My friend Jonah Goldberg of National Review has been “outed” as one of the neoconservative puppetmasters of the Bush Administration. According to a review of Pat Buchanan’s new book “Israel’s Amen Corner: How the Zionists Betray the American People and the Will of God,” Goldberg is on Buchanan’s enemies list:
His enemies list of neoconservatives has unsurprising names: Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Irving and William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg.
Hmm…what do those men have in common? Are they all from New York? Are they all left-handed? No, that’s not it. Hmm…
When I was a lad, I loved reading Buchanan’s columns for their pungent prose and full-strength opinions. Now, I wish this obnoxious windbag would leave the stage for good, taking his “the 1950s were the Golden Age of America and Catholicism” shtick with him. He’s an embarrassment to Catholics, Christians in general, and political conservatives.
(Before you ask: do I think Buchanan is an anti-Semite? No, I’ve not seen any evidence of that. Do I think he loves to play “bait the Jew”? Oh, yes.)
If the summaries by the top two reviewers at the link you provided, both sympathetic to Buchanan, are accurate, it sounds as if Buchanan has written an intriguing but flawed argument.
It seems to me that Bush and the party’s embrace of high spending and big deficits is exactly what Reagan did, not the opposite as Buchanan claims. Also, Bush believed that there were WMD’s in Iraq, however incorrectly. He thus believed–as he argued repeatedly at the time–that taking out Saddam Hussein was necessary for *our own security.* That’s hardly “chasing monsters abroad to destroy” as Buchanan charges.
Yes, the invasion of Iraq angered many in the Muslim civilization, and it angered continental Europe. How that “endangers our superpower status” is unclear to me. Bush’s decisive action made clear that the US will act on perceived threats to our national security. Libya’s Kaddafi didn’t suddenly decide to let in inspectors and meet international demand because Bush sent him flowers. He saw what we did in Iraq.
Buchanan is right that the postwar has not been managed as well as it could have, principally because we aren’t sending enough force over there and we haven’t come down hard enough on insurgents. Fallujah should have been evacuated and leveled months ago to set an example.
But with the huge domestic spending Bush and the GOP Congress have embraced, they’d have to rescind the tax cut to raise enough $$ to expand the military as drastically as the world situation demands. That certainly won’t be discussed before the election, though it ought to be after, assuming Bush is re-elected (which right now it looks as if he will be).
As for the “neocon cabal,” who voted for huge domestic spending? The mostly-Gentile GOP Congress, with Bush’s support. Maybe Buchanan can blame Jewish Republicans in Congress for that well.
Before you ask: do I think Buchanan is an anti-Semite? No, I’ve not seen any evidence of that. Do I think he loves to play “bait the Jew”? Oh, yes.
I’d think that Jew-baiting would qualify as some evidence of anti-semitism.
Yeah, but it’s pretty weak evidence. Buchanan clearly hates Zionism, but some Orthodox Jews do, too. (Not to mention very liberal, secular Jews, and a few Israelis.)
I would be careful to draw a distinction between those of the Jewish faith (and their sympathizers) who would support Israel’s actions, no matter how reckless they are in the process of self-preservation, and those who wish Israel would behave as one of the family of nations who has to learn to get along with everybody, whether they like it or not. Supporting the latter position does not make Buchanan (or anybody else) an anti-Semite.
Except Buchanan’s position is that anyone who supports Israel is ipso facto untrustworthy, because supporting Israel offends the delicate sympathies of the Muslim Middle East.
If Pat Buchanan is an anti-semite so is Arafat….gee I have to think about that one…Buchanan was just on ewtn news interview…it repeats sunday at 5pm and monday morning at 10am….he makes some excellent points and clearly supports Bush over Kerry……
From what I understand through reading what he’s written so far, PB’s position is that he does not believe America should be fighting foreign wars unless there is a clear US interest at stake. I have never read him to demand the obliteration of Israel or Jews or anything close to that – only that they take care of their own problems rather than have us fight proxy wars for them (not that this is actually true or false, but it is his perception). He would say the same of fighting proxy wars for England, Ireland or any other country. But I still don’t understand Krauthammer or Jonah being named in there. True, they are neocons (mostly), but other than general journalistic exposure, what power do they carry w/ the W administration? Why did he not also name Rummy or Rove (or did he)?