[andyt]

I want to soften my statement a bit. Of course there can be neo-cons who aren't in favor of torture, and didn't support the lying and futile war in Iraq. The question is are they speaking out, did they go after Bush for those things, or, because he was their guy, more or less go along with it?

I don't know if it was a neocon view that was driving the Bush regime, or more one based on the ideas of Leo Strauss, to the extent that they differ.

Quote:

Critics of Strauss accuse him of being elitist, illiberalist and anti-democratic. Shadia Drury, in Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999), argues that Strauss inculcated an elitist strain in American political leaders linked to imperialist militarism, neoconservatism and Christian fundamentalism. Drury argues that Strauss teaches that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them." Nicholas Xenos similarly argues that Strauss was "an anti-democrat in a fundamental sense, a true reactionary. According to Xenos, "Strauss was somebody who wanted to go back to a previous, pre-liberal, pre-bourgeois era of blood and guts, of imperial domination, of authoritarian rule, of pure fascism."[29]
Strauss has also been criticized by some conservatives. According to Claes Ryn, the "new Jacobinism" of the "neoconservative" philosophy, a philosophy that Ryn controversially attributes to Strauss, is not "new, it is the rhetoric of Saint-Just and Trotsky that the philosophically impoverished American Right has taken over with mindless alacrity. Republican operators and think tanks apparently believe they can carry the electorate by appealing to yesterday’s leftist clichés.[30][31]
Noam Chomsky has argued that Strauss's theory is a form of Leninism, in which society should be led by a group of elite vanguards, whose job is to protect liberal society against the dangers of excessive individualism, and creating inspiring myths to make the masses believe that they are fighting against anti-democratic and anti-liberal forces. Daniel Bell, in his Marxian socialism in the United States wrote: "the consequence of the theory of the vanguard party and its relation to the masses is a system of "two truths," the consilia evangelica, or special ethics endowed for those whose lives are so dedicated to the revolutionary ends, and another truth for the masses. Out of this belief grew Lenin's famous admonition—one can lie, steal, or cheat, for the cause itself has a higher truth."

(From Wiki)

[Psudo]

I challenge you to find a statement by a self-described neoconservative that says anything comparable to "one can lie, steal, or cheat, for the cause itself has a higher truth." Neoconservatives do not believe all means are justified by the ends. They believe that isolationist inaction is not.

Also, who in the CIA do you imagine is a neoconservative? Which operators of Abu Graib were? Some neoconservatives are not to blame, and some who are not neoconservatives are. That is true both for both direct blame and philosophical motivation. It's just as bad a generalization to hold all neoconservativism responsible for the invasion of Iraq as to hold all Islam responsible for 9/11.

[andyt]

Psudo wrote:

I challenge you to find a statement by a self-described neoconservative that says anything comparable to "one can lie, steal, or cheat, for the cause itself has a higher truth."

Actions speak louder than words. Read the stuff on Strauss above - of course you don't tell the people what you're doing. You feed them myths that are the opposite of what you're really up to.

[Psudo]

Accidents do not describe a philosophy better than a description of it.

Why should I trust Shadia Drury, Shadia Drury, and Noam Chomsky more than Richard Perle, Jonah Goldberg, and Commentary Magazine? Until you give me a reason I can believe, I will continue to believe your only reasoning is personal political bias.

[andyt]

Psudo wrote:

Accidents do not describe a philosophy better than a description of it.

Why should I trust Shadia Drury, Shadia Drury, and Noam Chomsky more than Richard Perle, Jonah Goldberg, and Commentary Magazine? Until you give me a reason I can believe, I will continue to believe your only reasoning is personal political bias.

You've kinda lost me here. What accident?

Quote:

Whether or not, as reported, John Bolton chases people through hotels throwing things at them (which I think would be an asset or indeed a necessity for a UN ambassador), he certainly is dedicated to overstating the threats of mass destruction posed by "rogue states" such as Cuba, Syria, and Saddam's Iraq.
Indeed, Bolton's entire function in the first George W. Bush administration seems to have been exaggerating or manufacturing threats, and one wonders what evils, under his aegis, the "intelligence" community might have associated with Djibouti or Bhutan.
Be this as it may, the idea of manipulating policy and public opinion through deception is perhaps the central feature of the political philosophy with which such architects of administration policy as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Cambone, Elliot Abrams, and Adam Shulsky are associated. I refer to "Straussianism": the thought of German/American philosopher Leo Strauss. All of these figures were students of Strauss (who died in 1972) or of his students.

http://www.crispinsartwell.com/strauss.htm