Taki
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Pat, Scott and I held a press conference in the National Press Club building in Washington for the launch, at which I realised from the word go how deeply mistrusted and loathed anyone who describes himself as a paleoconservative is. The coverage by the NY Times and Washington Post dealt more with my drug bust of a quarter of a century before than with the start-up of a new political magazine. During the press conference I was asked time and again if I was using Saudi money. Saudi money? I’d rather catch the clap than use camel jockey moolah, but it illustrates how much homework the Fourth Estate does. I’ve only been writing against them bums for 30 years, was all I said. When asked what my reasons were for coughing up, I tried a bit of humour, and answered ‘for the women’. It went down like a loud fart in church, worse even.
Our first cover story was written by Eric Margolis and ran as follows: ‘Iraq Folly. How Victory Could Spell American Defeat.’ Pat Buchanan had a story on empire, and how we should stay away from Iraq. I wrote about Ayn Rand and John Galt and how my father was no John Galt but a caring capitalist who looked out for his workers. Ten years later to the day, all one has to do is substitute an N for a Q. Iraq turned out to be the greatest foreign policy blunder ever, and counting. Iran will be far worse and could end up in Armageddon. Yet the very same players who beat the war drums against Saddam’s WMDs are back playing the same tune, this time against Iran’s nuclear weapons. One thing is for sure. The American Conservative did not stop the neocons — Bush, Cheney and Tony Blair — from lying their heads off and plunging us into a catastrophic war, nor will the American Conservative — now a respected monthly — stop the neocons and Netanyahu from taking us to the brink yet again.
In Hollywood melodramas, the bad guys are always revealed towards the end and more often than not get their comeuppance. Not in real life. The same bad old neocons are still at it. The Kagans, Feiths, Frums, Kristols, Podhoretzes, Ledeens and Wolfowitzes, to name just a few, may not be working for the Obama administration, but they are busy beating the war drums where it counts. On television and in the press. Their greatest supporter, the Israeli lobby, is also working overtime. Lone voices against an even worse folly than Iraq are Chronicles magazine and the American Conservative. Everyone else, it seems, has gone John Wayne crazy, including the Jewish–American community that sees a bearded ayatollah’s money behind every article extolling peace.
Neocons only looked dead when the Iraqi folly became obvious even to the thickest of all American minds. But they have more lives than the proverbial feline, and Americans are known for having short memories. Three million Iraqi dead is an old story. Just look at what Assad is doing to his people. The fact that it is the very same people who murdered an ambassador in Libya last week that we are trying to help in Syria is beyond American comprehension. As is the fact that one theocracy in Saudi Arabia is trying to overthrow another theocracy in Iran. The code word is appeasement. That’s what did us in where Hitler was concerned. Let’s not let it happen again. America needs to fight Israel’s wars, otherwise we’ll be fighting on Fifth Avenue before we know it. I’ve heard it all before and am getting mighty tired of it. Can’t these clowns at least change their tune a bit?
I spent a lot of moolah underwriting the magazine, and, if I say so myself, we got it exactly right. We could run the same stories and the same headlines substituting Iran for Iraq today, yet very few people remember our warning. Victory did spell defeat but the neocons couldn’t care less. In retrospect I should have bought myself a bigger boat.Also in Society
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