Neoconservatism and the Nattering Nabobs

Is there a word in our contemporary political discourse that expresses more opprobrium than “neocon?” Six years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime in Iraq, a war largely credited to the nefarious influence of a handful of writers and government officials associated with the intellectual disposition, the label has become a catchall for everything bad about a worldview envisioning a robust international role for the United States and the promotion of democracy abroad. Never mind that the Clinton administration had committed to a policy of regime change in Iraq or that most Democrats in Congress voted in favor of the war; rest assured it was “the neocons” who laid the intellectual underpinnings and deceived the American people into supporting it. Critics need not even explain which particular aspects of neoconservatism they don’t like; a simple hurling of the word “neocon” is sufficient to condemn one’s opponent as a barbarian. The term, as George Orwell once wrote of fascism, “has now no meaning except insofar as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’”

To be sure, there are valid criticisms to be made of the policy recommendations promoted by neoconservatives, whether it be the expansion of NATO or military intervention to stop the genocide in Darfur. But, in recent years, the debate has degenerated to the point where the word “neocon” is regularly employed to impugn the national allegiance of prominent Jewish Americans.

A frequent purveyor of this meme is University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole, one of the left’s most influential voices on Middle Eastern politics. He has alleged that Douglas Feith, a former Defense Department official, “has dual loyalties to the Israeli Likud Party and to the U.S. Republican Party,” but that “if he has to choose, he will put the interests of the Likud above.” Cole has also warned of “pro-Likud intellectuals” who routinely “use the Pentagon as Israel’s Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv.”

Time’s Joe Klein offered the following recitation of the dual loyalties claim in 2008: “The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives—people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary—plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.” Klein might as well have just quoted Pat Buchanan, who, in 2003, listed a cabal of “neocons,” all Jews, “willing ‘to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel.’” Alongside Klein, at the 2009 Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly, I suggested that debates about matters of war and peace would be better served by a hashing out of substantive policy disagreements rather than accusations of treason. In response, Klein told The Washington Post, “He says I accuse Jewish neoconservatives of being traitors, which is a word I’ve never used. I’ve said, at times they put the interests of Israel above the interests of the U.S.”

What else is an American citizen doing when he “put[s] the interests of Israel above the interests of the United States?” Take the case of Senator Joseph Lieberman, who seems to earn Klein’s special outrage for no other reason than that he is both Jewish and an unapologetic supporter of the Iraq war. If, as an elected official with access to classified information, Lieberman is putting the interest of a foreign state above that of his own, Klein should present the evidence and call for his prosecution. But, of course, no such evidence is available, and all we’re left with is wild accusations by the likes of Klein, Cole and other ideological clairvoyants.

Today, those who use and abuse the term “neocon” apply it to anyone who takes a hawkish line on Israel. Coined by the socialist writer Michael Harrington, “neoconservative” originally described those disillusioned leftist intellectuals who left the Democratic Party as it lurched leftward in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the rise of the counterculture and the nomination of George McGovern for president in 1972. Israel had little to do with the origins of neoconservatism, nor were its early critics occupied with insinuations of dual loyalty. It was the statist principles of social democracy to which the neocons were deemed disloyal, not their country. That most of the early neoconservative intellectuals were Jewish was incidental, since intellectuals of many stripes are disproportionately Jewish.

What convinced the neocons to move to the right were the failures of Great Society domestic programs. Foreign policy—in particular, the Democrats’ increasingly accommodationist stance toward the Soviet Union—was secondary. While the neocons (some of the most prominent of whom, like former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, were not Jewish) had always been supportive of Israel, their backing was hardly exceptional among Cold Warriors.

Contemporary neoconservative ideas on foreign policy continue to evince a cross-regional consistency; Israel is hardly an exceptional instance of neoconservative support for democracy and a firm military posture against authoritarian regimes. If Israel were to miraculously achieve peace with its neighbors tomorrow, thus obviating the need for American backing, there is no reason to think that neoconservatives would temper their support for democracy promotion, American hegemony or the primacy of place that morality ought to play in the formation of our approach to the world. If critics are to accuse neoconservatives of being “ideologues,” they should at least appreciate the fact that their ideology, while perhaps influenced by the Jewish experience and Jewish values, is hardly limited to the Jewish State.

James Kirchick is an assistant editor of The New Republic and an online columnist for the New York Daily News.