posted April 22, 2003 at 12:33 p.m. MDTAnother Bushite rogue fit for the gallery!
He's William Kristol, Not Billy Crystal, and His War's Not Fun Anymore " ... Along the way he bonded with the circle of Republican "chicken hawks" who urged uncompromising war in Iraq, unilateralism in foreign policy, and massive military buildups. His pages bristled with neo-conservative visions of empire and running acclaim for the British imperial era. After September 11, The Weekly Standard became more like the "Weekly Pander" for Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle, while issuing steady warnings against Colin Powell's tendency to multilateralism. [emph added]
Kristol was so convinced of the "cakewalk" thesis of a short, triumphal war in Iraq that The Weekly Standard immediately took paternal credit for the concept of "shock and awe" when the bombing began. They re-ran their previous editorials like that of September 24, 2001, that called for toppling Saddam Hussein and preparing to "scorch southern Lebanon and Revolutionary Guard dormitories and depot facilities in Tehran". According to the journal's past prophecies, "awe is the sine qua non of politics" in the Middle East where "being seen as 'wobbly' is fatal". (Jan. 19, 1998)…"America's hayba - its ability to inspire awe" - had vanished in the mid-90s, "and once hayba is lost, only a demonstration of indomitable force restores it". (May 14, 2001)…"We have to restore our awe, and the only way you acquire and retain such majesty in the Middle East is through the use of military power". (Sept. 24, 2001) In the run-up to war, Kristol promoted his views of "Baghdad and Beyond" through a new book and continual interviews on Fox News, the television outlet of his patron, Rupert Murdoch. [Murdoch funds Kristol's "Weekly Pander" _ h_b]
I will leave the psychoanalysis to others, but this memory with the reader. Once in the West Bank, in the early Eighties, I came upon a Palestinian family standing with their meager possessions in the road while Israeli soldiers methodically blew up their two-story house. Stunned by the cold-blooded military precision, I interviewed the Israelis as to their purpose. The Palestinian family didn't appear to be an "enemy", weren't being arrested for anything, but nevertheless were made homeless, displaced on the road. Apparently someone in their extended family was an alleged "enemy", and for that the home had to be destroyed. You see, said the Israeli spokesman, the only thing the Arab understands is awesome power. It is, you see, the way they are."
p.s. Kristol is chairman of *!TaDa!* Project for the New American Century
