“9/11 and the
Neocon
Agenda”
Vancouver
Hearings,
June, 2012
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Purpose:
To establish philosophical
predisposition to crime
Neocon ideas,
historical consequences
• Economy crippled
• Constitution
shredded
• On the brink of war
w/Iran, Russia,
China?
If 9/11 didn’t exist, the neocons
would have had to invent it.
• Islamist militants had neither the capacity
nor the desire to stage such a
spectacular, and spectacularly
counterproductive, attack.
• Orchestrating 9/11 would be the
quintessential act of the Straussian
philosopher-king.
What is “neoconservatism”?
Two approaches:
• 1) Theory: Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss
and the American Right (1997)
• 2) Practice: Stephen Sniegoski, The
Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle
East, and the National Interest of Israel
(2008)
Leo Strauss,
Founder of
neoconservatism:
from
Nazi Germany
to the
neocon USA
Strauss “more extremist” than his
mentor, top Nazi philosopher
Carl Schmitt.
•
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•
•
•
•
Politics = enmity
We need enemies
So invent them!
“Domestic enemies” OK
Killing enemies OK
Leaders above the law
Leo Strauss: the UberSchmitt
Strauss radicalizes Schmitt, adds distorted
version of Plato’s “noble lie” doctrine:
“Instead of descending into the cave with knowledge
of the sunny truth, (Strauss) believes that the role of
the philosopher is to manipulate the images in the
cave. He teaches that philosophers must fabricate
lies for the many while embracing the darkness for
themselves.” - Shadia Drury
“Death to Socrates!” -Strauss
Strauss on natural rights:
“Those who are fit to rule are those who
realize there is no morality and that there
is only one natural right, the right of the
superior to rule over the inferior.”
-Strauss scholar Shadia Drury, summarizing
Strauss’s teaching on natural rights.
Francis Boyle, Professor of
International Law, University of Illinois:
"The United States could not care less about Muslim life.
And the same is true for the genocidal apartheid regime in
Israel...They would be happy to break the taboo of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki against Muslims in Iran. It would create no
problem at all for them.
“Indeed, I went to school with these Neo-Conservatives at
the University of Chicago. Wolfowitz was there, Chalabi,
Khalilzad, Shulsky, all the rest of them. I went through the
exact same program. Their mentor, Professor Leo Strauss.
And who was his teacher in Germany and his sponsor?
Professor Carl Schmitt, who went on to become the most
notorious Nazi law Professor of his day, justifying every
atrocity that the Nazis inflicted on everyone.
Francis Boyle, Professor of
International Law, University of Illinois:
“We must understand that these NeoConservatives are in fact Neo-Nazis.
They have espoused the Nazi doctrine of
Schmitt and Strauss and Machiavelli and
Nietzsche, the 'superman'. They are the
supermen, and the Muslims are the
scum of the earth.”
Strauss’s teaching culminates
in the Noble Big Lie
The Big Lie: “The broad masses of people ... more
easily fall victims to the big lie than the small one,
since they themselves sometimes tell little fibs, but
would be too ashamed to tell great lies. Such
falsehoods do not even occur to them, so they cannot
believe others capable of the colossal impudence of
these most scandalous distortions. Even when faced
with the facts in such a case, they will still linger in
doubt and waver and continue to suppose that there
must be some truth to it.” -Hitler
The Noble Big Lie...
• For the neocons, the bigger the lie, the
more noble. “After all, a great lie, one
that is believed, gives form to the
void, imposes order on chaos, and
creates the world ex nihilo.”
• Shadia Drury, summarizing Strauss’s
advocacy of the “noble big lie.”
Straussian
thought* leads
directly to 9/11
and the “war on
terror”
*or at least the Ledeen/Wolfowitz/
Perle interpretation thereof
9/11 & war on terror a big lie?
• Gives form to post-cold-war void of
enemies.
• Imposes order on chaos: “Now you’re
either with us or against us.”
• Creates world ex nihilo: “We're an
empire now, and when we act, we create
our own reality.” -Bush aide (Karl Rove?)
• 9/11 not prosecuted because we
“cannot believe others capable of the colossal impudence...”
Michael Ledeen:
“In order to
achieve the most
noble
accomplishments,
the leader
may have to
enter into evil.”
Neocons: Great leaders enter
into evil, then leave it.
Strauss: To beat Hitler, we
must adopt his methods
• Wolfowitz’s father’s family perished in
the Holocaust; he will later say that what
happened to European Jews during
World War II “shaped a lot of my views.”
[New York Times, 4/22/2002] Feith will
tell the New Yorker in 2005, “[My] family
got wiped out by Hitler, and… all this
stuff about working things out—well,
talking to Hitler to resolve the problem
didn’t make any sense.”
Neocon-Nazi parallels
• False-flag attacks used to seize
absolute executive power, start wars
• Media propaganda blankets, unites
nation
• “Inferior, darker-skinned, Middle Eastern
Semites” demonized
• Colonial projects: “1000-year-Reich” in
Slavic east, “New American Century”
via Middle East (CentCom = Israel!)
Seymour Hersh:
“The amazing thing is we have been taken
over basically by a cult, eight or nine neoconservatives have somehow grabbed the
government. Just how and why and how they
did it so efficiently, will have to wait for much
later historians and better documentation
than we have now, but they managed to
overcome the bureaucracy and the Congress,
and the press, with the greatest of ease. It
does say something about how fragile our
Democracy is.”
2. Neoconservatism in
Practice
• Philip Weiss: The
neoconservatives
originated as a largely
Jewish movement in the
1970s “in good part
out of concern for
Israel’s security.”
MondoWeiss.net
“...in good part.”
Wolfowitz can't be accused of
dual loyalties.
“Neocon = Jew?” NO!
• 2003 Annual Survey of American
Jewish Opinion: Jews opposed Iraq war
by 54 percent to 43 percent.
• 2005 Annual Survey of American
Jewish Opinion: 70 percent of Jews
opposed the war on Iraq, while only 28
continued to support it.
• Jews more anti-war than other
American ethnic groups
Neocons = Likudniks
“The neocon defense intellectuals, as
well as being in or around the actual
Pentagon, are at the center of a
metaphorical Pentagon of the Israel
lobby and the religious right, plus
conservative think tanks, foundations
and media empires.” -Michael Lind,
defector from neoconservatism
Purpose of 9/11 wars:
“To reconfigure the Middle East in ways
favorable to Israeli security.”
-Virginia Tilley
(Ph.D.
UW-Madison
1997; author,
The One-State
Solution )
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Who are the neocons?
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They left out
a few key players:
Edward Luttwak
Author, Coup d’Etat: A Practical Handbook
Albert Wohlstetter
Named in his obituary
“the world’s most
influential unknown
figure of the past half
century,” Wohlstetter was
Wolfowitz’s mentor and
Richard Perle’s father-inlaw. Radical pro-Israeli,
defense “hawk.”
Paul Wolfowitz
Inherited “top US strategist” role from Paul
Nitze. Nitze shaped US Cold War strategy.
Wolfowitz shaped post-Cold War strategy.
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Philip Zelikow
Author of “Bush Doctrine” of
pre-emptive (aggressive) war.
• A self-described expert in “the creation and
maintenance of public myths” especially those of
“searing or molding events” that change history, like
Pearl Harbor
• Effectively the sole author of the 9/11 Commission
Report
• Wrote the Report in outline before investigation
commenced
• Conferred secretly with Karl Rove
1968: Luttwak's Coup d'Etat
• Stanley Hilton, a graduate of Harvard
Law School, studied under Strauss with
Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.
Hilton's senior thesis detailed a plan to
establish a Presidential Dictatorship
using a fabricated 'Pearl Harbor-like
incident' as justification. Hilton Perle,
Wolfowitz, Strauss, etc. discussed an
array of different plots and incidents 'like
September 11th' and 'flying airplanes
into buildings way back in the 60s'.
1979: Jerusalem Conference
on International Terrorism
(JCIT)
• Convened by Netanyahu
• Featured G.H.W. Bush, Richard Pipes,
Sen. Henry Jackson, Shimon Peres
• Created “war on terror” to mobilize
Western populations behind aggressive
and expensive military policies
1996: “A Clean Break” document
• Commissioned by Netanyahu
• Lead writer Richard Perle
• Co-authors: Douglas Feith, David
Wurmser
• Called for imposing regime change
throughout Middle East, starting with
Iraq - so “Israel could TRANSCEND its
enemies.”
September, 2000: PNAC’s
“Rebuilding America’s Defenses”
• “The process of transformation is likely
to be a long one, absent some
cataclysmic and catalyzing event - like a
new Pearl Harbor.”
• The “transformation” sought was nearly
identical to Netanyahu’s “Clean Break”
plan: Middle East regime change,
starting with Iraq.
Bin Laden: I didn’t do it! (FBI agrees)
• “I would like to assure the world that I did not
plan the recent attacks, which seems to have
been planned by people for personal reasons.”
Osama Bin Laden ]
• “Confession” video
“bogus.” -Bruce
Lawrence
9/11 not just justified, but mandatory,
according to tenets of
neoconservatism.
Osama bin Wolfowitz all along?
What can
YOU do?
An
easyto- read,
thoroughlydocumented
deconstruction
of the war
on terror.