC, The Lobby and the whole schmeer.
Mondoweiss
This is as opposed to the talented Auster who is against the Neocons, but strongly supports the USA being attached at the hip to Israel.
Hard to imagine the amount of hatemail Weiss must receive from his fellow tribesmen for his heresy.
The first Anonymous says:
... it's highly likely that unless some miracle occurs and Iran's nuclear program taken out by air/naval forces, we'll lose at least one US city.
That is truly absurd hyperbole.
AmCon doesn't have comment threads. But along with iSteve.com, the Taki web site is a close substitute.
There is comment by Tom Piatak on the latest Raimondo thread over at takimag.com that gets to the heart of the matter:
"We believe the Mideast is not worth the loss of a single US Marine."
That is it. The opposite of the NeoCon Israel-firsters. The fight against the Taliban is righteous payback. But all that was required in the Levant was a "divide and conquer" strategy and the use of proxies.
But no, Wolfowitz et al needed U.S. Marines on the ground like cops on the beat standing between the lunatic warring desert tribes of Iraq.
For this "intellectual firepower" the NeoCons should be repudiated, shamed, and shunned.
Dollar index did in fact dip again strongly down to 77.67 which is a record low.
That is easily the biggest news impacting everyday Americans this week. AmConMag should be pounding this story in every issue. A stable dollar is the basis of the world as we know it.
Afghanistan - righteous payback indeed but we shouldnt still be there now. Go in, kill them, smash their stuff and leave them to sort out the mess, though hopefully with our proxies in the ascendant. Pausing only to deposit a calling card - "Dont f**k with us again as there is plenty more where that came from. Best regards."
I have opinions on the discussion, but just can't comment on so many anoymous's. There's no need for it. Somebody get a name.
As to the article, it seems that American Conservative cannot discuss much of anything except how bad the neocons are. Thank you, Steve, for at least offering some variety.
Post a Comment