Monday, December 17, 2018

With end of the Weekly Standard, neocon grip on Republican Party ends. Neocons will continue to advance their blood drenched “liberal world order” of endless war that’s neither liberal nor orderly from confines of the Democrat Party-Justin Raimondo

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For at least three decades the neocons have pushed us [on the right] aside, minimized our influence, and smeared us as “extremists”--and now they have been finally and justly repudiated.”...Neocons now on the outside continue to plot “day and night to destroy the President [and his 63 million voters] who destroyed them politically.”

12/10/18, The End of the Weekly Standard,AntiWar.com, Justin Raimondo 

“And the final defeat of neoconservatism in the GOP.”  

The rumored demise of the Weekly Standard is yet another of Donald J. Trump’s achievements that will go uncelebrated by his liberal enemies: indeed, they are even now mourning the death of the neoconservative flagship.

And of course neoconservatism’s many fellow-travelers are out there with panegyrics. It stood up for conservative principle” in the age of Trump, writes Meghan McArdle. What principle this might be, Ms. McArdle somehow neglects to say: perhaps it’s a penchant for perpetual war, the only known characteristic this famously eccentric and variable band hold in common. Both McArdle and the editors of the Standard thrilled their readers with stories of the great danger posed by Saddam Hussein, who they told us had nukes hidden beneath his palace ready to launch at a moment’s notice. 

Let’s take a look at the three important roles played by the Standard and its editors in the history of the post-9/11 era.

To begin with, Kristol and his neoconservative cadre served as the point men and chief agitators for the series of wars we fought, to disastrous effect, in the Middle East. Through a series of front groups and thinktanks, such as the Project for a New American Century, the neocons spread their propaganda with promiscuous alacrity, to Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike, until they finally succeeded in getting Bill Clinton to sign the Iraq Liberation Act. With Ahmed Chalabi and his fellowheroes in error” – yes, they had the gall to characterize themselves as such! on the CIA payroll, the machinery of regime change was oiled, fueled up, and ready to go.

PNAC [Project for a New American Century] testified before Congress, published reams of literature, cultivated interest groups, lobbied strenuously, and effectively encountered no real opposition: the field was wide open, and they swarmed over it like midges over a swamp.

Secondly, the magazine was key to getting out the disinformation that made the Iraq war possible. Supposedly based on leaked “intelligence,” and given the benefit of a doubt due to the magazine’s closeness to the Bush administration, the Standard told us with full confidence that al Qaeda was behind 9/11, that Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction” posed a physical threat to the territory of the United States, and that the Iraqis would greet us as “liberators.” It was Kristol who infamously predicted that the war would last two months.”

Most importantly, however, the Standard was the flagship of the neoconservative faction of the Right – a querulous group of intellectuals who originally identified as leftists, far leftists, in most cases – who gradually moved rightward until they became “leftists for Reagan” at the height of the cold war. Rejecting the pro-peace stance of Democratic party activists during the Nixon years, they crossed over to the GOP and have been ensconced in the party, especially its policymaking machinery, ever since – until now.

While generally conservative in a temperamental sense, the neocons have never been committed to any economic theory more involved than “two cheers for capitalism,” as Irving Kristol put it. As for the social conservatism of the traditionalists, the neocons have little use for it except, by way of contrast, as a means to signal to their liberal counterparts that they aren’t really horrible reactionaries, since, after all, they recently attended a gay wedding.

What they really care about is foreign policy: for them, perpetual war for perpetual peace isn’t an absurdity: it’s a policy. From their days as the brain trust of Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who was known as the Senator from Lockheed, their agenda has been consistent: establishing and maintaining American military hegemony on every continent. 

What Britain once was we have become, in large part thanks to their effort: the guarantor of a “liberal world order” that is neither very liberal nor all that orderly.

It’s an empire in which everything goes out and nothing comes in – a “modern” sort of Imperium, which (ostensibly) benefits the conquered and costs the conquerors a pretty penny. 

The imminent demise of the Weekly Standard is symbolically important to us paleocons – and, by the way, for anti-interventionists of every stripe and persuasion — for it instantiates and confirms our victory over the neocons. For at least three decades the neocons have pushed us aside, minimized our influence, and smeared us as “extremists” –­ and now they have been finally and justly repudiated by the movement they posed as leaders of and the party they controlled since the reign of Bush II [2000-2018]. Trump [and his 63 million voters] made neoconservatism untenable, and effectively destroyed it as a viable political force, at least in the short term.

Now we are in the drivers’ seat, albeit that’s one ride that promises to be a bit bumpy, and the neocons are on the outside looking in, plotting day and night to destroy the President who destroyed them politically. Because Trump has indeed done exactly that.

His noninterventionist “America First” foreign policy, which horrifies the elites, won a mandate in 2016 – and the front lines of the struggle for peace are being pushed forward as never before, despite opposition from the usual foreign lobbyists and drooling anti-Trumpers who prefer World War III to negotiations with nuclear-armed Russia.

Whither the neocons? A long time ago–1999!–I predicted that they would abandon the GOP and go back to where they came from—the left, and the Democratic party. That proved to be correct, but this time around I think I’ll just wait and see what transpires – because, after all, where else can they go after this?”

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Added: Ignored or downplayed by media, military-intel Democrat candidates (“The CIA Democrats") were big winners in 2018 elections: 

30 military-intel Democrats won their primaries, 9/21/18, “The CIA Democrats: A balance sheet of the primaries.”Eleven of them won House seats in Nov. 2018. 10 of these were from Bush and Obama wars. Of course, in 2 of the 11 seats no Republican was on the ballot.

39 House districts didn’t even have a Republican candidate on the ballot in 2018. Democrats lacked candidates in only 3 districts. The GOP E is much happier being in the minority and was eager to get back to it. Until 1994, Democrats had held the House for 40 straight years.
 
$300 million difference in 2018: “Democrat House and Senate candidates nationwide outraised Republican candidates by over $300 million.”

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11/17/18, “Eleven military-intelligence Democrats win US House seats,” Patrick Martin, Worldwide Socialist Website

“With the victory of Jared Golden, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, a total of 11 Democrats with military or intelligence backgrounds have won Republican-held seats in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections.

The military-intelligence apparatus accounts for the largest number of victorious Democratic challengers in Republican districts, more than lawyers (9), state and local government officials (7), businessmen/wealthy individuals (7), or others (8).

Golden trailed incumbent Republican Bruce Poliquin by a narrow margin in the initial vote results. Under Maine’s ranked-choice voting system, however, since none of the four candidates on the ballot won 50 percent, the votes for the third and fourth-place candidates in the district, about 8 percent of the total, were redistributed, giving Golden the margin of victory.

The third- and fourth-place candidates had urged their supporters to preference Golden over Poliquin on their ballots, and they did so by a sizeable margin. Golden trailed Poliquin by 2,632 first-choice votes, but he won by 2,905 votes, with 50.5 percent of the total, when the votes of the two eliminated candidates were redistributed.

Poliquin has filed a lawsuit against ranked-choice voting—but only after Election Day, when it became clear that the new system, approved by Maine voters in a referendum in 2016, was likely to cost him his seat. On Thursday morning, a federal judge rejected Poliquin’s request for a temporary restraining order to stop the vote redistribution process, citing the previous referendum vote, but the Republican congressman said he would appeal.

With Golden’s victory, Democrats now hold every congressional seat in the six New England states, 21 in all. Poliquin had held the 2nd Congressional District seat for four years, and President Trump carried the largely rural area, which covers two-thirds of the state, in the 2016 election.

Of the 11 military-intelligence Democrats newly elected to Congress, nine defeated incumbent Republicans, while two won seats left open by a Republican retirement. Besides Poliquin, the Republicans defeated by candidates drawn directly from the national-security apparatus include

Dan Donovan in New York, Leonard Lance and Tom MacArthur in New Jersey, Keith Rothfus in New Jersey, Scott Taylor and David Brat in Virginia, Mike Bishop in Michigan, and Mike Coffman in Colorado.

Besides Golden [Maine]—who enlisted in the Marines after 9/11 and spent four years as an infantryman, deploying to Afghanistan in 2004 and to Iraq in 2005–2006, the only rank-and-file soldier in the group—the military-intelligence Democrats who won congressional seats include:

Jason Crow, Colorado 6th District, veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division, leading a paratrooper platoon during the invasion of Iraq,

Chrissy Houlahan, Pennsylvania 6th District, a 10-year veteran of the Air Force, leaving it as a captain,

Andy Kim, New Jersey 3rd District, strategic adviser to US commanders in Afghanistan, then director for Iraq on Obama’s National Security Council,

Conor Lamb, Pennsylvania 17th District, Marine captain and Judge Advocate General, won special election in the 18th District earlier this year, redistricted into the 17th,

Elaine Luria, Virginia 2nd District, career Navy surface warfare officer, second-in-command of guided missile cruiser, commanded assault craft supporting Marine Corps deployment,

Tom Malinowski, New Jersey 7th District, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in the Obama administration,

Max Rose, New York 11th District, Army combat officer in Afghanistan, Ranger-qualified, Bronze Star and Purple Heart,

Mikie Sherrill, New Jersey 11th District, ten years as Navy helicopter pilot, Russia policy officer for the Atlantic Fleet, then federal prosecutor,

Elissa Slotkin, Michigan 8th District, a CIA agent in Iraq, then worked at the National Security Council for Bush and Obama, and as an assistant secretary of defense,

Abigail Spanberger, Virginia 7th District, eight years in the CIA as an operations officer in Europe, speaks five languages, previously a postal inspector (policeman for the Postal Service).

The influx of new members of Congress with recent experience in the CIA or military or civilian national security positions is unprecedented for the Democratic Party in the more than four decades since the Vietnam War era. The 11 include seven military veterans, all but one an officer—two each from the Army, Navy and Marines, one from the Air Force—two former CIA agents, and two who worked as civilian decision-makers in the State Department and National Security Council.

Seven military-intelligence Democrats fell just short of winning seats, with one not yet conceding, Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer who challenged Republican incumbent Will Hurd, a former CIA agent, in the 23rd Congressional District of Texas. Ortiz Jones trailed Hurd by 1,150 votes out of more than 200,000 cast (0.5 percent), and she has the right to request a recount given the closeness of the contest.

Other military-intelligence Democrats who lost narrowly, and their margin of defeat, include Dan Feehan in the 1st District of Minnesota (0.4 percent), Dan McCready in the 9th District of North Carolina (0.6 percent), Joseph Kopser in the 21st District of Texas (2.8 percent), George Scott in the 10th District of Pennsylvania (2.8 percent), Mary Jennings Hegar in the 31st District of Texas (3.0 percent) and Amy McGrath in the 6th District of Kentucky (3.2 percent).”…

[Edit Note: Re: Amy McGrath: Trump did hold at least one rally just for a congressman as in the case of Kentucky’s Republican incumbent Andy Barr on 10/13/18. Barr, whose re-election vs Amy McGrath was rated a toss-up, was re-elected on Nov. 6 by a 51 to 47.8 margin. 10/13/18: “Barr’s race is one of the most closely watched House races in the country. Although he represents a district which voted for Mr. Trump by 15 points in 2016, [Democrat candidate] McGrath is an unusually formidable Democratic challenger. A former fighter pilot and first-time candidate, McGrath has garnered local and national attention.”]

(continuing): “The remaining 12 of those whom the WSWS has identified as the “CIA Democrats” lost by wider margins, ranging from 6.6 percent for Brendan Kelly in the 12th District of Illinois to 23 percent for Jesse Colvin in the 1st District of Maryland. Richard Ojeda, one of the most heavily publicized of the military-intelligence candidates, lost by 12.8 percent in the 3rd District of West Virginia, the heart of the Appalachian coalfield. The former Army Airborne major immediately announced the formation of a committee to explore a possible run for the presidency.

There appears to be a regional component in the relative success or failure of the military-intelligence candidates. Nine of the eleven elected won seats in the Northeast, in states from Virginia through Maine along the Eastern Seaboard. Only one won in the Midwest, Slotkin in Michigan, and one in the West, Crow in Colorado. None won seats in the South, although five lost narrowly in that region.

The regional disparity has some political significance. The Northeast has traditionally been a center of antiwar sentiment. The Democrats gained no political advantage there by running candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus, especially given that none of these candidates made any show of opposition to the wars of which they had been part. Rather, the military-intelligence apparatus gained by having its candidates slotted into districts that were likely to be won by the Democrats in the event of a national swing against the Republican Party and the Trump administration, as seen in the November 6 midterm.

The result is that in the Northeast, of 15 Republican seats captured by the Democrats, nine went to military-intelligence candidates. In the other three regions, there were only two military-intelligence candidates among the 25 Democrats winning Republican seats.

The newly elected CIA Democrats have begun to attract considerable media attention, after an election campaign in which the high proportion of military-intelligence candidates seeking Democratic congressional nominations was largely disregarded or directly downplayed by the corporate-controlled media.

Five of the 11 newly elected CIA Democrats are women, a fact which is endlessly celebrated by the media, although there is no reason to believe that female national-security officials are any less ruthless and bloodthirsty than their male counterparts.

Both the former CIA operatives elected November 6, Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger, are women, as are the two former Navy officers, helicopter pilot Mikie Sherrill and warship commander Elaine Luria, and the former Air Force captain, Chrissy Houlahan.

Slotkin did three tours of duty in Baghdad for the CIA, then worked in the White House on Iraq policy under both Bush and Obama, before a stint as an assistant secretary of defense where she had responsibility for drone warfare, among other murderous tasks. She has now emerged as a media favorite, the subject of a gushing 3,000-word front-page profile in the Detroit Free Press, followed by an invitation to appear on NBC’s Sunday interview program “Meet the Press,” as one of two representatives of the incoming freshman class of congressmen and congresswomen.”

“The author also recommends:

The CIA Democrats: A balance sheet of the primaries
[21 September 2018] [30 military-intel Democrats won their primaries]


The CIA Democrats and the US midterm elections
[24 September 2018]”

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Of note:

The Obama administration [was] the first in American history to have been engaged in a major military conflict for every day of its eight years.”


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