Neocon Christmas List

Jim Lobe

December 20, 2004

While it may be true that neocons would be happy with coal in their stockings (along with oil and natural gas), what are they really asking Santa for this year? Jim Lobe reports on the leaks coming from unnamed sources close to the North Pole.

Jim Lobe writes for Inter Press Service, an international newswire, and for Foreign Policy in Focus, a joint project of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and the New Mexico-based Interhemispheric Resource Center.
 
The interregnum between November's election and the formal launch in January of President George W. Bush's second term has a strange feel to it.

Perhaps it is that Colin Powell, who until now stayed as close to Washington as he could to try to prevent Vice President Dick Cheney or Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld from pushing phony intelligence and aggressive policy advice on the president in his absence, has been traveling virtually all over the world, assuring appropriately skeptical foreign leaders that Bush will really—REALLY—be committed to multilateralism in his second term.

Now that Powell has been informed his services will no longer be required, the least-traveled secretary of state in the last generation is finally getting out to see the sights, even if his credibility as a spokesman for future U.S. foreign policy is less than at any time over the past four years.

Or perhaps it is the sense of anticipation in some quarters, dread in others, of what will actually happen in the coming term. The dread comes from Democrats, whose somewhat diminished presence in Congress will make them even more marginal in the second term than they were in the first.

And it is felt by others who consider themselves on the relative ''left'' of the very one-sided U.S. political spectrum: ''realist'' foreign-policy analysts who are just hoping against hope that the over-extension of the U.S. military in Iraq and the rapid depletion of the U.S. Treasury will force Bush to pursue a less ambitious international agenda, sooner rather than later.

What Will Santa Bring?

In October 2003, Karl Rove ordered the hawks to shut up lest they scare the hell out of the electorate and lose the election for Bush. Having bottled up their greatest longings all this time, they are now bursting forth. But, unlike the wish lists that Santa's elves at their workshops in the fast-disappearing Arctic are toiling overtime to fill, the neocons' lists feature the names of countries, cabinet agencies and multi-lateral institutions.

Beginning one month ago, when 'uber-hawk' Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy (CSP) and long-time protegé of neoconservative impresario Richard Perle, published what he called his ''checklist of the work the world will demand of this president and his subordinates in a second term,'' prominent hawks have been pushing their own favorite targets for regime change or simple confrontation—from Caracas to Pyongyang, not to mention the State Department and the CIA, where change is presumably already underway—on what sometimes seems like an hourly basis.

At the top of the list, as they have been for so long, of course, are Iran and North Korea, whose possession of nuclear weapons is simply "unacceptable," as the administration itself has repeatedly stated. But others—notably Syria, China, dark-horse Venezuela and even Russia, not to mention the United Nations (at least until the White House put the kabosh on that last week) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—are still seen as requiring policies of active containment, if not "regime change."

These calls to action have appeared in all the usual places—the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, the pages and websites of the Weekly Standard and the National Review, on FoxNews, and the Washington Times . Somewhat ominously, perhaps, they are also reprinted in the Pentagon's twice-daily 'Early Bird' editions—compilations of must reading for senior national security officials.

Common to almost all of these effusions is the sense that, while Iraq might not have gone quite as well as anticipated, the U.S. has somehow "turned the corner" in Iraq, presumably with its ''victory'' in Fallujah, and now has the situation well enough in hand to recast its net against the world's evil-doers, be it by military force, covert action, "support for the opposition," or simply intimidation.

Target: Syria

Most recently, the target of the hawks has been Syrian President Bashar Al Asad who—on the basis of one Washington Post article which quoted unnamed intelligence and military officials as claiming that the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was being run out of Syria—earned calls for military confrontation from no less than three major sources with a fondness for alliteration, if of a rather unimaginative sort.

Despite current constraints in Iraq, wrote William Kristol in the Weekly Standard's lead editorial, "Getting Serious about Syria," "We could bomb Syrian military facilities. We could go across the border in force to stop infiltration; we could occupy the town of Abu Kamal; we could covertly help or overtly support the Syrian opposition...." His ideas were seconded in a subsequent column in the National Review Online ("Serious on Syria") and in the Wall Street Journal ("Serious About Syria?")

''The president's goals in Iraq, and elsewhere in the region, will not be achieved until the Syrians are forced to halt all assistance to our enemies'', write three officials associated with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative group behind the recent re-creation of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), in the Washington Times this week.

Never mind, the message goes, evidence cited by other U.S. officials that Al Assad has stepped up cooperation with Washington in securing his border with Iraq and made unprecedented offers to talk peace with Israel, even suggesting that he may be willing to go to Jerusalem to do so personally.

Target: Iran

Iran, of course, gets the most ink, with a constant drumbeat of columns underlining the duplicity/hypocrisy/naiveté of Britain, France and Germany for their nuclear accord with Tehran and the necessity of an ultimate confrontation, if not because of its nuclear program, then because of the regime's alleged infiltration and subversion of Iraq.

While the hawks concede that a full-scale invasion of Iran is not a viable option, at least for the moment, they insist not only that well-targeted air strikes (by Washington or Israel) could, at the least, significantly retard Tehran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon.

Similarly, they seize on every report of discontent, such as last week's heckling by university students of President Mohammed Khatami, as evidence that, just as in pre-war Iraq, Washington is wildly popular with theologically oppressed Iranian masses who will be eager, at the very least, to accept money and rhetorical support—already in the works, according to recent reports—from the Bush administration to put an end to the regime, perhaps as peacefully, even, as in Ukraine.

Target: Everybody Else

North Korea is another top-ranking target, with, as in Iran, right-wingers seizing on even more dubious reports of widespread and growing discontent with the government to bolster their argument for regime change and at least the preparation for military strikes, despite the fact that U.S. intelligence does not have the faintest idea where key nuclear facilities can be found.

Concern about China—whose failure to ''deliver'' North Korea, along with its recent multi-billion-dollar energy contract with Iran and persistent tensions with Taiwan are seen as evidence of latent enmity—is also being spurred by the hawks, who appear to have resumed their campaign against ''engagement'' with Beijing after a three-year hiatus.

Particularly notable in that regard, Dan Blumenthal, until recently Rumsfeld's senior country director for China and Taiwan, moved recently to Perle's American Enterprise Institute (AEI) where he resurrected the notion of China as a ''strategic competitor'' to the United States.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's recent discussions with Russia about the possible purchase of warplanes and his visit to Iran have also spurred a flurry of columns, particularly in the Journal and National Review , reminding readers how close President Hugo Chavez is to Fidel Castro and how determined he is to curb U.S. influence in the Americas.

Until Bush's intervention last week, however, the United Nations proved to be the most delicious target of all as the usual suspects leaped on new disclosures about the "oil-for-food" scandal to call for Kofi Annan's resignation and even a reconsideration of Washington's membership in the world body. Except for just a few stray voices, such as The National Review's Rachel Ehrenfeld—"(W)e should rid ourselves of this corrupt, anti-American, anti-Israeli, pro-terrorist organization, and establish a new organization in which the participants share Judeo-Christian, pro-American, pro-West values, and are united to fight Islamic radicalism"—the campaign against Annan ended no sooner did the White House speak.   

To the immense disappointment of the hawks whose hatred and contempt for the United Nations dates back decades, they will not find Annan's head in one of those nicely wrapped packages tucked under the tree—at least not this Christmas.