Supporting the war without supporting PNAC

When anyone in the antiwar crowd finds out that I support the War in Iraq, he or she automatically labels me a “neocon”. Most of them are actually clueless as to what one is, but that doesn’t stop them from making the accusation.

In a generic sense, neoconservatives are former liberals who became disgusted with the leftward shift of the Democrats which occurred during the Cold War and especially Vietnam. Basically, they were liberals who were staunchly anti-communist and couldn’t accept that the Democrats weren’t. Irving Kristol is considered by many to be the godfather of the movement.

More specifically, though, the current crop of neoconservatives are products of the think tank called the Project for a New American Century or PNAC. They believe that global peace, cooperation and prosperity must be promoted through a process of Americanizing the parts of the world where freedom doesn’t currently exist. They are convinced that the United States must assert itself, through force if necessary, though not exclusively; to interject American style economics, culture and government in places that have no tradition of freedom or democracy.

The idea is that if nations that are currently dangerous to us and the free world become more like the United States then they won’t be a threat anymore. These people believe that they can truly Americanize Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, thereby making them inhospitable for terrorists and thus removing safe havens for the Osamas of the world and eliminating their funding and their potential sources for weapons of mass destruction.

It’s a beautiful idea. If it only would work in the real world. However, it won’t. What? I’m rejecting the PNAC agenda? Then I must oppose the war in Iraq? Not hardly. I think anyone who opposes the war in Iraq is dangerously naïve or a traitor. But that is a different issue that I will get to later. Right now, let’s stick with my problems with PNAC and the neocons.

First, the neocons believe that everyone wants to be free. They look at the world through the prism of the Cold War and the fact that the citizens of the satellite states of the Soviet Union were slaves and truly longed for freedom. In fact, no one can question the fact that the vast majority of people under Soviet oppression dreamed of living as free men and women. However, that doesn’t necessarily translate to the Middle East.

You see, most of today’s neoconservatives arestudents of Leo Strauss. Without going into great detail about Straussian thought, let me just say that Strauss discounted the role of religion in a people or a culture. He viewed religion as something that can be replaced by another value system to provide order and stability in a society.

I know, President Bush is very religious. Regardless of what the Left thinks, the President is evangelical through and through. The fact is that Bush isn’t a true neocon, regardless of how his enemies try to paint him into a corner. Bush believes that spreading the United States’ freedom to our enemies is a mission from God. PNAC has no such ideas.

Strauss was familiar with Marxist thought, Leninist thought, Trotsky and Mein Kampf. He saw how these philosophies were used in Europe. He never looked at the Middle East and Islam, though. In Europe, Christianity is mostly ritual. In the United States religion is fraught with materialism. Islam, though, is completely different.

Islam means “submission”. Muslims consider freedom to be evil. Whereas children in Communist countries are brainwashed to believe that freedom will corrupt them in this life, Muslim children are raised to believe that anything other than complete submission to the authoritarian rule of Sharia law will condemn them to Hell.

The result is that Muslims will resist freedom the same way they would resist a bacon sandwich. These people aren’t slaves of some dictator. They are submissive servants because they truly believe that Allah wants them to be. As a result, PNAC has as much chance of Americanizing the adults of the Middle East as I have of regrowing the hair I lost when I was in my twenties. It AIN’T gonna happen. In twenty or thirty years we might be able to raise a generation of people in those countries that would embrace freedom, but to do it in the short term is next to impossible.

Like I said earlier though, that doesn’t mean that I agree with the leftist appeasers. I believe that we have to defang the Middle East. Their internal politics is unimportant. Saddam had played games for twelve years. It had to end at some point. He never accounted for all of his known quantities of chemical weapons. He made overtures to terrorists. After 9/11, that made him to big of a risk to leave in power under ANY style of containment. Additionally, after 9/11, we needed to have a demonstrative example to all of the other nations on the list of terrorist states. We must use Iraq to make sure that the only things exported from the region are oil and rugs, not terrorism.

I don’t agree with PNAC’s agenda because I don’t think it is achievable. However, I agree with Bush on how he is handling the War on Terror, INCLUDING the war with Iraq. PNAC, like most leftists believe a global community is possible. I hold no such illusions. Basically, PNAC and the American Left are two sides of the same coin.

PNAC wants to make the world a happy place by making it like the United States. The Left wants to make the world into a combination of Swedish economic policy and French foreign policy with Amsterdam’s morality thrown in for good measure. Both ideas are silly, but if I had to choose, I would rather have the world like the United States instead of having the United States become like the world.