Yesterday, Bill Kristol, a “big brain” and quite possibly the biggest one behind today’s Neoconservative movement, went on Fox News in order to explain how President Bush has failed so spectacularly in his attempt at forwarding the aims of Neoconservativism.
Now, I’m not here this time to muse about how terrible Bush is, or how badly he’s failed in nearly every aspect of running the country, but to explain a little about Kristol’s attempt to separate Bush from Neoconservativism and how the movement itself is doomed to failure.
Kristol, on Fox news Sunday, spent his time on camera explaining that Bush’s failures are not failures of the Neoconservative agenda itself, but rather poor execution by an inept President. You see, the Neoconservatives spent many years positioning themselves, backing the right candidates, and putting their agents in the right places at the right times in order to amass the political army they have today. Yet, with all of this might, with all of the boons that have come their way, they have failed to achieve their goals. Many people are questioning the President, and the Neoconservative movement at large due to this.
However, it has occurred to me that many people believe that Neoconservativism is just a militaristic, quasi-fascist movement that aims solely to rule the world through force of arms. This is not entirely true; quasi-fascism and militarism are key parts, though the use of force and the expansion of the capability to use force is not the central part in Neoconservative aims.
Neoconservativism, at its core, aims to create an “American Empire,” though not in the way the British Empire existed at the turn of the century. They do not plan on creating a world-wide garrison composed of fortified colonies at all points on the globe. The idea is that we generate an economy capable of infinitely increasing the defense budget. This is achieved through international relations, some military, others non-military. However, they must be profitable to the US.
In order to create the huge international economy supportive of an ever-growing defense budget, we must create economic allies in the world’s other economic giants. As for the Third World and other nations that have resources at hand, but are not using them to US advantage, military force is used in order to seize these resources and turn them to generating wealth for the US. Because of this fact, it is no lie that the war in Iraq is a war for oil. However, oil wealth only in Iraq is not the only motivator of force there.
Our actions in Iraq are precisely aimed in order to give other nations in the area a concrete target to push against. Instead of having an ideological construct to fight against, fundamentalist theocracies such as those in Iran and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia now have an American army in their neighborhood to motivate solidarity and help recruit new allies for their cause. This opposition plays directly into the hands of Neoconservativism in that it gives the US layman an enemy to be fearful of, as well as giving politicians an enemy to offer protection from. Since much of the world’s petroleum-based energy comes out of, or travels through the Middle East, they now have political allies in the US who are enabling them to push for the use of force against other, new, Middle Eastern oil-rich countries, thus continuing the cycle of usurping wealth in order to grow the defense budget, in order to wrest more wealth from the hands of the uncooperative.
Many people can see that the First World is saturated with American globalized economic interests, and the Second World is becoming almost equally saturated, with the Third World and the remainder of the world’s natural resources lagging behind this saturation. Since much of the Third World is more or less opposed to American imperialism, the use of force is needed by Neoconservatives in order to secure the wealth in those countries.
This symbiotic cycle of the growth of strength and the subsequent use of strength to secure more wealth for more growth is the crux of the Neoconservative movement. If they cannot use non-violent political action to create US-friendly terms with other countries, they then elect to effectively beat people into giving up their wealth. Concisely, Neoconservativism conducts muggings on an international scale.
If other countries have no wealth to build militaries of their own, then they cannot conduct effective resistance to further takeovers. The benefit of this to the Neoconservative movement is obvious and needs no explanation.
Because of these facts, the Neoconservative movement is doomed to failure, as eventually, it will reach a critical mass past which no further growth is possible, and the “empire” will begin to crumble and fade into obscurity. Since we have exhausted the prospects of non-violent international economic growth, the result is military action to continue this growth. Using a military costs a lot of money and uses a lot of resources. The bigger the military, the more resources it uses in order to complete the same tasks. It is likely that this critical mass has been reached, or is being reached with Iraq, and we simply do not have the ability to generate further economic growth to create the ability to secure more resources. Like a game of StarCraft, we’ve used all the expansion sites and simply can’t generate units fast enough to go after the enemy bases.
Neoconservativism has failed, and the creators of the design, the Himmlers, Rommels, and the Goerings are all shaking their heads once again in total disbelief that their perfect and infallible opus has somehow become wholly fallible and developed glaring imperfections.
Instead of accepting that their ideals have failed on a fundamental basis, Neoconservatives are entering a period of denial, blaming Bush and “executive incompetence” for the failures of Neoconservativism on an ideological level. Like the old-guard Communists who will argue endlessly that Communism failed “because real communism was never tried,” they are trying to push blame for an idea doomed from inception on to the people diligently following directions.
The language of “rugged individualism” and “personal responsibility” have never been more scathing to Neoconservatives than now. While Reagan, another instrument of Neoconservativism (note the number of people who have served in Reagan’s administration and also served in both Bush administrations.) spoke about taking responsibility for actions, the Neoconservative movement has now shown its true craven identity with this huge outpouring of denial on the airwaves and in print.
Like lions circling a pack of wildebeests, they have already picked off the slow, the sick, and the weak prey, and worked their way through stronger and stronger targets. They’ve reached the center of the pack, where the resistance is strongest, and are now finding out that they simply can’t take care of the last of them. Instead of accepting that their plans didn’t work, they are now blaming each other for failures that were not caused by any one man or woman, but failures that were written into the genetics of their broken ideology.