David Greenberg: The relationship of the neoconservative movement to Bush's foreign policy
Not long ago the term "neoconservative" seemed ripe for retirement. The label was originally applied in the 1960s and 1970s to the ex-liberals (themselves ex-socialists) who turned halfway to the right after becoming disenchanted with the Great Society, left-wing politics, and the Democrats' post-Vietnam isolationism. Under Ronald Reagan, however, the neocons kept moving right and joined in a broad right-wing consensus, and by the 1990s it became hard to tell them apart from other Republicans. Did second-generation neocons such as Irving Kristol's son Bill -- baby boomers who never made any left-to-right voyage -- even warrant the moniker? The younger Kristol said he was "just a conservative."
Despite some tensions that surfaced during George Bush Sr.'s presidency, Reagan's conservative coalition cohered, more or less, until midway through the current administration. Only with the failures of Bush II and the Iraq War has the concept of neoconservatism gained new life and new meaning, at least on foreign policy (on domestic issues the neocons now can hardly be distinguished from other Republicans). On one side, the neocons' zeal for the war has earned them seething hatred (occasionally tinged with anti-Semitism) from the anti-war left, as younger bloggers, indifferent to the label's precise meaning, sling it as an all-purpose epithet. On the other side, the Republican crack-up has resurrected old internecine splits on the right -- Wall Street versus Main Street, isolationist versus neo-imperialist, and paleocon versus neocon -- with the neocons often being blamed for the right's disarray.
The revival of neoconservatism as a discrete ideology justifies the publication of They Knew They Were Right, journalist Jacob Heilbrunn's addition to the heavy shelf of histories of this influential and controversial claque. A first generation of books, such as Peter Steinfels' The Neoconservatives (1979), surveyed the incipient movement and defined its contours. Another wave, including John Ehrman's Rise of Neoconservatism (1995), began to consider it with some historical perspective. Heilbrunn's updating reminds us that the story of neoconservatism is still evolving and past obituaries have been premature.
Breezy, riddled with nuggets gleaned from interviews, and laced with sharp and often personal judgments, They Knew They Were Right seeks to explain the relationship between neoconservatism and Bush's foreign policy. Although Heilbrunn clearly enjoys indulging his taste for invective, and although his own apparently moderate, realist politics makes him on balance critical of the neocons, he strives hard to seem fair and to make his book a history more than a polemic....
Read entire article at American Prospect
Despite some tensions that surfaced during George Bush Sr.'s presidency, Reagan's conservative coalition cohered, more or less, until midway through the current administration. Only with the failures of Bush II and the Iraq War has the concept of neoconservatism gained new life and new meaning, at least on foreign policy (on domestic issues the neocons now can hardly be distinguished from other Republicans). On one side, the neocons' zeal for the war has earned them seething hatred (occasionally tinged with anti-Semitism) from the anti-war left, as younger bloggers, indifferent to the label's precise meaning, sling it as an all-purpose epithet. On the other side, the Republican crack-up has resurrected old internecine splits on the right -- Wall Street versus Main Street, isolationist versus neo-imperialist, and paleocon versus neocon -- with the neocons often being blamed for the right's disarray.
The revival of neoconservatism as a discrete ideology justifies the publication of They Knew They Were Right, journalist Jacob Heilbrunn's addition to the heavy shelf of histories of this influential and controversial claque. A first generation of books, such as Peter Steinfels' The Neoconservatives (1979), surveyed the incipient movement and defined its contours. Another wave, including John Ehrman's Rise of Neoconservatism (1995), began to consider it with some historical perspective. Heilbrunn's updating reminds us that the story of neoconservatism is still evolving and past obituaries have been premature.
Breezy, riddled with nuggets gleaned from interviews, and laced with sharp and often personal judgments, They Knew They Were Right seeks to explain the relationship between neoconservatism and Bush's foreign policy. Although Heilbrunn clearly enjoys indulging his taste for invective, and although his own apparently moderate, realist politics makes him on balance critical of the neocons, he strives hard to seem fair and to make his book a history more than a polemic....