Neocons Getting the Band Back Together

As predictably as the sun rising in the East, the two foremost proponents of ousting Saddam, William Kristol and Frederick Kagan, are calling in The Weekly Standard for President Obama to “act boldly and decisively” by returning American ground troops to Iraq — not simply the special operators who are essential for targeting airstrikes [whenever a president says “airstrikes but no ground troops” he means “airstrikes and some ground troops”], but “regular military forces.” The goal of such a return would be not only to stop ISIS, but to do so “without empowering Iran,” which is what they’re really concerned about. Just as Iraqi Freedom was really about Israel for both Kristol and Kagan, so too is Return to Iraq about Israel; they’re not at all concerned about Iraqis. They’re concerned about “stability,” which they define in zero-sum terms: good or bad for Israel.

As an Iraq veteran, I find it almost laughable that these two in particular are yet again advocating a military adventure in which they’ll share none of the costs. That’s not unusual for the Wise Men of Washington with their seemingly endless thirst for war. What’s especially noxious about Kristol and Kagan is their declaration that “now is not the time to re-litigate either the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 or the decision to withdraw from it in 2011.”

Right. Because the decision to invade Iraq was taken by America’s Yokel-in-Chief, a man who ought to have been convicted of steering the ship of state while under the influence of neoconservatism. Let’s not forget that it was Kristol and Fred Kagan’s brother, Robert, who first ginned up the “Saddam Must Go” campaign in a January 30, 1998, New York Times op-ed. Neither of the Kagans, nor Kristol, ever served in the military, and the closest Fred Kagan ever came to the military was a Wingnut Welfare sinecure teaching military history at West Point, though his academic training was in Soviet military strategy — something singularly pointless when analyzing the Middle East. So let’s not re-litigate that, because it might make us look bad.

Likewise the let’s-n0t-re-litigate-the-withdrawal, which Kristol and Kagan cleverly date to 2011 — so as to blame it Obama by inference (and look magnanimous and statesman-like in their forbearance of “litigation”) — despite the fact that Fred Kagan was one of the architects of the so-called “surge,” which was intended (theoretically) to tamp down the sectarian violence that had engulfed Iraq and would permit the signing of a Status-of-Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the two countries to facilitate American withdrawal — something George W. Bush was all-too-keen to do, so that his presumptive Republican predecessor would inherit a “victory” in Iraq.

Kagan is especially keen that we not re-litigate the decision to withdraw because in 2008, after Bush signed the SOFA with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, he dutifully trooped over to Hugh Hewitt’s all-neocon/all-the-time radio show to declare the SOFA “a great accomplishment.”  Of course, once President Obama was in the Oval Office, Kagan decreed from his perch at the American Enterprise Institute that fulfilling the obligations of the SOFA — namely, withdrawing U.S. troops — suddenly went from being “a great accomplishment” to “a retreat.”

In a famous scene from the 1984 mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, the eponymous band finds itself lost and blundering about backstage, trying to follow a janitor’s directions to the stage door but endlessly finding themselves at a  dead end. To keep the band’s spirits up, bass player Derek Smalls (played by Harry Shearer), keeps shouting “rock and roll!” every time they embark on yet another fruitless quest to find the stage.

That’s Kristol and Kagan today, wandering through the conference facilities and green rooms of the Beltway, pumping themselves up with more war rock-and-roll, and, as always, finding themselves at a dead end.

By: Russ Burgos

Interested in foreign affairs, global conflict, and political narratives and discourses