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Perle’s of Wisdom from the “Prince of Darkness,” or Neocon Vindication Day
Jonah Goldberg, not your ordinary fire breathing war monger, has reached back in time and remembered a conversation involving the Neocon’s Neocon Richard Perle. Perle often referred to since that time as the “Prince of Darkness” is making some rock solid sense.
Perle of Wisdom on North Korea
Mr. Perle: No, I don’t think we need to launch a strike tomorrow, but I think unless you have decided that you will launch a strike before you will allow North Korea to become a significant nuclear power, and I think in practical terms, that means before you allow them to reprocess the fuel they now have into plutonium — once you make that decision, then I think it’s fine, sit down at the table, but make sure that your allies know that you’ve made that decision and that the North Koreans know that you’ve made that decision.
Mr. Wattenberg: So you agree with Paul and the rest of the panel that we ought to proceed with the negotiations?
Mr. Perle: Only after we make the decision that if the negotiations fail, we will do what the Israelis did and end the program in that way, because if you don’t make that decision first, there is a risk that you go on negotiating past the point at which they take irreversible action and become the nuclear power we’re trying to prevent them from becoming.
There has been way too much demonization of the Neocons. Most of it motivated by left-wing, politically correct foreign policy wishful thinking. We collectively decided to live in a foreign policy safe space blaming the Neocons for frightening us with all of their hardball talk. Now we are being rudely evicted from that safe space by reality in the form of a fat little murdering tyrant with a bad haircut and a robotic killer regime.
Put Richard Perle next to Kim Jong Un, and the Prince of Darkness starts to look like the Angel Gabriel.
Published in General
I seriously doubt they are going to launch those missiles. The fat man will say something like, “I’ve graciously decided to spare the lives of American personnel and hope that the United States appreciates my gift.”
The alternative for him is the end of his life, or at least the end of the life he has always known.
I don’t know if the aegis boats are set up to get missiles in the launch phase, but if they are we should keep a few of them floating around Korea on a permanent rotation. We sell aegis boats to Japan and Australia, maybe South Korea. I know they don’t have the full capabilities of ours, but hopefully they have some ballistic defense, too. If we’re ready for it, I think we have a decent shot at knocking it down.
Bingo. And that’s exactly how it WASN’T sold. Instead: We’re there to build democracy. Sadam kills all his people – he drops them into paper shredders, blah, blah, blah. The occupation will pay for itself.
It’s as though these morons planning our policy knew nothing about how Shia would react to being occupied. Oh, excuse me, liberated. They would be so thankful to us. And it will all just pay for itself.
It’s as though these morons planning our policy didn’t know about the Sunni-Shia divide and once the Shia had the upper hand would begin butchering Sunni. Which by the way is what has been happening in Mosul.
Why do we want or need to be in the middle of this? It’s not our fight. The people there hate us. And I don’t care anything about helping any of them.
Oil is the one and only thing that any of them has to sell that is of any use to anybody else. And instead of letting it come onto the market, what do we do? Sanctions. Our policy makers are insane.
Neoconservative: “The official line…was what came to be called ‘fusionist’…[which] stressed the dominance of anti-Communism and Christian order, to be sure, but retained some libertarian rhetoric in a subordinate rank. The importance of the libertarian and Old Right rhetoric was largely political; for it would have been difficult…to lead a conservative political revival in this country in the garb of monarchy and Inquisition.”
–Murray Rothbard, The Betrayal of the Old Right, pg. 166
“We must all support ‘the extensive and productive tax laws that are needed to support a vigorous anti-Communist foreign policy,’ as well as ‘large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington.”
–Murray Rothbard quoting William F. Buckley Jr., The Betrayal of the Old Right, pg 159
“Therefore, ‘we have to accept a Big Government for the duration–for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged…except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within out shores.'” (If anything defines “neoconservatism,” this is it.)
–Murray Rothbard quoting William F. Buckley Jr., The Betrayal of the Old Right, pg 159
And if Rothbard doesn’t do it for you as a source, then I know you “Conservatives” will have no problem with this:
“Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace comes to pass in an era of Righteousness — that is, national or ideological self-righteousness in which the public is persuaded that ‘God is on our side,’ and that those who disagree should be brought here before the bar as war criminals.”
–Russel Kirk, 1991 speech to the Heritage Foundation
Neither of those describe neoconservatives as I remember them. Rothbard’s fusionisits is a description of a concept that evolved at National Review in the 50s/60s inspired by Frank Meyer, I think.
Kirk’s might be closer to the mark, though it’s a bit overwrought.
Here’s what I recall. The original neoconservatives were Democrats. They moved to the right, toward the Republican Party, because a party dominated by McGovern Democrats had abandoned any idea of a muscular anti-communist foreign policy. For the most part, the neoconservatives continued to support liberal social and economic policies. Jean Kirkpatrick, for example was a neoconservative. She had to be romanced by Reagan. As a life long Democrat she viewed working in his administration as tantamount to abandoning the faith of her family.
My neocon brother from another mother said today we have a military option in Venezuela. Finally!