How Dick Cheney got his groove back

[BootyBay]

** This is a summary of half of part 1 of "The Power of Nightmares"  I deliberately left out the part on radical Islam because I didn't want to explain it **
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk1WkmioQvA


9/11 was an unthinkable tragedy for some, but a perfect opportunity for others.  Those others would be neoconservatives.  Their views are simple, and are prevalent in political life everywhere in the West.

The neoconservative ideology was borne out of the mind of an obscure political scientist of the late 40's/early 50's by the name of Leo Strauss.  He was of the opinion that liberalism, by lacking any firm, unquestionable truths, while promoting selfish behavior, had corrupted America, and that only the elite, by conveying an image of enlightened purity, could sway the individual into acting in the interests of the collective.  There were two courses of action to accomplish this:

1) Create a fictitious enemy, which was to be considered evil, and push the image of America as special and good.

2) Use religion to control (i.e. Christian Right)

Now, for a little history of the rise to power of neoconservatism..

In 1972, President Nixon (not a neocon himself) managed to orchestrate a treaty regarding nuclear weapons with the Soviet Union.  He then declared an "end to the age of fear," and he would have been right, too, had he not then been impeached.  Gerald Ford then took office with Donald Rumsfeld as his secretary of defense and Dick Cheney as his Chief of Staff.  Rumsfeld and Cheney were both adherents to the Straussian point of view, and their actions while in office reflected this.
Rumsfeld accused the Russians of secretly betraying the United States' trust regarding the treaty signed under Nixon.  He ominously claimed that the lack of evidence for a specific type of Russian submarine clearly indicated the existence of new submarine technology (this type of reasoning occurs today in the Faith-Based Science community).  Also, the CIA under Ford falsified intelligence to make the Soviets look, for lack of a better word, evil.  Propaganda ran endlessly portraying the US as under threat from enemies that existed only in its leaders' imaginations.
President Reagan was no stranger to neocons, either.  Under him, we saw the emergence of a group of powerful Christian preachers who were directly influenced by neoconservatives.  Thus, the rise of celebrities we know and love like Tammy Fae Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert.  It was truly a time to be alive (unless you're gay or a minority).
When Freedom Fighters fought the Soviets in Afganistan, Americans soon fought along side them.  Thus, neocons had their enemy and their religion.  The image of America as valiant defenders of freedom in a dark, twisted world, as well as the influence of a moral elite insisting that there is only one true path, would compel the masses to work as a whole, under the guidance of a select few.

***

Now ... fast forward 20 years.  The exact same thing is happening all over again!   It's even some of the same people, for Christ's sake!  I certainly hope the Chinese don't delve too deeply into American politics, lest our image of "absolute righteousness" be damaged.

Questions remain to be answered, such as:  Why are the perpetrators of this spurious war not in prison right now (and will likely never be)? Why is Iran our next target when the idea is so unpopular at home and abroad?  And why is a contender for President also in favor of remaining in Iraq indefinitely when the obvious moral course of action is to withdraw?

[P3nT4gR4m]

Questions remain to be answered, such as: 

1 Why are the perpetrators of this spurious war not in prison right now (and will likely never be)?

2 Why is Iran our next target when the idea is so unpopular at home and abroad? 

3 And why is a contender for President also in favor of remaining in Iraq indefinitely when the obvious moral course of action is to withdraw?

1) Because they own the prisons and the legal system

2&3) Oil

[e]

...neoconservatives.  Their views are simple, and are prevalent in political life everywhere in the West.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

And why is a contender for President also in favor of remaining in Iraq indefinitely when the obvious moral course of action is to withdraw?

I liked most of your rant, but I thought this piece was a bit less troof and more opinion... I don't think that the 'moral' course is withdraw. I think that's an option, but I also think that if we do withdraw, the violence will become much worse, the crap government that we're upholding will be pulled down, many Iraqis that trusted Americans will be outed and killed and in the end, we'll have some bunch of jackbooted thugs running the country... again. There is no simple and 'moral' answer to this mess. We invaded a terrible, but somewhat stable nation and turned it into a hole of chaotic madness. It seems to me that not staying is akin to visiting someone, trashing their house, then leaving with the broom, mop and scrub brush. I mean, maybe thats best in the end, but ethical or moral aren't exactly the words I'd use, maybe "desperate", "last ditch" or "run the fuck away from the mess we can't fix" would be better. 

[e]

"run the fuck away from the mess we can't fix"

[Requia ☣]

Firstly: 

Secondly:  Does anybody know where I can get citable sources for all this stuff?  Or for the history behind any of the current ideologies in the western meme space for that matter.

[BootyBay]

And why is a contender for President also in favor of remaining in Iraq indefinitely when the obvious moral course of action is to withdraw?

I liked most of your rant, but I thought this piece was a bit less troof and more opinion... I don't think that the 'moral' course is withdraw. I think that's an option, but I also think that if we do withdraw, the violence will become much worse, the crap government that we're upholding will be pulled down, many Iraqis that trusted Americans will be outed and killed and in the end, we'll have some bunch of jackbooted thugs running the country... again. There is no simple and 'moral' answer to this mess. We invaded a terrible, but somewhat stable nation and turned it into a hole of chaotic madness. It seems to me that not staying is akin to visiting someone, trashing their house, then leaving with the broom, mop and scrub brush. I mean, maybe thats best in the end, but ethical or moral aren't exactly the words I'd use, maybe "desperate", "last ditch" or "run the fuck away from the mess we can't fix" would be better. 

Yeah.  That is true.  I included the questions at the end because I read somewhere that n00bs are supposed to include their own thoughts.  I whipped up a bunch of crappy ones real quick, and that's the result.  I actually was thinking the exact same thing when I posted it (about how it's not so simple to just withdraw).

[BootyBay]

Why do countries go to war for resources when they could just trade for them?  You know, give them something they want in exchange for oil/water/medince.  It's free market based, it's much less expensive and, most importantly, no one gets killed.

That said, why do we say "That's the things have always been and that's the way things will always be" when a King or President or (insert title of bossman here) kills 10 or 20 thousand people for no good reason, but when a man bursts into a room shooting, taking out four or five, we expect him to hang or at least spend the rest of his days behind bars?

[Requia ☣]

Because those other countries are greedy bastards who don't want to sell 2/3rds of a critical resource to one country.

They need to be tought to share.