The Lost Kristol Tapes
What the New York Times Bought
Imagine that there were a Beatles record only a few people knew existed. And imagine you got the chance to listen to it, and as you did, your excitement grew, note by note. You realized it wasn’t merely as good as Rubber Soul, or Revolver, or Sgt. Pepper’s. It was much, much better. And now, imagine how badly you’d want to tell other Beatles fans all about it.
That’s how I feel for my fellow William Kristol fans. You loved it when Bill said invading Iraq was going to have “terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East”? You have the original recording of him explaining the war would make us “respected around the world” and his classic statement that there’s “almost no evidence” of Iraq experiencing Sunni-Shia conflict? Well, I’ve got something that will blow your mind!
I’m talking about Kristol’s two-hour appearance on C-Span’s Washington Journal on March 28, 2003, just nine days after the President launched his invasion of Iraq. No one remembers it today. You can’t even fish it out of LexisNexis. It’s not there. Yet it’s a masterpiece, a double album of smarm, horrifying ignorance, and bald-faced deceit. While you’ve heard him play those instruments before, he never again reached such heights. It’s a performance for the history books — particularly that chapter about how the American Empire collapsed.
At the time Kristol was merely the son of prominent neoconservative Irving Kristol, former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle (aka “Quayle’s brain”), the editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard, and a frequent Fox News commentator. He hadn’t yet added New York Times columnist to his resumé. Opposite Kristol on the segment was Daniel Ellsberg, famed for leaking the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam era. Their discussion jumped back and forth across 40 years of U.S.-Iraqi relations, and is easiest to understand if rearranged chronologically.
So, sit back, relax, and let me play a little of it for you.
To start with, Ellsberg made the reasonable point that Iraqis might not view the invading Americans as “liberators,” since the U.S. had been instrumental in Saddam Hussein’s rise to power: Here’s how he put it:
“ELLSBERG: People in Iraq… perceive Hussein as a dictator… But as a dictator the Americans chose for them.
“KRISTOL: That’s just not true. We’ve had mistakes in our Iraq policy. It’s just ludicrous — we didn’t choose Hussein. We didn’t put him in power.
“ELLSBERG: In 1963, when there was a brief uprising of the Ba’ath, we supplied specifically Saddam with lists, as we did in Indonesia, lists of people to be eliminated. And since he’s a murderous thug, but at that time our murderous thug, he eliminated them…
“KRISTOL: [surprised] Is that right?…
“ELLSBERG: The same thing went on in ‘68. He was our thug, just as [Panamanian dictator Manuel] Noriega, and lots of other people who were on the leash until they got off the leash and then we eliminated them. Like [Vietnamese president] Ngo Dinh Diem.”
Ellsberg here is referring to U.S. support for a 1963 coup involving the Ba’athist party, for which Saddam was already a prominent enforcer — and then another coup in 1968 when the Ba’athists consolidated control, after which Saddam became the power behind the nominal president. According to one of the 1963 plotters, “We came to power on a CIA train.” (Beyond providing lists of communists and leftists to be murdered, the U.S. also gave the new regime napalm to help them put down a Kurdish uprising we’d previously encouraged.) James Crichtfield, then head of the CIA in the Middle East, said, “We really had the t’s crossed on what was happening” This turned out not to be quite right, since factional infighting among top Iraqis required the second plot five years later for which, explained key participant Abd al-Razzaq al-Nayyif, “you must [also] look to Washington.”
Yet it appears clear on video that Kristol is genuinely startled by what Ellsberg was saying.
Consider the significance of this. Any ordinary citizen could easily have learned about the American role in those two coups — former National Security Council staffer Roger Morris had written about it on the New York Times op-ed page just two weeks before the Kristol-Ellsberg broadcast. And Kristol was far more than an ordinary citizen. He’d been near the apex of government as Quayle’s chief of staff during the first Gulf War in 1991. He’d been advocating the overthrow of the Saddam regime for years. He’d co-written an entire book, The War Over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission, calling for an invasion of that country.
Nevertheless, Kristol was ignorant of basic, critical information about U.S.-Iraq history. Iraqis themselves were not. In a September 2003 article, a returning refugee explained the growing resistance to the occupation: “One of the popular sayings I repeatedly heard in Baghdad, describing the relations between the U.S. and Saddam’s regime, is ‘Rah el sani’, ija el ussta‘ — ‘Gone is the apprentice, in comes the master.’”
What this suggests about the people running America is far worse than if they were simply malevolent super-geniuses: They don’t know the backstory and couldn’t care less. It’s as though we’re riding in the back seat of a car driven by people who demanded the wheel but aren’t sure what the gas pedal does or what a stop sign actually looks like.
Moreover, when Ellsberg tells Kristol this information, he demonstrates no desire to learn more; nor, as best as can be discovered, has he ever mentioned it again. Really? Those colored lights mean something about whether I’m supposed to stop or go? Huh. Anyway, let’s talk more about how all of you complaining in the back seat hate freedom.
Later, when the discussion gets closer to the present. Kristol’s demeanor changes. He appears to be better informed and therefore shifts to straightforward lies:
“ELLSBERG: Why did we support Saddam as recently as when you were in the administration? And the answer is–
“KRISTOL: We didn’t support Saddam when I was in the administration.“ELLSBERG: When were you in the administration?
“KRISTOL: 89 to 93.”
This is preposterously false. First of all, Kristol worked in the Reagan administration as Education Secretary William Bennett’s chief of staff — when the U.S. famously supported Saddam’s war against Iran with loans, munitions, intelligence, and diplomatic protection for his use of chemical weapons. After George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988, Kristol moved to the same position in Vice President Quayle’s office. During the transition, Bush’s advisors examined the country’s Iraq policy and wrote a memo explaining to the incoming President the choice he faced. In a nutshell, this was “to decide whether to treat Iraq as a distasteful dictatorship to be shunned when possible, or to recognize Iraq’s present and potential power in the region and accord it relatively high priority. We strongly urge the latter view.”
And Bush chose. Internal State Department guidelines from the period stated, “In no way should we associate ourselves with the 60 year-old Kurdish rebellion in Iraq or oppose Iraq’s legitimate attempts to suppress it.” (Saddam’s gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja has occurred less than a year before.) Analysts warning of Iraq’s burgeoning nuclear program were squelched. The Commerce Department loosened restrictions on dual-use WMD material, while Bush the elder approved new government lines of credit for Saddam over congressional objections.
And Saddam was receiving private money as well: most notably from the Atlanta branch of Italian bank BNL. BNL staff would later report that companies wanting to sell to Iraq were referred to them by Kristol’s then-boss, Vice President Quayle. One Quayle family friend would end up constructing a refinery for Saddam to recycle Iraq’s spent artillery shells. The Bush Justice Department prevented investigators from examining transactions like this, while Commerce Department employees were ordered to falsify export licenses.
As Kristol and Ellsberg discuss the buildup to the 1991 Gulf War, Kristol, of course, continues to fiddle with reality:
“KRISTOL: So you were against the liberation of Kuwait.
“ELLSBERG: No, on the contrary. At that time, a number of four star military people, former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were foursquare for containing Saddam, preventing him by military means from getting into Saudi Arabia… When it came to expelling him from Kuwait, they wanted to give the blockade and the embargo [more time], on the belief of people like Admiral Crowe that that would be preferable to the deaths that would be involved in trying to expel him militarily. We didn’t test that theory.
“KRISTOL: The argument was not that the sanctions could get him out of Kuwait. The argument was that we could keep him out of Saudi Arabia. Who seriously thought he could be expelled from Kuwait by sanctions?
“ELLSBERG: Practically everyone who testified before Senator Nunn, who is no left-wing radical. And Senator Nunn himself. You’ve forgotten the history of that.
“KRISTOL: I remember the history vividly.”
Ellsberg is correct, of course: On November 28, 1990, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral William Crowe testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee and its chairman Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.). Crowe stated: “[W]e should give sanctions a fair chance… I personally believe they will bring [Saddam] to his knees” — by which Crowe meant Iraq would be “pushed out of Kuwait.” The same message was delivered by General David Jones, another former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman. The next day, the lede in a page one New York Times story was that Crowe and Jones had “urged the Bush Administration today to postpone military action against Iraq and to give economic sanctions a year or more to work.”
It’s not like Kristol could have missed all this, since the Bush administration immediately disputed such commentary — and one of its point men for the push back was none other than Dan Quayle. An early December 1990 article about a Quayle speech reported: “[Quayle] specifically cited the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee” where “voices have argued that the Bush Administration should allow time for economic sanctions against Iraq to work, getting President Saddam Hussein to leave Kuwait voluntarily rather than using force to dislodge him.” (Unfortunately, there’s no available reporting on whether Quayle’s chief of staff wrote this speech for him.)
Then there’s Kristol’s curious explanation of his views on how the Gulf War ended — that moment when George H.W. Bush called upon the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam and then, despite having smashed Saddam’s army and controlling Iraq’s air space, let the dictator’s helicopter gunships take to the air and crush a Shiite uprising. There were even reports the administration forbade the Saudis from aiding the uprising and that U.S. troops blew up caches of Iraqi weapons rather than allow the rebels to use them.
Kristol, however, uses his courtier’s skills to remake reality more pleasingly:
“KRISTOL: I was unhappy in 1991 when we stopped the war and left this brutal tyrant in power. I think we betrayed the people who rose up against Saddam, a genuine popular uprising. That was a big mistake on the part of the Bush administration. A political mistake and a moral mistake.”
So that’s clear: Kristol feels the decision was immoral. Or… was it?
“KRISTOL: I don’t think these were simply immoral decisions by the president. These were judgment calls. There were reasons. There were arguments. There weren’t simply –
“ELLSBERG: But they were immoral –
“KRISTOL: Well, no, that’s not so easy to call a political decision an immoral decision.”
That’s fancy footwork for you! On the one hand, Kristol wants us to know that the decision was indeed “a moral mistake.” The implication is that he should be respected in the post-invasion moment of 2003 as the sort of sensitive tough guy who would indeed invade Iraq to make up for past decisions that lacked morality. On the other hand, we’re talking about a former Republican president and the present President’s father. A straightforward declaration of “immorality,” if pursued far enough, could easily hurt future employment prospects. Kristol has absolutely perfect pitch, managing to strike a blow for moral beauty in politics while maintaining career viability.
Ellsberg then asks questions aimed at just this issue:
“ELLSBERG: Did you consider doing more than disagree? Perhaps putting out the word of your dissent? Perhaps resigning with documents and revealing those to the press and the Congress?
“KRISTOL [scoffing]: I had no documents to put out. There were no secrets about the President’s policy… We didn’t want to occupy Baghdad. The rebellion would have failed anyway. We would have gotten in deeper.”
Hmmm. No secrets about Bush the elder’s policy. Yet there was something that most certainly was secret about the rebellions at the end of the Gulf War: Saddam was using chemical weapons to put down the Shiite uprising in the south. Rumored since 1991, this has been confirmed by the most impeccable source imaginable — the CIA’s final 2004 report on Iraq’s WMD. According to the report, the Iraqi military used Sarin nerve agent, dropped from the helicopters the U.S. had given them permission to fly.
The CIA goes on to to suggest the U.S. government knew about this at the time, describing “reports of attacks in 1991 from refugees and Iraqi military deserters.” And Gulf War veterans have said they passed such reports up the chain of command. Did Kristol know it then? Probably not. But even today there’s no sign he knows: he and the Weekly Standard appear never to have mentioned it. As with the coups in 1963 and 1968, Kristol’s ignorance is of a peculiarly convenient variety.
In any case, here’s what Kristol did know: the Bush administration made the choices it did at war’s end not because, as Kristol says, they felt “the rebellion would have failed.” Their fear was exactly the opposite: that the rebellion would succeed. Yes, the Bush administration preferred Saddam gone, but it wanted him replaced by some other, more amenable group or leader from the Sunni military elite. It most certainly did not want a popular uprising that might leave a largely Shiite government in power in Baghdad, potentially close to Iran. Even worse was the possibility Iraq could fracture, with power shifting to the oil-rich Shiite south. As an administration official told Peter Galbraith, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, “[O]ur policy is to get rid of Saddam Hussein, not the regime.” Later, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained that Washington was looking for “the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein.”
Kristol’s predictions that March day in 2003 are every bit as on target as his descriptions of the past. When Ellsberg raises the possibility of the new Iraq war coming to resemble Vietnam in some fashion, Kristol insists that this is utterly preposterous: “It’s not going to happen. This is going to be a two-month war.”
Here’s the exchange when they turn to what will happen to Iraq’s Kurds:
“ELLSBERG: The Kurds have every reason to believe they will be betrayed again by the United States, as so often in the past. The spectacle of our inviting Turks into this war… could not have been reassuring to the Kurds…
“KRISTOL: I’m against betraying the Kurds. Surely your point isn’t that because we betrayed them in the past we should betray them this time?
“ELLSBERG: Not that we should, just that we will.
“KRISTOL: We will not. We will not.”
This past December, we did. The Bush administration officially looked the other way while Turkey carried out a 50-plane bombing raid on Iraqi Kurdistan against the PKK, a Kurdish rebel group. Ken Silverstein of Harper’s reprinted an email from a former U.S. official there that said, in part:
“The blowback here in Kurdistan is building against the U.S. government because of its help with the Turkish air strikes. The theme is shock and betrayal… The people killed and wounded were villagers, not PKK fighters or support people… The initial explanation from Washington that the United States did not authorize the Turkish strike is bullshit, and every Kurd here knows it.”
No mention of the bombing has appeared in the Weekly Standard. It’s fair to assume, however, that Kristol will eventually call America’s actions there “a moral mistake,” while emphasizing that “these were judgment calls. There were reasons. There were arguments.”
Back in 2003, Kristol was also quite certain, almost touchingly so, that the Bush administration would be well served by relying on Iraqi exiles:
“KRISTOL: We have tens of thousands of Shia exiles [who] have come back to help contribute to the liberation of Iraq.
“ELLSBERG: I’m afraid the people who propose this war have failed one lesson of intelligence history, which is not to rely too much on the knowledge of people who have left the country… The people who’ve come to this country may very well underestimate the desire of those people not to be governed by foreigners.”
This lesson of history goes back a long way. Book II, Chapter XXXI of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy is titled “How Dangerous It Is to Believe Exiles”:
“It ought to be considered, therefore, how vain are the faith and promises of those who find themselves deprived of their country… such is the extreme desire in them to return home, that they naturally believe many things that are false and add many others by art, so that between those they believe and those they say they believe, they fill you with hope, so that relying on them you will incur expenses in vain, or you undertake an enterprise in which you ruin yourself… A Prince, therefore, ought to go slowly in undertaking an enterprise upon the representations of an exile, for most of the times he will be left either with shame or very grave injury.”
The Weekly Standard’s archives show Kristol has published quite a few articles on how political correctness in elite U.S. universities is strangling the teaching of the Western canon. And you can understand where he’s coming from: While Kristol himself received a PhD in government from Harvard, it obviously was during a period when radical multiculturalists had completely expunged Machiavelli from the curriculum. When will the PC brigade ever learn? Teaching Toni Morrison starts wars.
Finally, there’s the most telling moment of the entire two hours, when a caller asks Kristol something he does not at all expect:
“CALLER: I wonder how we reconcile these views with how we treat the American Indians?
“KRISTOL: [raising eyebrows, chuckling] Well, I think the American Indians are now full citizens of the United States of America. We have injustices in our past in treating the American Indians. I’m for equal rights for American Indians and for liberating the people of Iraq from this horrible tyranny.”
Kristol obviously finds the caller’s perspective ridiculous. But the man had, in fact, asked the most profound question possible.
After all, there is a deep cultural connection running from our conquest of the continent to the invasion of Iraq. While Americans have mostly forgotten this, the early settlers did not perceive themselves as simply pushing Indians out of the way. Rather, they came here with the very best of intentions. The 1629 seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is a picture of an American Indian, who is saying, “Come over and help us.” Three hundred seventy-three years later in 2002, Ahmed Chalabi was being paid by the U.S. government to tell Americans to come over and “help the Iraqi people.” In his book The Winning of the West, Teddy Roosevelt wrote that no nation “has ever treated the original savage owners of the soil with such generosity as has the United States.” In 2004, Fred Barnes wrote (in the Weekly Standard) that the invasion of Iraq might be “the greatest act of benevolence one country has ever done for another.”
Kristol finishes the C-Span show with a crescendo:
“The moral credentials of this war are strong. We’ll see if we follow through. I agree with Mr. Ellsberg on this, if we’re not serious about helping the Iraqi people rebuild their country and about helping promote decent democratic government in Iraq… it will be a much less morally satisfying and fully defensible war… I’m happy to be held to a moral standard. I ask that it be a serious moral standard.”
So, there you have it: a complex, rich experience to be savored by anyone who enjoys watching a master at the very peak of his craft.
Yet trying to encapsulate Kristol’s now almost five year-old chilling performance by turning it into a bitter joke only takes us so far. After all, the joke is on us.
Kristol indeed has been held to a moral standard, but it’s the moral standard of Rupert Murdoch and, more recently, the New York Times. What we learn from this dusty vinyl LP is that some of the most powerful men and institutions in our country are genuinely depraved. They provide Kristol with his prominence not in spite of performances like this one, but precisely because of them. Kristol is giving them just what they want. The fact that he’s a propagandist straight out of Pravda’s archives makes the same impression on them as the fact that John Lennon was a great songwriter might make on you or me.
Of course he is. That’s why we bought the album.
* * *
Jonathan Schwarz is a frequent contributor to Mother Jones and co-author with Michael Gerber of Our Kampf, a collection of their humor from the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and Saturday Night Live. His website is named after a saying of George Orwell’s: “Every joke is a tiny revolution.”
Copyright 2008 Jonathan Schwarz
This is a brilliant article by Jonathan Schwarz.
What troubles me is that William Kristol has never been right. He has consistently advocated a pipe dream supported by magical thinking and outright lies which has given us nothing but death and chaos.
Why does this loser still have a name?
And, why did the NYT hire him?
They like pissing people off?
The NY Times Editorial page does what a good newspaper should do. Publish writers from across the spectrum of opinion.
Besides, publishing Kristol helps more people know what an idiot he is.
The Native American Indian analogy appealed to me too at the start of the war. As with the justifications for waging war against and taking land from the Native American Indians, the case for the war seemed to boil down to:
“The Iraqis have an evil chief and they do not follow best societal practices, so we have a moral obligation to remove their chief and force on them best societal practices. Of course we know what the best societal practices are because we are the best people. That should be obvious from the facts that we possess the most powerful and most numerous weapons and we have the greatest ability and the greatest propensity to destroy civilization and the human race, either economically or militarily.”
One of these days, I would love to hear these words from Juan Williams to Bill Kristol on Fox New Sunday -
“Bill, you really need to see a doctor. You’re a pathological liar and you have a problem with reality. I’m no expert, but that sounds like somebody that is psychotic.”
Ellsberg should have just called him a f*cking idiot.
That’s how you treat people like this.
You dont treat them as intellectual equals.
You hand them a Ronald Reagan colouring book, a box of crayons and sit them in a corner somewhere out of the way.
Kristol Wolfowitz and Bush in a corner somewhere, with crayons, what trouble could they create?
Probably a lot but its best not to think about it.
Agreed, Kristol has never been right about anything. What a surprise … his mentors, apart from his very paranoid father, have been William Bennett, Rupert Murdoch, and that intellectual giant, Dan Quayle. If you’re wondering (as you should) how he’s managed to hang on to his pundit’s lapel pin, it’s because he has what the media needs for its sound-bite news model - the ideological certainty of the corporatist “expert” and a glibness that truly is pathological.
He also has plenty of company. None of his neo-conservative colleagues (Perle, Pipes, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Feith, Bolton …) have ever made a correct call either, except when it comes to their own economic prosperity and bureaucratic survival. These guys have been fucking up the works for nearly 30 years!! But the American people are so obsessed with infotainment, and (as Schwarz says of Kristol) ignorant of history, that the corporate media continue to foist them upon us with impunity. More crimes against humanity.
Yep. We bought the album. The joke’s on us. Feels pretty humiliating, doesn’t it? Pretty depressing. There’s a rapidly growing anger in these United States. Very unsubtle. It’ll be truly revolutionary if we can channel it for the good. The consequences look grim if we don’t.
Excellent article, but I disagree that the joke is on us. We are not suffering at all from this occupation.
The Iraqi people, now going into their 6th year of occupation, preceded by sanctions and before then, by another war, are suffering unspeakable horrors and misery and death.
All Americans should be deeply ashamed of their country’s brutal and immoral treatment of the people of Iraq. We OWE them billions of dollars to repair their country and we need to get out now, bowing and apologizing and forking over the cash so that they can rebuild THEMSELVES!
These wacked out gunmen, going into schools, shedding innocent blood.
Why don’t they go to the headquarters of FOX, or any of the other neo-con opium dens, and fire until they are out of ammo?
Think the 2nd amendment nuts will wake up then?
It flabbergasts me to feel as if I am the only one commenting on this article that calls Kristol the liar that he is. “…he’s never been right about anything…”? Really? He’s not trying to be right. He is LYING. This is common political rhetoric, AKA doublespeak. It blows my mind to think that some of those folks commenting even read the article, considering their comments question Kristol’s intelligence. Those qualities we consider foolish or morally inconsistent are neither. They are totally consistent with the behavior of the sociopathic elite of which he is a proud part (see http://www.newamericancentury.org/). He’s not an idiot, he’s a criminal mastermind. Everything that has happened has been by design, as is clearly illustrated at the aforementioned link.
“ordo abchao” is not just fun to say, it’s a tried-and-true political theory.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!
If the PNAC were masterminds instead of masturbators the American people would still be just peachy about what they’re doing. They over estimated, over reached and just totally over did themselves beacuse they’re egotistical, adolescent, narrowminded pinheads.
If they were really smart we’d be really screwed.
Don’t underestimate their Machiavellian schemes. They know better than you or I. They don’t show their cards, they’re better players than that. How would it have benefited Mr Kristol to say “Oh sure, I did that thing!”. “Shrubs” visits with the Taliban doesn’t get talked about, nor the Ben Laden family business connections either. Stop buying their products! Boycott bullsheit! We empower them by repeating their names. Say his name three times and he’ll appear in your living room, like a more malevolent Beetlejuice.
Dear Clemsy - what makes you think we aren’t?
Every goal of the PNAC has come to pass except for the takeovers of Syria and Iran.
The jury is still out whether they’ve over reached or no.
Until the fascist state they created is removed, we still must fight the demagogery(sp?) of people like Kristol and his ilk.
Oh I didn’t say we weren’t screwed. We most certainly are! I said we’d be REALLY screwed if their hubris didn’t catch up with them.
I don’t buy the thinking that says “Everything is still going according to plan.” I really don’t. Their plan is economic and military dominance of the world. They can’t do that if they destroy the U.S. military (getting there) and the U.S. and the world’s economy (getting there too!).
These people are psychotic, just like Hitler in the Bunker moving divisions that don’t exist around a map. They’ll never admit to being wrong. They’ll never back down. They’ll continue until the only way out is a gunshot tothe head.
“Until the fascist state they created is removed, we still must fight the demagogery(sp?) of people like Kristol and his ilk.”
I’m with you there!
I’ll tell you one thing that makes me optimistic. Have you heard any of the music the kids are listening to today? 30 Seconds to Mars, Anti-Flag and lots of others. Totally down with what’s going on. I have 8th grade students sharing this stuff with me. My 15 year old at home knows more than most adults.
Very cool. Might be a revolution growing up right now.
Kristol is neither an idiot nor a congenital liar. He is a commissar, an unofficial official apologist for the ruling elite and a formulator of its official positions. He has the disciplined and authoritarian mind required for excellent performance of this job: a selective memory, over-identification with his favored governments, satisfaction with a discussion removed from ordinary people and facts, and disinterest in how government policies actually affect people on the ground.
Josh,
Congenital liar? Try again…
Kristol is a liar for hire. Lying is his chief, if not only, skill. When someone hires someone whose chief skill is lying, their intention is pretty clear. When the New York Times prints articles by him, they should remind readers of Kristol’s track record. Anything less is dishonest.
Kristol was Quales “brain”…nuff said.
The question I want to see Kristol asked is ” Do you have anyspecial requests for your last meal?”
And then don’t give it to him.
I am glad to see how many CommonDream readers are familiar with The Project for The New American Century
(PNAC), Kristol being one of the authors. It is the raw architecture for world dominance of ruthless global capitalism by way of American military and economic power.
Unfortunately, I have met very very few people who have ever heard of the PNAC. In turn. these people too often question its’ existence, as if I was a conspiracy nut. Americans simply choose not to know as it may blow their delusional minds so soaked in American exceptionalism.
What also bothers me a bit is that so many CommonDream readers condemn the evils of capitalism but provide no alternate thinking. It is as if there were no alternative to either capitalism or communism.
A source for this alternate thinking can be found at the website of the International Forum on Globalization, their publication ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE, and at their occational scholastic teach-ins. Also great thinkers and authors such as David C. Korten (The Post Corporate World, Life Without Capitalism)…(and The Great Turning) and Joanna Macy.
In past postings I have mentioned THE EARTH CHARTER. Never have I seen CD comments on THE EARTH CHARTER , or have I ever read an article on CD about THE EARTH CHARTER.
Just as we have the PNAC for the radical right, we have an alternative document, THE EARTH CHARTER for the more liberal, progressive, compassionate, conscious, educated, spiritual, environmental, and countercultural thinkers. These people are now called the “Cultural Creatives” of our times, contributing to an emerging higher global consciousness.
Of importance, THE EARTH CHARTER was not put together by a small group of nut cakes like the PNAC but by hundreds of the greatest thinkers on Earth, religious and secular. It about how to create a more just, compassionate and sustainable world.
Let’s hear more about alternatives to global capitalism.
The PNAC came on my radar just prior to 9/11. I read Rebuilding America’s Defenses and watched with horror as pieces of the plan click, click, clicked into place.
“In lieu of some event like Pearl Harbor, it will take years to realize these goals…”
That’s a particularly chilling quote, paraphrased but close enough to the original. My wife met Howard Dean during the 2004 campaign and asked him about the PNAC.
He’d never heard of them.
I’d like that question asked of both Democratic candidates. Even now I’ve no confidence they’re well enough informed. None.
Clemsy,
How naïve are you!? You are absolutely kidding yourself. You think that two people, puppets, the both of them, being dangled in front of the world as the supposed prospective presidential front-runners of the United States, are “uninformed”. Even more absurd is that you believe yourself and others of us who’ve unwrapped the Jokey-smurf giftbox and read the PNAC documents to be more informed than the men behind the curtain. Get serious! Both Clinton and Obama have DIRECT ties to several elite globalist cadres.
Clemsy, thanks, I so often wished to ask some high profile politician what they thought about PNAC. I have heard Dennis Kucinich speak of it.
It does not surprise me that John McCain knew nothing of it. But I can understand, they have no intellectuals working for them behind the scenes, with the understanding they have no time to read and think great thoughts after campaining all the time.
Where are we in this country, when the people do not read, and then most of the politicains do not read.
Clemsy February 15th, 2008 2:54 pm {quote}: “I don’t buy the thinking that says ‘Everything is still going according to plan.’ I really don’t.”
I’m with you. I still believe in the Law of Unintended Consequences. Unfortunately, as Naomi Klein pointed out, the world elite are much more capable - because of their financial resources and their almost total control of communications and courts - of taking advantage of these unintended consequences, turning them to their advantage, and making us think that it was part of the plan all along.
{quote}: “Their plan is economic and military dominance of the world. They can’t do that if they destroy the U.S. military (getting there) and the U.S. and the world’s economy (getting there too!).”
I used to agree with you on this one, too. The Unintended Consequence of thier military adventures might be the destruction of the US military. Turning it to their advantage - Blackwater and its ilk.
Destroying the world’s economy - I don’t think they will let this happen. They’ve got so much money between them (and they control the ability to make more because they control all of the world’s central banks).
The only thing that they can’t control is The Goddess - The Goddess of All Life called Mother Earth. The more we take care of Her (by doing whatever we can individually and collectively) the more She will take care of the elite (and unfortunately, many innocents, too).
She is the only Unintended Consequence of which a mere human can never ultimately take advantage.
Speaking of ignorance of history - Jeffrey Goldberg, After Iraq What Will the Middle East Look Like? (Atlantic Monthly jan/feb) writes that “Just before the “Mission Accomplished” phase of the war, I spoke about Kurdistan to an audience that included Norman Podhoretz, the vicariously martial neoconservative who is now a Middle East advisor to (erstwhile presidential candidate) Rudolp Giuliani. After the event Podhoretz seem authentically bewildered. “What’s a Kurd anyway?” he asked me.”
(P.S. demagoguery - there you go)
This episode reminds one of a tale told quite often in Hollywood: a now famous actress spends lavishly and expends much energy to “recover” every print and negative of every porn movie she performed in before becoming famous. I wonder what the price was for Kristol and Co. to expunge this record.
A few days ago, Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, essentially told reporters that he fears the next 9/11, which could be a suitcase nuke. Yesterday, in threatening to veto a waterboarding ban, Bush said, and I quote, “terrorists are planning new attacks on our country… that will make Sept. 11 pale by comparison.”
Executive Order 12919 (pushed through by the Bushies) would place the United States under total Martial Law and Military Dictatorship in the event of another attack. This Executive Order allows the President to declare a National Emergency at any time, and freeze everything…including a national election. Congress is powerless to prevent such an Executive Dictatorship, as long as the President advises Congress in a timely matter.
“Destroying the world’s economy - I don’t think they will let this happen. They’ve got so much money between them (and they control the ability to make more because they control all of the world’s central banks).”
Hey iowairish! The only way they can ‘not let this happen’ is for them to give all their money away! The global economy still depends on a strong middle class being able to consume without accruing a large credit debt. These idiots are squeezing the middle class right into a radical swing to the left! Money is the opiate of the masses, and the current concentration of wealth at the top is going to start millions of people jonesing big time!
dinsmore,
You’re thinking yourself into a dark pit of despair there dude. I don’t buy it. Remember that the wizard was a fraud.
He was just good at making people think he was that powerful. Lighten up! Things definitely suck right now, but not that badly!
“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.” ~Joseph Campbell
All of these neocon quacks should be hiding in shame at how disastrously, horrifically, even immorally wrong they have been and the million lives and trillion dollars they have wasted. They have no credibility with anyone who is not mentally retarded, psychotic or in a deep coma. And yet here they are in the media pontificating as if they actually had something intelligent to say. They are like herpes: just when you think you have gotten rid of them, they turn up again to cause more misery.
It would be far less dangerous and disturbing if Spartacus would convert his racist rage into critical and historically-informed analysis of US warfare and imperialism. Jonathan Schwarz does this effectively, connecting the current war on Iraq to the destruction of the Native American population. Indeed, US soldiers in Iraq often refer to areas outside the Green Zone as “Indian territory.” There is much going on in the US’s latest imperial campaign beyond the machinations of individual creeps like Kristol. By blaming the war on “foreign” “usurpers” — “bloodsucking parasites” no less — Spartacus lets the US government off the hook, obfuscates understanding of the situation, and engages in the most revolting form of anti-Semitism. It’s also notable that, on this liberal site, nobody seems to take notice of or be offended by this swill.
“The PNAC came on my radar just prior to 9/11. I read Rebuilding America’s Defenses and watched with horror as pieces of the plan click, click, clicked into place.
“In lieu of some event like Pearl Harbor, it will take years to realize these goals…””
Amen. The Bu$h Administration could have NEVER puilled off such treats such as Patrioit Act, Military Commissions Act, Warner Defense Act, illegally spying on American citizens, basically any thing Bu$h 43 has done were it not for 9/11. This is the key to everything that has come to pass from this administration. Then we have the Bu$h gang not wanting any investigations into 9/11 and when clear that this will not pass, they initiate investigations where Bu$h/Cheney do not have to testify under oath, hand pick the investigating committee (except the chair…Bu$h wanted Kissenger but that didn’t fly), evidence removed from ground zero, etc. Sorry, I don’t care what anyone else says…this smells like an inside job! …A New Pearle Harbor.
PNAC is alive and unfortunately, I think they beieve they can still accomplish their goa of imperialism.
The prime directive document produced by Bill Kristol and the others at the PNAC is a Zionist document, written by the same people that wrote the document NEW DEFENSE OF THE REALM (and the realm is not the USA, it is Israel). If you look at the list of members of the PNAC, you will find that around 90% are Kristol-style-Zionist Jews, with Dick Cheney thrown in there for good measure.
The goals of these two documents are quite similar: the secret hijacking of the American government and its military, and its subsquent use as a war machine to defeat Israel’s enemies in the Middle East. This goal has been partly achieved. Iraq is now a hopeless divided wreck of (barely) a country under the iron boot of foreign occupation, unable to threaten anyone. America burned it down. Mission Accomplished!
Kristol acts like an Israeli Zionist mole. This ideology motivates his every word and utterance, no matter how absurd or mendacious. There are only the goals, the means to the ends do not matter. Lies, truth? Hey only opinions, right?
As for Cheney, well, he was in it for the fun of it (false flag ops, black bag operators, wet work, fixing elections, secret war, global war for secret reasons, inquisition-style torture, ability to order death and destruction, unquestioned power, chances to grab money and loot for himself, etc), he being just that kind of smarmy sneaky guy… oh and of course in it for the shitload of oil there was to steal. The conquering of Iraq was included in his still-secret 2001 ‘energy’ plan.
The attack on Iran is only waiting for the next false-flag operation on the American people (betcha it’s coming soon!).
Bill Kristol has lost his credibility and believability as anything but a Zionist war-mongering shill, with his pontifications over the last few years. That the NY Times includes him of ALL people in their rarified pages testifies to the Zionist bent of the publishers and editors. It is the only explanation.
Stephen V.Riley asks why we don’t have more postings on what the future ought to look like with a different vision than the one provided by rampant capitalism. He complains that CD doesn’t talk about the Earth Charter, the link to which he failed to post, but no problem, easy enough to find.
http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/2000/10/the_earth_charter.html
So I looked for it and read it for the first time. I like it and would have liked just having it pointed out to me, rather than feeling like I was being chastised for not having known about it already. Anyway, thanks Stephen for letting us know about it, apparently not for the first time.
I do have a question about the last item in #15
15. Treat all living beings with respect and consideration.
…
c. Avoid or eliminate to the full extent possible the taking or destruction of non-targeted species.
So what are targeted species, and am I sure I like that?
Also, there are just too many generalities, good ones, but generalities still. For example: “Demilitarize national security systems to the level of a non-provocative defense posture, and convert military resources to peaceful purposes, including ecological restoration.”
Uh, just how do we do this? Where are the working steps to implement this charter?
Real change in this country can only happen when the power elite have the plug pulled and the present policy makers are relieved of their duties. Not likely to happen but one can always hope.
What an appalling man… Ellsberg runs rings around the smarmy rude little turd. Reminds me of a more pretencious and smugger Dershowitz… Wonder why that could be??
The pasty officebound warmongering flower Kristol would shit his natty pants if he heard a gun go off anywhere near him. Any body who wants to talk war and plan war and send others to war should at least have been in one. All these theorist fucks should be conscripted and sent over to do a tour of duty in the so called Green Zone..
Dumb, soulless Bastards, all of them
Thank you for nailing smarmy-faced Kristol once and for all! The man is a lying menace to the world. SHAME on the NY Times for having anything to do with this #1 HACK….
FVHorn, I have no doubt that there will be those who, having read your commentary, will infer that you are an anti-Semite. Frankly I don’t know whether you are or not, but as a very liberal Jew, I believe that what you have said is largely true. (By the way, I am pro-Israel, a just Israel, that is, and am thus very much against its settlements, occupation, expansionism, and militarism.) I deeply believe that Bush, Cheney and others of the administration, past and current, are major war criminals and threats to the well-being of the planet itself. That said, I also believe that such as the ever-grinning Bill Kristol are fellow-traveling warmongers and enablers of warmongers. As to such as he feeling perhaps at least a modicum of shame at what their patrons and they have wrought, forget it. Sociopathy takes many forms, but one thing that I suspect sociopaths very much possess in common is an abiding and defining amorality that insulates any potential conscience against moral reckoning.
The video is not in LexisNexis but it is in the CSPAN video library.
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=175746-2
The mind reals as to why this “man” fouls the airwaves.
History is written by the powerful. Tell the lie often enough and it becomes a fact. This is just another bad view of history by the Bushies (both father and son).
Kristol is just putting out the lies that he was told to believe by his bosses, and not intellegent enough to think for himself.
Failing upward is by now an ingrained American habit. George Wanker Bush is the avatar of failing upwards in the United States - as is Bloody Bill Kristol. Stick your nose far enough up the right people’s asses and (if you can stand the smell) you can fail upward with a vengeance. For the rest of us, the middle class, it’s the same old story of failing downward as our standard of living continues to drop. To Kristol, Joe Lieberman, Richard Perle and all the other reactionary/fascist Jews who brought us the catastrophe in Iraq - Go To Hell! And if not Hell, then go to Israel. But get out of the United States and leave us be.
Truth is whatever Kristolnacht says it is. This week Iran is a danger and we need to nuke them and next week it will be Obama supporters who are a danger and need to be tortured.
Kristolnacht’s world is a dangerous place and only he and his pals know how to deal with it–”bomb ‘em.”
These end-timers are not only taking our country down but are taking the rest of world with them. The Kristolnacht/ Armageddon crowd can’t wait for the end of times. That’s why they don’t care about the economy, the environment or peace. Hey, they’re taking their pile of dough and they are outta here! Heaven bound.
Be smart, don’t spend Mondays with Kristolnacht at the NYTimes’ op ed page.
The Corporate Media need the Bill Krystols just like they need the Rush Limbaghs and the Sean Hannitys. They need a panel of brain-dead sieg-heilers to maintain a fiction that they have been maintaining at least since 1945. That fiction is designed to dress up naked economic imperialism and militarism with the perceived American values of freedom, democracy, and human rights. And the beat goes on.
The prime directive document produced by Bill Kristol and the others at the PNAC is a Zionist document, written by the same people that wrote the document NEW DEFENSE OF THE REALM (and the realm is not the USA, it is Israel).
___________________________________________________________________
Even in a history abundant with cruel ironies, this one is egregious: a non-fiction contemporary version of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, as depraved and morally bankrupt as the original.
TO: 4thefuture: Thanks for responding to my posting.
I did not complain CD doesn’t talk about the Earth Charter, I complained that there was little talk or articles about alternatives to global capitalism. Then I went on to mention alternate sources of information, like the International Forum on Globalization and the Earth Charter.
I did not intend to “chastise” CD readers, I admire CD readers, CD readers are for the most part deep democratic thinkers, just what our democratic society needs. I apologize if this is the way my posting came off.
Regarding your question of #15c of the Earth Charter, ….”Avoid or eliminate to the full extent possible the taking or destruction of non-targeted species”. I believe an example of “Non targeted species” would be those species “not thought to be there” or “not considered important” by an indifferent land developer
Of course these are generalities, The Earth Charter is a vision of a new way of thinking of how the world was meant to work. These are exciting times. It is a major turning in our evolution as a species, an emerging higher global consciousness. . You certainly indicate you are a visionary with “4thefuture”
As for national security systems, …take away the expensive offensive provocative nature of national security.
Where are the working steps to implement the Earth Charter? Check on the side bar “get involved” and “Earth Charter in action”. In turn, I would say that you work it out through the dynamics of democracy, in solidarity with like minded people. You begin by choosing to know.
The Earth Charter is more like a spiritual road map, not specific steps like MapQuest.
The Earth Charter recognizes what is truly at issue in our broken world, the conflict between excessive materialism and spirituality. By spirituality, a good example would be the powerful hunger for justice that is emerging throughout the world. It is a major part of cultural blowback. .
Thank you 4thefuture, I do sincerely appreciate your responding to my posting. I hope it will stimulate more alternate thinking to “rampant capitalism”.
On the subject “New American Century”
William Kristol, Chairman
http://www.newamericancentury.org
They pretty much say their goal is US world domination
Watch PBS with Bill Moyer “Buying The War”
This documentary explains how William Kristol was one of they guys who conned the American people into thinking there was a connection between 911 and Iraq.
http://mrxfromplanetx.com/2008/02/16/buying-the-war
John Stewart asked one night on his Daily Show “is this guy ever right?” His father was wrong so many times about the Soviets during the cold war that his credibility should have been called into question. Much was learned how wrong he was only after the fall of the Soviet Empire, but the lack of accuracy in assessments and predictions should be documented and not forgotten.
His son continues the tradition of stating what some want to hear, no matter how implausible or inaccurate. He seems to get rewarded because he has a smug childish smile and states it all so confidently. Maybe the media is just looking for ratings and circulation. It does not matter who they hire, as long as it makes money.