Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Let’s hear just a little about neocon foreign policy in the last days
The economy’s meltdown has been a ghastly godsend for Barack Obama’s campaign, and it doesn’t seem like a very good idea to change a subject that seems to be working. In the final days of the campaign, though, sometimes I wish we would hear a few more reminders about our occupation of Iraq, and about the kind of shoot-first commander-in-chief that John McCain would become.
Think Progress points to a Der Spiegel interview with Robert Kagan, the neocon McCain advisor who was a signatory to the 1998 letter (.pdf file) to Bill Clinton urging regime change in Iraq.
Matt Duss, the Think Progress writer, picks out the astonishing part of the interview with the German newspaper. In response to a question about the Bush administration’s dishonest rationalization for invading Iraq, Kagan says characterizing it in that way is “a silly conversation” and “absurd conspiracy theories.”
SPIEGEL: Isn’t it true that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld took advantage of the outrage over the 9/11 terrorist attacks to strike Iraq? Is it even possible anymore to deny that the war was based on manipulation, exaggeration and flat-out lies?
Kagan: That’s absurd.
SPIEGEL: It’s a commonly held view…
Kagan: The Bush administration’s intelligence on Iraq was the same as the Clinton administration’s, the German government’s and the French government’s before the war. We now know that Saddam wanted the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction—and the world did.
SPIEGEL: But, unlike Washington, both Paris and Berlin did not want to go to war without UN approval. And the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna asked the United States—unsuccessfully—for a few more months to complete its investigation in Iraq. But the US wanted this war for strategic reasons.
Kagan: In retrospect, we have to admit that Washington could have waited a while longer. That’s a different question. But I think it’s about time we moved beyond this silly conversation and these absurd conspiracy theories. There is a real debate as to whether we should have gone to war in Iraq. And now we should have an intelligent discussion about the new challenges we face in Iraq and elsewhere.
It’s so crazy and disrespectful to hear these guys continuing to pretend they didn’t have a clear aim in mind from day one and concocted a case to fit the aim. Most Americans and most of the world know that much of the justification for invasion was a fiction, and still they try to con us. They must think we’re idiots. When I see the word “neocon” it’s the con part that rankles.
Also check out ThinkProgress’s McCain war cabinet. You want more neocon foreign policy? McCain’s your guy.
Obama talks mostly about more of the same George Bush economic policy. I can’t think I’m alone in being even more frightened by more of the same George Bush foreign policy.