Neocons Issues Beyond Palo Alto, posted by Jag Singh, a resident of the Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhood, on Nov 26, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Hardly had the results of the midterm elections been announced, when the neocons – the architects of ‘America’s greatest blunder’ tried to distance themselves from their former leader to assuage their own guilt. Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum began finger pointing and claimed their grand Iraq prewar plans, had been undermined by the incompetence of the Bush administration. It is shameful that Richard Perle, who once occupied the lofty position of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee and had relied on Ahmad Chalabi’s, fictional account of Iraq’s WMD’s, to buttress the case for the Iraq war, is now heaping his scorn and disdain at his former ‘stay the course’ task master. In order to deflect mounting criticism and as a face saving measure, Perle still insists that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s. David Frum, the former White House speechwriter, also blamed his former boss. Kenneth Adelman, a diehard neocon who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, is also having difficulty justifying his earlier Febryray 2003 op-ed article in the Washington Post in which he stated, "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." He has also jumped on the bandwagon blaming Bush and his close advisors for being ‘deadly dysfunctional.’ These self serving neocons deserve public scorn for their role in railroading our great nation into a disastrous Middle East conflict which has drained our national Treasury and aborted the lives of thousands of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
Posted by Cynic, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Nov 27, 2006 at 4:35 pm
You seem bitter and angry that Americans are willing to risk money and their lives to take a chance on bringing freedom to a far-off people. Maybe the campaign was ill-conceived, and like all ventures it could have been conducted better. But your venom is ill-judged.
Make no mistake about it - the Republicans did not lose this election over Iraq. Republicans lost this election because they abandoned their principles of small government and lower taxes. The voters were more unhappy about profligate spending than about our well-intentioned efforts to bring down despots. Ned Lamont lost by running on an anti-Iraq platform. Democrat Joe Manchin won in West Virginia by promising to cut taxes.
Perhaps the 2008 elections will help to sharpen these issues.
Posted by Draw the Line, a resident of Stanford, on Nov 28, 2006 at 3:29 pm
Thanks, Cynic. It is nice to see the "rest of the story" somewhere around here.
You are absolutely right. In an election with about 40% turnout, the Republicans lost because Republican voters stayed home in frustration that the Republicans abandoned so much of everything else they were also voted in to do..educate the public in order to pass real Social Security reform; shut down our borders to illegal entry, while reforming our laws to put already present, law-abiding, hard working illegal aliens on the path toward citizenship; cut spending; continue to push for education reform; confirm a strong person like Bolton to the UN, place more non-activist judges into court benches etc. The Republicans knuckled under to the minority Democrats far too often, they didn't use the muscle of their majority, and so they looked more and more like Democrats.
Like you said, CONSERVATIVES, be they Democrats or Independant, like Joe Lieberman, won over more liberal Republicans. Our nation is upside down in party definition.
I see repeatedly a complete misunderstanding by the Democrats of why the Republicans lost, which perhaps is good for us in the long run. Unless Pelosi, Shumer, Reid, Kennedy, Rangel and the likes wake up and realize what really happened, the nation will see what the Democrat leadership really stands for now, versus when I was young and a Democrat.
Our country has moved so far left, that just standing still,( and growing in understanding about what is helpful for a society and what isn't) I became a Republican.
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