Subject: [big campaign] Neocons Slither Back Into Public Debate
From: Adam Blickstein <[email-masked]>
To: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:43:09 -0400
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

Neocons Slither Back Into Public Debate

Washington, D.C. - In the last nine months, the American homeland has not been attacked, the most significant plot against the U.S. since 9-11 has been stopped, key terrorist operatives have been killed overseas, terror operations have been disrupted in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, and global support for the U.S. has skyrocketed.  Yet prominent neoconservatives Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice President, and Bill Kristol have launched a new foreign policy group dedicated not to preventing attacks against American but rather one devoted to attacking President Obama. Subtly titled "Keep America Safe (KAS)", the initiative is more about defending the Bush administration's legacy and its failed policies than advancing approaches that would enhance American security.

What role can Americans play in keeping their country secure?  Two of KAS's recommended "five ways to keep America safe" are "write news editors" and "call talk radio." Cheney and Kristol's records -- Cheney's short and unsuccessful tenure at the State Department and Bill Kristol's support for invading Iraq and his outlandish claims before and after the war -- should place these two firmly on the fringes of American politics. KAS' advice is spectacularly reminiscent of President Bush's admonition to Americans to "go shopping" after 9-11. The policies that KAS advocates are simply a retreading of the same neoconservative foreign policies that failed so dramatically under the Bush administration.

While neocons continue to breathlessly advocate and attempt to advance their past failures as solutions to the threats we currently face, the American people have wisely turned the page.

Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol form new group to attack Obama and promote radical neoconservative policies. Politico reports, "Former Vice President Dick Cheney's eldest daughter Liz will launch a new group aimed at rallying opposition to the "radical" foreign policy of the Obama administration which it says has succeeded only in undermining the nation's security.  The new group, Keep America Safe, will make the case against President Barack Obama's moves to wrench America away from Bush era foreign policy on issues from detaining alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay to building a missile shield in Eastern Europe."

The group does not enjoy universal conservative support:  Freddy Gray of the American Conservative has even repudiated KAS: "Liz Cheney's 'Keep America Safe' group, a new-fangled PR initiative against executive branch 'weakness' on foreign policy, is obviously preposterous. But then what should one expect from the Angler's spawn?... for readers of realist persuasion, the Obama policies she [Deborah Burlingame, KAS board member] objects to are surely the most (only?) attractive aspects of his presidency. With America still ruining herself abroad thanks to the Bush Doctrine, the idea that it is of tantamount importance for Obama to preserve precisely the same foreign policy as his predecessor is laughable."

Politico highlights how the organization is structured to launch attacks, not promote policy choices: "The group's mechanics are largely a product of former campaign aides to Senator John McCain: Michael Goldfarb, now a Weekly Standard blogger, is an adviser to the group; its executive director is McCain war room chief Aaron Harison, and the video was produced by Justin Germany, the McCain aide who produced a campaign video titled, 'The One,' which mocked Obama as a messianic figure." [Politico, 10/13/09<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=4pw46adab.0.0.olnitxbab.0&ts=S0417&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com%2Fnews%2Fstories%2F1009%2F28212.html&id=preview>. Freddy Gray, The American Conservative, 10/13/09<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=4pw46adab.0.0.olnitxbab.0&ts=S0417&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amconmag.com%2Fblog%2F2009%2F10%2F13%2Fkeep-america-feared%2F&id=preview>]

Keep America Safe's message undercut by board members Liz Cheney's and Bill Kristol's incompetence.  In a May debate at Rockefeller University on strategies for dealing with Iran, Cheney argued that the "threat of military force" was the only way to convince Iran to "get serious about sanctions."  Former Undersecretary of State Nick Burns responded by blasting Cheney and her father, accusing them of living "in an alternate universe."  According to the Washington Post's Al Kamen, a pre-debate poll of 430 audience members showed that 34 percent favored Cheney's position, with 33 percent supporting Burns and another 33 percent undecided.  But, "[a]fter the one-hour, 45-minute debate, Cheney's position was favored by 35 percent, while the Burns team rocketed to a whopping 59 percent vote and undecideds dropped to 6 percent." Marina Ottaway, senior associate and co-director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the American Prospect "She came in knowing very little about the Middle East. She had a mandate to do democracy promotion, but she had very little familiarity with the subject. ... They deliberately picked a person who was not a Middle East specialist, so that the conventional wisdom, well, let me rephrase, so that real, actual knowledge of the issues in the region wouldn't interfere with policy."

Bill Kristol too suffers from a well-documented credibility deficit.  Even while the mission in Afghanistan continued, Kristol argued that a war in Iraq "could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East."  Worse, on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Kristol declared: "Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president." [Politico, 5/12/09<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=4pw46adab.0.0.olnitxbab.0&ts=S0417&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com%2Fblogs%2Fbensmith%2F0509%2FCheney_in_Manhattan_A_giant_conspiracy_on_Iran.html&id=preview>. Washington Post, 5/15/09<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=4pw46adab.0.0.olnitxbab.0&ts=S0417&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fwp-dyn%2Fcontent%2Farticle%2F2009%2F05%2F14%2FAR2009051404242.html&id=preview>. American Prospect, 5/21/06<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=4pw46adab.0.0.olnitxbab.0&ts=S0417&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.prospect.org%2Fcs%2Farticles%3Farticle%3Dthe_commissars_in_town&id=preview>. Bill Kristol, via the The Nation, 9/18/02<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=4pw46adab.0.0.olnitxbab.0&ts=S0417&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenation.com%2Fblogs%2Fcapitalgames%2F153112&id=preview>. Bill Kristol, via the The Nation, 3/01/03<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=4pw46adab.0.0.olnitxbab.0&ts=S0417&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenation.com%2Fblogs%2Fcapitalgames%2F153112&id=preview>.]

Keep America Safe seeks to promote the Bush-era policies that failed to keep us safe. CNN reports that "The group plans to tackle hot-button issues like the way forward in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense spending, CIA interrogation techniques, and the planned closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility..." These are the precisely issues that were the Bush administration's greatest failures.  As Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly writes, "Liz Cheney added that the group would defend and promote Bush-era policies: 'There's no turning away from that legacy at all.' That's not unexpected -- self-reflection is not one of the neocons' strengths -- but it does offer an opportunity to remind the Cheney/Kristol crowd that we tried it their way, and it was a spectacular failure. 'Keep America Safe' looks back at the Bush era and sees a national security record to be proud of. Except for the catastrophic events of 9/11, and the anthrax attacks against Americans, and terrorist attacks against U.S. allies, and the terrorist attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Bush's inability to capture those responsible for 9/11, and waging an unnecessary war that inspired more terrorists, and the success terrorists had in exploiting Bush's international unpopularity, they may have a point. The truth is, Cheney/Kristol had their day. They got to do exactly what they wanted to do -- torture, preemptive war, abandoning the rule of law, abandoning democratic norms, alienating allies, ignoring the concept of international cooperation -- and they failed anyway."

Michael Cohen writes in Politico today, "the tables are turning. Democrats have narrowed the Republican advantage on national security. They are seen as more effective when it comes to improving global respect for America and working closely with the country's allies. And in a poll result that would have raised eyebrows only a few years ago, President Barack Obama is more trusted on foreign policy than he is on the economy and health care. Today, more than seven in 10 Americans consider him a strong leader." [CNN, 10/13/09<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=4pw46adab.0.0.olnitxbab.0&ts=S0417&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2009%2FPOLITICS%2F10%2F13%2Fcheney.obama%2F&id=preview>. Washington Monthly, 10/13/09<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=4pw46adab.0.0.olnitxbab.0&ts=S0417&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonmonthly.com%2Farchives%2Findividual%2F2009_10%2F020397.php&id=preview>. Michael Cohen, Politico, 10/14/09<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=4pw46adab.0.0.olnitxbab.0&ts=S0417&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com%2Fnews%2Fstories%2F1009%2F28237.html&id=preview>]
###
Adam Blickstein
Communications Director
National Security Network
202-289-7113 (office)
617-335-0859 (mobile)
[email-masked]

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "big campaign" group.

To post to this group, send to [email-masked]

To unsubscribe, send email to [email-masked]

E-mail [email-masked] with questions or concerns
 
This is a list of individuals. It is not affiliated with any group or organization.
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---