US 'Warmonger' Bolton to Advance Hardline on Venezuela, Cuba

US 'Warmonger' Bolton to Advance Hardline on Venezuela, Cuba

John Bolton. (photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP)

Chicken Hawks & War Mongers

Not a complete list!

RSN: Steve Weissman | Rethinking the Neo-Con Threat

Watching as the US once again MARCHES TO WAR based on LIES, it's time to THINK! 

Reader Supported News | 04 November 15

It's Live on the HomePage Now: 
Reader Supported News

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FOCUS: Steve Weissman | Rethinking the Neo-Con Threat 
 
Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News 
Weissman writes: "Rethinking the neo-cons and liberal interventionists will help us sharpen our opposition to both." 
READ MORE

s Barack Obama deepens US intervention in both Syria and Iraq, the idiocy that George W. Bush began continues to destabilize the Middle East. Many observers, myself included, have blamed neo-cons for the disaster. Why? Ask the neo-con David Brooks, now a columnist at The New York Times. “Con is short for ‘conservative,’” he famously wrote. “And neo is short for ‘Jewish.’”

Some critics, Brooks thought, blamed the neo-cons to lay an unpopular war in the lap of the Jews. Why not? Libeling Jews or Zionists is old hat, and surprisingly popular among many would-be progressives. Just browse the comments here at Reader Supported News.

Being Jewish and of the 1960s New Left, I carried a different kind of baggage. I had begun battling the godfather of neo-conservatism, the late Irving Kristol, when he was still lionized as one of America’s leading liberals. A number of us at Berkeley knew his history. An ex-Trotskyist from City College of New York (CCNY), he had seen World War II as little more than a conflict between competing imperialisms, showed little concern over Hitler’s war on Jews, and had little time for Israel. Then, in the early 1950s, he and poet Stephen Spender co-founded and co-edited the highly influential British-based magazine Encounter, which promoted the Cold War in the most sophisticated way.

Our battle with Kristol and his politics became up-close and personal. During the Free Speech Movement, we continually tripped over his ideological soul mates, sociologists Nathan Glazer and Seymour Martin Lipset, who red-baited us and actively worked with university president Clark Kerr to try to split our ranks. When a very disgruntled Lipset left for Harvard, I very publicly – and most unkindly – hailed his departure as one of FSM’s major contributions.

Kristol himself remained an even more enticing target. My comrades and I struggled against his acolytes in SDS. We slammed his increasingly conservative writing in Commentary. We read and rebuffed his new magazine, The Public Interest, which he co-founded with Daniel Bell, author of “The End of Ideology,” a paean to precisely the technocratic thinking we had fought against at Berkeley. We then felt vindicated when Ramparts revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had founded, funded, and run the Congress for Cultural Freedom, including Encounter, its flagship propaganda sheet. Irving Kristol had made his peace with the empire early on, and had gotten a paycheck for doing it.

We fought him, but we never won. Kristol became one of the country’s most influential public intellectuals and a favorite of Ronald Reagan. As the neo-con journalist Irwin Stelzer tells it, “Reagan joked at a dinner that anyone wanting a job in his new administration should call the White House and say: ‘Irving sent me.’ No further vetting would be required.” It seemed to work, as Irving’s friends helped create Iran-Contra and swallowed hard as Reagan worked to bring détente with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union.

Irving’s greatest victory was still to come in the charmed political career of his son, William Kristol. Boasting little more than a Ph.D. in government from Harvard and a well-placed daddy, young Kristol served as chief of staff to Reagan’s highly ideological education secretary William Bennett and to Vice President Dan Quayle, whose missing brain he became. Once the Democrats returned to power, William Kristol led conservatives in killing Clinton’s health care proposal. He created the leading neo-con newsmagazine, The Weekly Standard, getting funding from Rupert Murdoch. Then in 1997, he joined with historian Robert Kagan to create the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), Washington’s most vocal promoter of going to war against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and those non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

For me, as for most progressives, this was clearly the dragon we needed to slay. But having fought these guys too long, I failed to give sufficient attention to four elements of the story that could now prove crucial.

First, I misunderstood the role of the neo-cons, as did many other writers. While ten of the 25 people who signed PNAC’s founding statement went on to serve under George W. Bush, only two of them had real power, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Corporate CEOs in oil services, pharmaceuticals, and defense, they were consummate Washington insiders and old-fashioned right-wing nationalists. Along with Bush, they were the imperial potentates, the deciders who set policy on Iraq and other possible targets of regime change. None of the three were neo-cons.

The other eight PNAC signers, neo-cons like Cheney’s man Scooter Libby and Rumsfeld’s deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, were underlings, subordinates, and advisors. They were the handmaidens of empire, the B-list.

Second, while most neo-cons were Jewish and Zionist, Kristol and Kagan were far more committed to American than to Israeli power. Their goal was “to promote American global leadership,” and a “benevolent global hegemony,” as they called it in a 1996 article in Foreign Affairs. We should never excuse Israel and its lobbies all over the world for constantly beating the drums of war. But just because the cock crows before sunrise, it does not mean that he causes the sun to rise.

Third, Kristol and Kagan’s message had its roots the Cold War liberalism of Truman and Kennedy, and was far more activist and interventionist than the historic Republican stance, with its lingering pockets of isolationism. Despite Kristol and Kagan’s effort to package their world view as a “Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” they were far closer to what we now hear from Hillary Clinton.

Fourth, and most important, Kristol and Kagan provided American weapons makers with a perfect substitute for the old Soviet threat. What better marketing strategy for the military-industrial complex than an endless war against Islamic terrorists, Iran, and ultimately China? PNAC laid much of this out in Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century, a report written primarily by the group’s deputy executive director, Thomas Donnelly, who went on to work for the defense giant Lockheed Martin. PNAC also worked closely with and received major funding from the Bradley Foundation, a strong backer of the defense industry.

Rethinking the neo-cons and liberal interventionists in these ways will help us sharpen our opposition to both. This becomes crucial as Kristol and Kagan’s new flagship, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and The Weekly Standard have spent the last two years trying to talk Americans out of being weary with war. I won’t be surprised to hear Hillary Clinton join in soon, rallying us to show new spirit in defending American values.

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A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/33308-focus-rethinking-the-neo-con-threat

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Robert Kagan: War Monger, War Profiteers, Co-Founder of Project for the New American Century

Robert Kagan's wife is Asst Sec  of State Victoria Nuland. 

Published on Mar 23, 2017

These ain't the Cleavers, folks!

Horrifying, personal John Bolton story et al

Just described  on Hardball as "a Neocon's Neocon ... "

Project for the New American Century

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

Bolton, John R. - War Criminals Watch

http://warcriminalswatch.org/index.php/the-culpable/36-the-culprits/67-john-r-bolton

Horrifying, personal John Bolton story



By amyindallas

Friday Apr 15, 2005


My best friend since college, Melody Townsel, was stationed in Kyrgyzstan on a US AID project. During her stay there, she became embroiled in a controversy in which the oh-so-diplomatic John Bolton was a key player. She described the incident in a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee members (who have thus far responded with a yawn), and I wanted to share it with a larger audience.

Here's a small taste:

"Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel -- throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman."

More after the jump.

Here's the entire text of her letter:

Dear Sir:

I'm writing to urge you to consider blocking in committee the nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the UN.

In the late summer of 1994, I worked as the subcontracted leader of a US AID project in Kyrgyzstan officially awarded to a HUB primary contractor. My own employer was Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, and I reported directly to Republican leader Charlie Black.

After months of incompetence, poor contract performance, inadequate in-country funding, and a general lack of interest or support in our work from the prime contractor, I was forced to make US AID officials aware of the prime contractor's poor performance.

I flew from Kyrgyzstan to Moscow to meet with other Black Manafort employees who were leading or subcontracted to other US AID projects. While there, I met with US AID officials and expressed my concerns about the project -- chief among them, the prime contractor's inability to keep enough cash in country to allow us to pay bills, which directly resulted in armed threats by Kyrgyz contractors to me and my staff.

Within hours of sending a letter to US AID officials outlining my concerns, I met John Bolton, whom the prime contractor hired as legal counsel to represent them to US AID. And, so, within hours of dispatching that letter, my hell began.

Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel -- throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman. For nearly two weeks, while I awaited fresh direction from my company and from US AID, John Bolton hounded me in such an appalling way that I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton, of course, then routinely visited me there to pound on the door and shout threats.

When US AID asked me to return to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in advance of assuming leadership of a project in Kazakstan, I returned to my project to find that John Bolton had proceeded me by two days. Why? To meet with every other AID team leader as well as US foreign-service officials in Bishkek, claiming that I was under investigation for misuse of funds and likely was facing jail time. As US AID can confirm, nothing was further from the truth.

He indicated to key employees of or contractors to State that, based on his discussions with investigatory officials, I was headed for federal prison and, if they refused to cooperate with either him or the prime contractor's replacement team leader, they, too, would find themselves the subjects of federal investigation. As a further aside, he made unconscionable comments about my weight, my wardrobe and, with a couple of team leaders, my sexuality, hinting that I was a lesbian (for the record, I'm not).

When I resurfaced in Kyrgyzstan, I learned that he had done such a convincing job of smearing me that it took me weeks -- with the direct intervention of US AID officials -- to limit the damage. In fact, it was only US AID's appoinment of me as a project leader in Almaty, Kazakstan that largely put paid to the rumors Mr. Bolton maliciously circulated.

As a maligned whistleblower, I've learned firsthand the lengths Mr. Bolton will go to accomplish any goal he sets for himself. Truth flew out the window. Decency flew out the window. In his bid to smear me and promote the interests of his client, he went straight for the low road and stayed there.

John Bolton put me through hell -- and he did everything he could to intimidate, malign and threaten not just me, but anybody unwilling to go along with his version of events. His behavior back in 1994 wasn't just unforgivable, it was pathological.

I cannot believe that this is a man being seriously considered for any diplomatic position, let alone such a critical posting to the UN. Others you may call before your committee will be able to speak better to his stated dislike for and objection to stated UN goals. I write you to speak about the very character of the man.

It took me years to get over Mr. Bolton's actions in that Moscow hotel in 1994, his intensely personal attacks and his shocking attempts to malign my character.

I urge you from the bottom of my heart to use your ability to block Mr. Bolton's nomination in committee.

Respectfully yours,

Melody Townsel
Dallas, TX 75208

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/15/106909/-

Why does John Bolton have a Super PAC?
[Wasn't there a sex scandal that surrounded Bolton?]
"....Trump ran as the candidate who would break the stranglehold of big 
money on the nation’s politics, but the rise of Bolton suggests money may 
still win out. Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire who provided the lion’s 
share of the financial backing for Trump’s candidacy, is a major supporter 
of Bolton. The largest donor to John Bolton’s Super PAC over the years has 
been the Mercer family; in 2014, Trump gave $5,000 to the Super PAC. ..."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-bolton-secretary-of-state-donald-trump_us_582a314ee4b02d21bbca46b2?section=politics

Republicans OPPOSED Bolton!

NEW JOHN BOLTON SCANDAL EMERGES
APRIL 26, 2005 TDAXP LEAVE A COMMENT
“Bolton Roid Rage: Did Canseco Inject Nominee?,” by Scott Ott, ScrappleFace, 
22 April 2005, (from One Free Korea).

A funny.

Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee revealed today 
that they have stalled the confirmation of John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador to 
investigate claims by Jose Canseco that the former Major League Baseball 
slugger had injected Mr. Bolton with steroids on several occasions.

If Mr. Canseco’s allegations prove true, it would help to explain Mr. Bolton’s 
oft-reported bouts of rage, and perhaps engender sympathy from Senators who 
would see his anger as a medical issue rather than a personality defect.

In addition, it would provide Congress with another welcome opportunity to 
engage in America’s national legislative pastime, which is probing steroid 
abuse.
http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2005/04/26/new-john-bolton-scandal-emerges.html


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/05/30/214496/-John-Bolton-A-Rook-in-the-Plame-Scandal

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/08/the-john-bolton-acknowledgment-that-should-end/193964
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2005/04/the_real_bolton_scandal.html
http://www.wmcactionnews5.com/story/26865039/legalities-vast-in-alleged-bolton-high-prostitution-scandal

http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/john-bolton
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0505/S00240.htm
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_R._Bolton

Is he gay?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/22/john-bolton-s-surprising-support-for-gay-marriage.html

Bolton's articles:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/john-bolton

CounterCurrents: Donald Trump And The ISIS Factor, How To Break The Power Of Money, US Military Prepares New Offensives In Syria And Iraq,

Dear Friend,

Bad days for Iraqis and Syrians again. US imperialist forces are preparing for another offensive in Iraq and Syria. The Project For The New American Century (PNAC) is slowly unfolding before us. How long before we rose up and resisted? Perhaps the doom genes may be coded in the PNAC DNA itself! The limits to growth will bring down imperialist expansion too! We commoners should be ready with alternatives when the shit hits the roof. That's why CC is always searching for alternatives. To paraphrase Arundhati Roy, " A Rainbow of Alternatives"! David Korten, the author of "When Corporations Rule The World" comes up with an article to break the power of money. He ends the essay with a hopeful note ,

"We who work for peace, justice, and sustainability have the ultimate advantage. Truth is on our side. And the deepest truths, those on which our common future depends, live in the human heart. Let us each speak the truth in our own heart so that others may recognize and speak the truth in theirs. Together we will change the human story."

We are publishing the fascinating  Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities by Wendell Berry. Going through his personal experiences Berry shows us how agro industry,industrial civilisation  and capitalism disconnected us from our ecosystems, our imagination to be controlled by a few oligarchs.    He also ends his speech in a hopeful note,

".....truth, nature, imagination, affection, love, hope, beauty, joy. Those words are hard to keep still within definitions; they make the dictionary hum like a beehive. But in such words, in their resonance within their histories and in their associations with one another, we find our indispensable humanity, without which we are lost and in danger."

Ah yes, the usual request note,

If you think the content of this news letter is critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/. 

In Solidarity

Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org




The Tragedy Of The Anticommons
  by Michael Heller 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/the-tragedy-of-the-anticommons/

This essay introduces the tragedy of the anticommons. What’s that? Let’s start with something familiar: a commons. When too many people share a single resource, we tend to overuse it – we may overfish the oceans and pollute the air. This wasteful overuse is a tragedy of the unmanaged commons. How do we solve such a tragedy?




“It All Turns On Affection” by Wendell Berry 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/4869/

Wendell Berry’s Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities, which was delivered in 2012.




The Open Source School Redefines Education in Italy
  by Alessia Clusini 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/the-open-source-school-redefines-education-in-italy/

Threading elements of the great educational experiments of Bauhaus and Roycroft Community models together with Pierre Levy’s modern definition of “collective intelligence,” La Scuola Open Source (The Open Source School) embodies the principles of the sharing movement. Its success hinges on cooperative work, co-design, shared skills, and an open source culture. The school’s 13 co-founders believe in the power of people’s collaborative qualities. Their unusual constitution is testimony to this.




The Discrete Charm Of Economic Growth
by Kevin Carson 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/the-discrete-charm-of-economic-growth/

Revie of Robert Balthazar's "The Discrete Charm of Economic Growth. Part I: The Bilinguals"; Part II: "The Making of an Overriding Collective Preference"(2016).




How To Break The Power Of Money
  by David Korten 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/how-to-break-the-power-of-money/

We are living beings born of and nurtured by a living Earth. Life exists—can exist—only in living communities that self-organize to create the conditions essential to life’s existence. Money is just a number, an accounting chit we accept in exchange for things of real value because we have been conditioned to do so almost from birth.




US Military Prepares New Offensives In Syria And Iraq
  by Peter Symonds

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/us-military-prepares-new-offensives-in-syria-and-iraq/

Even as tensions are rising with Russia in Eastern Europe and China in Asia, the United States has launched a new war in Libya and is preparing a major military escalation in the Middle East, nominally directed against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In an interview yesterday with USA Today, Air Force Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigan confirmed that the US-led coalition is planning coordinated offensives against two ISIS-held cities—Mosul in northern Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.




Donald Trump And The ISIS Factor
  by Dr Binoy Kampmark 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/donald-trump-and-the-isis-factor/

Ever straddling that fine line between the absurd and the puncturing revelation, Donald J. Trump’s “ISIS” remarks about the Obama administration and the Democrat presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, were vintage.  “[Obama] was the founder of ISIS absolutely, the way he removed our troops. … I call them [Obama and Hillary Clinton] co-founders.” In a political environment where sarcasm is set aside in favour of serious management and public relations choreography, stage managed with careful insertions for media effect, Trump has other ideas. These may be contemptuous of the archive of history, avoiding evidence like the plague, but every so often, he makes a point that stings.




How Obama Administration Encouraged The Rise Of Islamic State?
by Nauman Sadiq 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/how-obama-administrationencouraged-the-rise-of-islamic-state/

Although, I admit that Donald Trump’s recent remarks that Obama Administration willfullycreated the Islamic State were a bit facile, but it is an irrefutable fact that Obama Administration’s policy of nurturing the Syrian militants against the Assad regime from August 2011 to August 2014 created the ideal circumstances which led to the creation of not just Islamic State but myriads of other Syrian militant groups which are just as fanatical and bloodthirsty as Islamic State.




Uncle “Sham” Says “Dance”…. And The Band Plays On….
by Gary Corseri 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/uncle-sham-says-dance-and-the-band-plays-on/

Those political, Republicratic “Conventions” clarified nothing and–despite the glitter, sparkle, balloons and flags, the pledges of allegiance, hands over the Constitution &/or one’s heart, the pretty words and gruff challenges—they succeeded in confounding and bewildering.





Narendra Modi, The Machiavellian Prince Of India
  by Sukumaran C V 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/narendra-modi-the-machiavellian-prince-of-india/

We have a Prime Minister who said that this government is for the Dalits, and the same Prime Minsiter says nothing when Dalits are publicly flogged by the gau rakshaks. Everybody knows on whose side he stands, but with his rhetoric he tries to convince the civilised world that he criticises the vigilantism that targets the Dalits.





Irom Sharmila Gets Solidarity From Kerala

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/irom-sharmila-gets-solidarity-from-kerala/

In solidarity with Irom Sharmila’s novel method of struggle against the draconian law of AFSPA, Solidarity Youth Movement held programs in different parts of Kerala. Programs were held in front of the Secretariat at Trivandrum and the Fort Kochi Beach at Ernakulam.





The Bourgeoisie And The Bourgeois Democratic Revolution
Compiled by MK Adithya 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/the-bourgeoisie-and-the-bourgeois-democratic-revolution/

An extract from chapter one of 1NDIA MORTGAGED by Tarimela Nagi Reddy ,pages 2-8, 1971. It narrates how transfer of  power took place and it was not real independence.




Demand For Dismissal Of Lt. Governor Kiran Bedi And Apologies For Insulting The Tribal Community

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/demand-for-dismissal-of-lt-governor-kiran-bedi-and-apologies-for-insulting-the-tribal-community/

Kiran Bedi, Ex IAS officer, an active member of a political party and Puducherry Lt Governor, has insulted and condemned de-notified tribes by tweeting on 2ndAugust:    ”Ex-criminal tribes are known to be very cruel. They are hardcore professionals in committing crimes. Rarely caught and/or convicted”.

RSN: Neocons and Neolibs: How Dead Ideas Kill

Robert Parry's article below deserves to stand alone and be carefully considered in terms of the US Presidential Elections.

Please subscribe to and support  INDEPENDENT MEDIA.
It may be the only TRUTH you find.  

Reader Supported News | 15 May 16

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The Progress Bar Is the Source of the Concern

If that were moving a bit more quickly towards completion we would be quite a bit calmer. It would also allow us to focus on what we actually do, which is not fundraising.

Small miracles can go a long way.

Marc Ash 
Curator, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

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Hillary Clinton. (photo: AP)

Neocons and Neolibs: How Dead Ideas Kill

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

14 May 16

Hillary Clinton wants the American voters to be very afraid of Donald Trump, but there is reason to fear as well what a neoconservative/neoliberal Clinton presidency would mean for the world, writes Robert Parry.

or centuries hereditary monarchy was the dominant way to select national leaders, evolving into an intricate system that sustained itself through power and propaganda even as its ideological roots shriveled amid the Age of Reason. Yet, as monarchy became a dead idea, it still killed millions in its death throes.

Today, the dangerous “dead ideas” are neoconservatism and its close ally, neoliberalism. These are concepts that have organized American foreign policy and economics, respectively, over the past several decades – and they have failed miserably, at least from the perspective of average Americans and people of the nations on the receiving end of these ideologies.

Neither approach has benefited mankind; both have led to untold death and destruction; yet the twin “neos” have built such a powerful propaganda and political apparatus, especially in Official Washington, that they will surely continue to wreak havoc for years to come. They are zombie ideas and they kill.

Yet, the Democratic Party is poised to nominate an adherent to both “neos” in the person of Hillary Clinton. Rather than move forward from President Barack Obama’s unease with what he calls the Washington “playbook,” the Democrats are retreating into its perceived safety.

After all, the Washington Establishment remains enthralled to both “neos,” favoring the “regime change” interventionism of neoconservatism and the “free trade” globalism of neoliberalism. So, Clinton has emerged as the clear favorite of the elites, at least since the field of alternatives has narrowed to populist billionaire Donald Trump and democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.

Democratic Party insiders appear to be counting on the mainstream news media and prominent opinion-leaders to marginalize Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, and to finish off Sanders, who faces long odds against Clinton’s delegate lead for the Democratic nomination, especially among the party regulars known as “super-delegates.”

But the Democratic hierarchy is placing this bet on Clinton in a year when much of the American electorate has risen up against the twin “neos,” exhausted by the perpetual wars demanded by the neoconservatives and impoverished by the export of decent-paying manufacturing jobs driven by the neoliberals.

Though much of the popular resistance to the “neos” remains poorly defined in the minds of rebellious voters, the common denominator of the contrasting appeals of Trump and Sanders is that millions of Americans are rejecting the “neos” and repudiating the establishment institutions that insist on sustaining these ideologies.

The Pressing Question

Thus, the pressing question for Campaign 2016 is whether America will escape from the zombies of the twin “neos” or spend the next four years surrounded by these undead ideas as the world lurches closer to an existential crisis.

The main thing that the zombie “neos” have going for them is that the vast majority of Very Important People in Official Washington have embraced these concepts and have achieved money and fame as a result. These VIPs are no more likely to renounce their fat salaries and overblown influence than the favored courtiers of a King or Queen would side with the unwashed rabble.

The “neo” adherents are also very skilled at framing issues to their benefit, made easier by the fact that they face almost no opposition or resistance from the mainstream media or the major think tanks.

The neoconservatives have become Washington’s foreign policy establishment, driving the old-time “realists” who favored more judicious use of American power to the sidelines.

Meanwhile, the neoliberals dominate economic policy debates, treating the “markets” as some new-age god and “privatization” of public assets as scripture. They have pushed aside the old New Dealers who called for a robust government role to protect the people from the excesses of capitalism and to build public infrastructure to benefit the nation as a whole.

The absence of any strong resistance to the now dominant “neo” ideologies is why we saw the catastrophic “group think” over Iraq’s WMD in 2003 and why for many years no one of great significance dared question the benefits of “free trade.”

After all, both strategies benefited the elites. Neoconservative warmongering diverted trillions of dollars into the Military-Industrial Complex and neoliberal job outsourcing has made billions of dollars for individual corporate executives and stock investors on Wall Street.

Those interests have, in turn, kicked back a share of the proceeds to fund Washington think tanks, to finance news outlets, and to lavish campaign donations and speaking fees on friendly politicians. So, for the insiders, this game has been a case of win-win.

The Losers

Not so much for the “losers,” those average citizens who have seen the Great American Middle Class hollowed out over the past few decades, watched America’s public infrastructure decay, and worried about their sons and daughters being sent off to fight unnecessary, perpetual and futile wars.

But inundated with clever propaganda – and scrambling to make ends meet – most Americans see the reality as if through a glass darkly. Many of them, as Barack Obama indelicately said during the 2008 campaign, “cling to guns or religion.” They have little else – and many are killing themselves with opiates that dull their pain or with those guns that they see as their last link to “freedom.”

What is clear, however, is that large numbers don’t trust – and don’t want – Hillary Clinton, who had a net 24-point unfavorable rating in one recent poll. It turns out that another indelicate Obama comment from Campaign 2008 may not have been true, when he vouched that “you’re likable enough, Hillary.” For many Americans, that’s not the case (although Trump trumped Clinton with a 41-point net negative).

If the Democrats do nominate Hillary Clinton, they will be hoping that the neocon/neolib establishment can so demonize Donald Trump that a plurality of Americans will vote for the former Secretary of State out of abject fear over what crazy things the narcissistic billionaire might do in the White House.

Trump’s policy prescriptions have been all over the place – and it is hard to know what reflects his actual thinking (or his genuine ignorance) as opposed to what constitutes his skillful showmanship that made him the “survivor” in the real-life reality TV competition for the Republican nomination.

Does Trump really believe that global warming is a hoax or is he just pandering to the know-nothing element of the Republican Party? Does he actually consider Obama’s Iran nuclear deal to be a disaster or is he just playing to the hate-Obama crowd on the Right?

Opposing the ‘Neos’

But Trump is not a fan of the “neos.” He forthrightly takes on the neocons over the Iraq War and excoriates ex-Secretary of State Clinton for her key role in another “regime change” disaster in Libya. Further, Trump calls for cooperation with Russia and China rather than the neocon-preferred escalation of tensions.

In his April 27 foreign policy speech, Trump called for “a new foreign policy direction for our country – one that replaces randomness with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace. …It’s time to invite new voices and new visions into the fold.

“My foreign policy will always put the interests of the American people, and American security, above all else. That will be the foundation of every decision that I will make. America First will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.”

Such comments – suggesting that “new voices” are needed and that “ideology” should be cast aside – were fighting words for the neocons, since it is their voices that have drowned out all others and their ideology that has dominated U.S. foreign policy in recent years.

To make matters worse, Trump outlined an “America First” strategy in contrast to neocon demands that the U.S. military be dispatched abroad to advance the interests of Israel and other “allies.” Trump is not interested in staging “regime changes” to eliminate leaders who are deemed troublesome to Israel.

The real estate tycoon also has made criticism of “free trade” deals a centerpiece of his campaign, arguing that those agreements have sold out American workers by forcing them to compete with foreign workers receiving a fraction of the pay.

Sen. Sanders has struck similar themes in his insurgent Democratic campaign, criticizing Hillary Clinton’s longtime support for “free trade” and her enthusiasm for “regime change” wars, such as those in Iraq and Libya.

Examining her long record in public life, there can be little doubt that Clinton is a neocon on foreign policy and a neolib on economic strategies. She stands firmly with the consensus of Official Washington’s establishment, which is why she has enjoyed its warm embrace.

She has followed Wall Street’s beloved neoliberal attitude toward “free trade,” which has been very good for multinational corporations as they shipped millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries. (She has only cooled her ardor for trade deals to stanch the flow of Democratic voters to Bernie Sanders.)

Wars and More Wars

On foreign policy, Clinton has consistently supported neoconservative wars, although she might shy from the neocon label per se, preferring its less noxious synonym “liberal interventionist.”

But as arch-neocon Robert Kagan, who has recast himself as a “liberal interventionist,” told The New York Times in 2014, “I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

Summing up the feeling of thinkers like Kagan, the Times reported that Clinton “remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes.”

In February 2016, distraught over the rise of Trump, Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century wrote the blueprint for George W. Bush’s Iraq War, openly threw his support to Clinton, announcing his decision in a Washington Post op-ed.

And Kagan is not mistaken when he views Hillary Clinton as a fellow-traveler. She has often marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented their aggressive “regime change” schemes against governments and political movements that don’t toe Washington’s line or that deviate from Israel’s goals in the Middle East.

She has backed coups, such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) all with various degrees of disastrous results. [For more details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon” and “Would a Clinton Win Mean More Wars?”]

Seeking ‘Coercion’

A glimpse of what a Clinton-45 presidency might do could be seen in a recent Politico commentary by Dennis Ross, a former special adviser to Secretary of State Clinton now working at the staunchly pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In the article, Ross painted a surreal world in which the problems of the Middle East have been caused by President Obama’s hesitancy to engage militarily more aggressively across the region, not by the neocon-driven decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and the similar schemes to overthrow secular governments in Libya and Syria in 2011, leaving those two countries in ruin.

Channeling the desires of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ross called for the United States to yoke itself to the regional interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in their rivalry against Shiite-led Iran.

Ross wrote: “Obama believes in the use of force only in circumstances where our security and homeland might be directly threatened. His mindset justifies pre-emptive action against terrorists and doing more to fight the Islamic State. But it frames U.S. interests and the use of force to support them in very narrow terms.

“The Saudis acted in [invading] Yemen in no small part because they feared the United States would impose no limits on Iranian expansion in the area, and they felt the need to draw their own lines.”

To counter Obama’s hesitancy to apply military force, Ross calls for a reassertion of a muscular U.S. policy in the Middle East, much along the lines that the neocon establishment and Hillary Clinton also favor, including:

–Threatening Iran with “blunt, explicit language on employing force, not sanctions” if Iran deviates from the Obama-negotiated agreement to constrain its nuclear program (the bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran zombie lives!);

–“Contingency planning with GCC states and Israel … to generate specific options for countering Iran’s growing use of Shiite militias to undermine regimes in the region”;

–A readiness to arm Sunni tribes in Iraq if Iraq’s prime minister doesn’t;

–Establish “safe havens with no-fly zones” inside Syria if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not force Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

Employing the classic tough talk of the neocons, Ross concludes, “Putin and Middle Eastern leaders understand the logic of coercion. It is time for us to reapply it.”

One might note the many logical inconsistencies of Ross’s arguments, including his failure to note that much of Iran’s supposed meddling in the Middle East has involved aiding the Syrian and Iraqi governments in their battle against the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Or that Russia’s intervention in Syria also has been to support the internationally recognized government in its fight against Sunni extremists and terrorists.

But the significance of Ross’s prescription to “reapply” U.S. “coercion” across the region is that he is outlining what the world can expect from a Clinton-45 presidency.

Clinton made many of the same points in her speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and in debates with Bernie Sanders. If she stays on that track as president, there would be at least a partial U.S. military invasion of Syria, a very strong likelihood of war with Iran, and an escalation of tensions (and possible war) with nuclear-armed Russia.

The logic of how all that is supposed to improve matters is lost amid the classic neocon growling about showing toughness or reapplying “coercion.”

So, the Democratic Party seems to be betting that Hillary Clinton’s flood of ugly TV ads against Trump can frighten the American people enough to give the neocons and the neolibs one more lease on the White House – and four more years to wreak their zombie havoc on the world.

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Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/36875-neocons-and-neolibs-how-dead-ideas-kill