In 2002 William aka "Weasel" Kristol penned the diatribe extensively quoted below the fold.
He was arguing FOR the proposition that George Bush was standing smack dab on the side of Moral Clarity, truth, justice, the Amerikun way, and presumably apple pie, in leading the United States into a war to remove that thug, that mass murderer, that sovereign ruler of the people of Iraq and former business partner and international ally to Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein.
Kristol was at sixes and sevens-- maybe he was so overwrought as to have been at eights and nines, who knows; but a writer's restraint required that he display just sixes and sevens -- sixes and sevens, the Sabbath number, over this statement:
"
"Leading Republicans from ... the State Department ... have begun to break ranks with President Bush over his administration's high-profile planning for war with Iraq."
Sputter sputter sputter!
"Begun to break ranks!"
The audacity and the audicity; other heads think other thoughts and have the noive to give them voice, in opposition to the Wise and Profound Thoughts of think-tankheads such as Kristol's own and the US president he has his cabal so thoroughly seduced.
Then Kristol sharpened his pencil. It wasn't some amorphous or job-protecting body of civil servants the Weasel had in his crosshairs, it was "the State Department of the Bush administration."
And not the whole stinking lot of the State Department, what with its Arabist tendencies yet to be cleaned out and replaced by fine think-tankheads such as pass through Kristol's shop, and those bouncy younguns that the Bush administration later recruited from Liberty University to people the Green Zone that Rajiv Chandrasekaran wrote about so colorfully and so compellingly; no, that particular measure of disaster was not to come about until AFTER the Administration had achieved "moral clarity" and actually started killing people in Iraq, in order to make room for the real business of establishing freedum and democricy and a few hundred thousand American-allied contractors in Iraq.
Like shavings from a whittler's penknife, Kristol brushes aside the arguments against the "moral clarity" of unilaterally invading a sovereign state that are advanced by the laughable likes of Brent Skowcroft and Pat Buchanan:
No, the "State Department of the Bush Administration" that Weasel had in mind whittled down to Richard Armitage and Colin Powell. And, to put a fine, black point on, Kristol sharpened his attack to focus on Colin Powell. Appeaser Extradordinaire.
It's all the Black Guy's fault.
Hell, I could slice and dice Kristol's 2002 article six way til Sunday and pepper the whole affair with snide remarks til it looked like cole slaw with too much paprika.
Read it for yourselves.
Remind yourselves what kind of rhetorical dishonesty got us into the mess we are in today.
Note again the people who warned that attacking Iraq was a bad idea.
Measure where we are today with where Kristol said we should/would be, and where the "Appeasers" warned we might be.
Consider the intensity with which Kristol and his "moral claritists" are backpedalling and blaming this entire imbroglio on George Bush, pbhn. Bush is a disaster, no doubt, but that does not absolve Kristol and his band of neocon thugs from complicity in condemning the United States, her military, her treasure, her reputation, and her citizens, to the deepest circle of moral hell. Of that I am absolutely, morally clear: the Bush Administration should be tried for war crimes. Kristol and his gang deserve no less prominent a place in the dock.
Goddammit I hate the neocons.
The Axis of Appeasement
From the August 26/September 2, 2002 issue: The State Department "breaks ranks" with the president.
by William Kristol
08/26/2002, Volume 007, Issue 47 http://www.weeklystandard.com/...
Isn't the State Department part of the Bush administration? How can its "leading Republicans"--Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage--"break ranks" with the president they work for?
Let's be clear. President Bush's policy is regime change in Iraq. President Bush believes that regime change is most unlikely without military action. He considers the risks of inaction greater than the risks of preemption. No doubt he and his administration could have been doing a better job of making that case in a sustained and detailed way. But that is not why an axis of appeasement--stretching from Riyadh to Brussels to Foggy Bottom, from Howell Raines to Chuck Hagel to Brent Scowcroft--has now mobilized in a desperate effort to deflect the president from implementing his policy.
The appeasers don't want the president to do a better job of explaining his policy. They don't agree with his policy. They hate the idea of a morally grounded foreign policy that seeks aggressively and unapologetically to advance American principles around the world. Some, mostly abroad and on the domestic left, hate it because they're queasy about American principles. Some, mostly foreign policy "realists," hate it because they're appalled by the thought that the character
of regimes is key to foreign policy. Some, cosmopolitan sophisticates of all stripes, hate talk of good and evil. Now they've come together in a last-gasp attempt to stop President Bush from setting American foreign policy on a course of moral clarity and global leadership.
The establishment fights most bitterly and dishonestly when it feels cornered and thinks it's about to lose. Churchill was attacked more viciously in 1938 and 1939 than earlier in the decade. So now the New York Times shamelessly mischaracterizes Henry Kissinger's endorsement of the president's policy as breaking ranks--when in fact it represents an acknowledgment by the most intellectually honest of the "realists" that realism, post 9/11, requires rethinking concepts like deterrence and preemption. And now Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska wanders into Pat Buchanan-land with his comment that "maybe [Richard] Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad." And now Brent Scowcroft (writing in the Wall Street Journal) thinks that a persuasive casus belli would be "compelling evidence that Saddam had acquired nuclear weapons capability." But as Henry Kissinger said in a television interview last week, "if there is no action now, that means that we are saying, we will wait until these weapons are used and react to an actual provocation. That is going to produce, if it comes, horrendous casualties."
Reading the Scowcroft/New York Times "arguments" against war, one is struck by how laughably weak they are. European international-law wishfulness and full-blown Pat Buchanan isolationism are the two intellectually honest alternatives to the Bush Doctrine. Scowcroft and the Times wish to embrace neither, so they pretend instead to be terribly "concerned" with the administration's alleged failure to "make the case." Somehow, Vice President Cheney's fine speech in San Francisco on August 7, or Condoleezza Rice's superb August 15 interview with the BBC, to say nothing of Donald Rumsfeld's impressive press briefings and President Bush's strong statements--these don't count.
But of course the problem with the administration has nothing to do with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or Rice. The problem is with the leading Republican in the State Department. Where is Colin Powell? The secretary of state is the lead spokesman for American foreign policy. This secretary of state, because of his popularity at home and his stature abroad, could be particularly helpful if he were to join the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, and the defense secretary in making the case for the Bush Doctrine with respect to Iraq. Instead, he allows his top aides to tell the New York Times on background that he disagrees with the president and is desperately trying to restrain him. And according to the Washington Post's Jim Hoagland, he complains privately that his boss is uninterested in foreign policy. When told that previous secretaries of state had an hour alone every week to talk foreign policy with the president, Powell is reported to have asked, "But what would I do with the other 55 minutes?" Well, what he could do is spend those minutes figuring out how best to execute the president's policy--or he could step aside and let someone else do the job.
Colin Powell is an impressive man. He is loyally assisted by the able Richard Armitage. They are entitled to their foreign policy views. But they will soon have to decide whom they wish to serve--the president, or his opponents.
--William Kristol