Those Who Forget the Past (43 page)

But the theory of permanent revolution was about other matters entirely. According to the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Marxists, the socialist revolution could unfold only some years after capitalism and the bourgeoisie had triumphed over feudalism in undeveloped countries like Russia; this meant that socialists had no choice but to support capitalism until it ripened and set the stage for revolution. From this prospect of deadly boredom, Trotsky rescued the movement by arguing for an immediate seizure of power in hopes of somehow telescoping the bourgeois and socialist revolutions into one seamless sequence. That was “permanent revolution.”

As is the case with the Strauss-hunters, it is far from evident what any of this has to do with Iraq, terrorism, or promoting democracy. The neocon journalist Arnold Beichman put it sardonically and well: “STOP THE PRESSES: Trotsky . . . wouldn't have supported the Iraq war.” On second thought he probably would have—on Saddam's side.

Finally, if the attempts to link neoconservatives to Strauss and Trotsky are based on misidentification and misconstruction, the fact that both linkages have been made—in some cases by the same writer—is stranger still. For it would be hard to come up with a more disparate pair of thinkers. Strauss's mission was to take us back by means of contemplation to the nearly lost past of classical antiquity. Trotsky's was to lead mankind by means of violent action to an unprecedented new society. The one aimed to rescue philosophy from ideology; the other was the consummate ideologue. How, exactly, does neoconservatism bear the earmarks of both of these projects simultaneously? No one has attempted to explain.

There is, however, one thing that Strauss and Trotsky did have in common, and that one thing may get us closer to the real reason their names have been so readily invoked. Both were Jews. The neoconservatives, it turns out, are also in large proportion Jewish—and this, to their detractors, constitutes evidence of the ulterior motives that lurk behind the policies they espouse.

Lind, for example, writes that neocons “call their revolutionary ideology ‘Wilsonianism' . . . , but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism.” Lind's view was cited at length and with evident approval by the
National Journal,
which noted that he “isn't alone”:

Commentators from surprisingly diverse spots on the political spectrum [agree] that neocons took advantage of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to advance a longstanding agenda that is only tangentially related to keeping the United States safe from terrorism. In this view, America's invasion of Iraq and threatening of Syria have little to do with fighting terrorism, eliminating weapons of mass destruction, or promoting democracy. Instead, those actions largely have to do with settling old grievances, putting oil-rich territory into friendly hands, and tilting the balance of power in the Middle East toward Israel.

Elizabeth Drew made a similar point, if more opaquely:

Because some . . . of the neoconservatives are Jewish and virtually all are strong supporters of the Likud party's policies, the accusation has been made that their aim to “democratize” the region is driven by their desire to surround Israel with more sympathetic neighbors. Such a view would explain the otherwise puzzling statements by Wolfowitz and others before the [Iraq] war that “the road to peace in the Middle East goes through Baghdad.” But it is also the case that Bush and his chief political adviser Karl Rove are eager both to win more of the Jewish vote in 2004 than Bush did in 2000 and to maintain the support of the Christian Right, whose members are also strong supporters of Israel.

Drew's use of the word “but” at the head of the last sentence was no doubt designed to distance her from the accusation that the neocons' motive is to serve the interests of Israel, even as the words that follow the “but” only seem to confirm the charge.

More explicit, and more egregious, was the hard-Left historian Paul Buhle, who wrote in
Tikkun
that “It is almost as if the anti-Semitic Protocols of Zion, successfully fought for a century, have suddenly returned with an industrial-sized grain of truth”—that “truth” being, of course, that the hawkish policies of the neoconservatives are indeed tailored for Israel's benefit.

Perhaps the most dramatic effort to expose the hidden Jewish interest underlying neocon ideas was the BBC-TV special on America's “war party.” It was aired on the program
Panorama,
which touts itself as the British equivalent of CBS's
60 Minutes,
and the lead-in announced: “Tonight: Will America's Superhawks Drag Us into More Wars Against Their Enemies?” It did not take long for the meaning of the phrase “their enemies” to become apparent. First, however, viewers were introduced to a rogues' gallery of neoconservative interviewees, each of them filmed at an unusually close angle with the head filling the entire screen for an eerie, repulsive effect. Freeze-frame stills of the subjects were also shown, shifting suddenly from color into the look of white-on-black negatives, while in the background one heard sound effects appropriate to a lineup on a police drama. By contrast, the interviewer, Steve Bradshaw, and a number of guests hostile to the neocons were shown mostly in appealing poses.

On the show itself, Perle was introduced as “the neocons' political godfather,” a suggestive term whose implication was reinforced by a question put separately to him and another guest: “Are you a mafia?” As the camera panned over the building that houses AEI and the other arms of this “mafia,” we heard from the announcer that here was where the “future is being plotted.”

And what exactly is being “plotted”? The answer was foreshadowed early on when an unidentified woman-in-the-street said of the war in Iraq: “It seems like there's . . . another agenda that we're not really privy to and that is what concerns me most.” Several minutes later, Bradshaw returned to the same motif: “We picked up a recurrent theme of insider talk in Washington. Some leading neocons, people whisper, are strongly pro-Zionist and want to topple regimes in the Middle East to help Israel as well as the U.S.” To shed light on this “highly sensitive issue,” he then turned to Jim Lobe, identified as a “veteran neocon watcher and longstanding opponent of anti-Semitism.”

Lobe was used repeatedly as the show's resident expert. A reporter with the “alternative” media who prides himself on being a nemesis of neoconservatives, he has no special credentials as an “opponent of anti-Semitism,” but the gratuitous compliment was there for a purpose—namely, to inoculate him and his hosts against the obvious charge of Jew-baiting. For that is indeed what came next. Bradshaw posed the leading question: “You think it's legitimate to talk about the pro-Israeli politics of some of the neoconservatives?” And Lobe, looking as Jewish as his name sounds, replied: “I think it's very difficult to understand them if you don't begin at that point.” A few moments later, in a simulacrum of journalistic balance, Bradshaw allowed the Middle East specialist Meyrav Wurmser to deny any special neoconservative fidelity to Israel. Wurmser is an immigrant to the United States from Israel, and looks and sounds the part; she could not have been chosen with more care to verify the charge she was brought on to deny—that the neoconservatives are indeed a Jewish mafia, dragging both America and Britain into war after war for the sake of Israel.

If there is an element of anti-Semitism at work in some of the attacks on the neoconservatives—and there manifestly is— to call it such is not, alas, enough. Even outright canards need to be rebutted, tedious and demeaning though the exercise may be. So let us ask the question: is it true that neoconservatives are mostly Jews, and are they indeed working to shape U.S. policy out of devotion to the interests of the “Likud party” or of Israel?

Many neoconservatives are in fact Jews. Why this should be so is not self-evident, although part of the answer is surely that Jews, whenever and wherever they have been free to indulge it, exhibit a powerful attraction to politics and particularly to the play of political ideas—an attraction that is evident all across the political spectrum but especially on the Left. Indeed, the disproportionate presence of Jews in early Communist movements in eastern and central Europe became grist for the Nazis and other far-Right movements that portrayed Bolshevism as a Jewish cause whose real purpose was (yes) to serve Jewish interests. In reality, Trotsky and Zinoviev and the other Jewish Communists were no more concerned about the interests of the Jewish people than were Lenin and Stalin which is to say, not at all.

As it happens, the Jewish affinity with the Left may be one reason why neoconservatism boasts so many Jewish adherents: it is a movement whose own roots lie in the Left. But the same affinity is to be seen at work in many of the insinuations against Jewish neocons by leftists who are themselves Jews or who profess some Jewish connection. Michael Lind, for one, has gone out of his way to assert his own Jewish “descent,” and
Tikkun
is in some self-professed sense a Jewish magazine. Even the BBC's assault on the neocons featured a Jewish critic in the starring role. So passionate are these Jews in their opposition to neoconservative ideas that they have not hesitated to pander to anti-Semitism in the effort to discredit them. What about their ulterior motives, one wonders?

It may sound strange in light of the accusations against them, but in fact the careers of leading neoconservatives have rarely involved work on Middle East issues. The most distinctive of Richard Perle's many contributions to U.S. policy lie in the realm of nuclear-weapons strategy. Elliott Abrams made his mark as a point man for President Reagan's policies toward Central America. Paul Wolfowitz's long career in government includes not only high office in the State and Defense departments but also a stint as ambassador to Indonesia during which he pressed for democratization harder than any of his predecessors.

These three, as well as the rest of the neocon circle, are and were hard-liners toward the USSR, China, Nicaragua, and North Korea. Is it any wonder that they held a similar position toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq? If Israel did not exist, which of them would have favored giving Hans Blix's team still more time, or leaving the whole matter in the hands of the UN? Are we to believe that the decades-long neoconservative campaign against Communism and anti-Americanism was a fantastically farsighted Rube Goldberg machine programmed to produce some benefit for Israel somewhere down the line?

The BBC claimed to have found a smoking gun, one that others have pounced on as well. Bradshaw “In 1996, a group of neocons wrote a report intended as advice for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benny [sic] Netanyahu. It called for . . . removing Saddam Hussein from power, an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.” Perle and Douglas Feith, the latter now a high official in Bush's Defense Department, were among those who had “contributed” to this paper.

Yet even if the BBC had characterized the document accurately, it would not imply what the BBC (and not the BBC alone) suggested it did. The Americans whose names appeared on the paper had long sought Saddam's ouster, an objective that was already, in 1996, the implicit policy of the Clinton administration. It would thus make more sense to say that, in preparing a paper for Netanyahu, they were trying to influence Israeli policy on behalf of American interests than the other way around. Indeed, most Israeli officials at that time viewed Iran, the sponsor of Hizballah and Hamas, as a more pressing threat to their country than Iraq, and (then as later) would have preferred that it be given priority in any campaign against terrorism.

To make matters worse, the BBC fundamentally misrepresented the nature of the document. Contrary to Bradshaw's claim, no “group of neocons” had written it. Rather, it was the work of a rapporteur summarizing the deliberations of a conference, and was clearly identified as such. The names affixed to it were listed as attendees and not as endorsers, much less authors.

In any case, although it is true that many neocons are Jews, it is also true that many are not. Kirkpatrick, Woolsey, Michael Novak, Linda Chavez, William J. Bennett—all are of pure neocon pedigree, while other non-Jews figuring prominently in current foreign-policy debates and today called neocons include Bolton, AEI president Christopher DeMuth, and Gary Schmitt of the Project for the New American Century. These Gentile neocons are no less strong in their support of Israel than are Jewish neocons, which suggests a stance growing not out of ethnic loyalty but out of some shared analysis of the rights and wrongs of the Arab-Israel conflict.

Just as it is undeniable that many neoconservatives happen to be Jews, it is undeniable that America's war against terrorism will redound to Israel's benefit as the biggest victim of terrorism. But the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, taking at a stroke three thousand lives, pushed America pretty high up on the list of terror's victims. That blow, and the certain knowledge that the terrorists would try for even greater carnage in the future, drove us to war in 2001 just as Pearl Harbor had done in 1941.

That earlier decision by the United States suffused Winston Churchill with joy, for England was then on the front lines with the Nazis just as Israel is today on the front lines with terrorists. At the time there were those who said we were going to war for the sake of England. For that matter, there were some who said we were going to war for the sake of the Jews: the subject is perennial. Then, as now, they were wrong.

If any single episode exposes the famousness of the charge that neoconservative policies amount to Jewish special pleading, it was the 1990s war in Bosnia—the same conflict that served to crystallize a post–cold-war approach to foreign policy that might fairly be described as neoconservative. It had been in large part as a response to the Soviet challenge that neoconservatism took shape in the first place, so it is only natural that the end of the cold war should have invited the question Norman Podhoretz raised in 1996: was there anything left of neoconservatism to distinguish it from plain, unprefixed conservatism?