The Greenfield-Cohen-Rice Suck up

[James DiEugenio]

In my recent reply to the Harris thread I referred to this article.  In it, I did my best to uncover the origins of the Neocon movement.

I traced it to the Ford administration.  Which I think is proper, the guy who was so instrumental in covering up the death of JFK would be responsible for the obliteration of his foreign policy.  I also thought this was interesting since Jared Cohen worked for both HRC and Rice.  And Rice tried to go after JFK in two areas, his civil rights program and Vietnam.  Which shows you that a real propagandist--which she was--never stops.  I think she would have fit right in with HRC, Power and the other Rice.

https://kennedysandking.com/articles/the-greenfield-cohen-rice-suck-up

Edited July 8, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

This article did draw a few responses when I linked it a couple of weeks ago.  I'd never been aware of Ford's November 75 actions in a sense giving us Bush, Scowcroft, Rumsfeld and Cheney.  No wonder Bush praised him so highly at his funeral.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks for that Ron.

 

The reason I think its the beginning of the Neocon movement is because it was after that rearrangement of the Ford administration that Team B was allowed to go in and do battle with the CIA over its estimates of the Russian threat.  And the CIA ended up losing.  Reagan used those same people and those estimates to launch his ridiculous defense build up.  And, IMO, the Pentagon budget has been out of whack ever since.

Further, these neocons have been allowed to have a table at the discussion level, when in fact, they are utterly crazy nutcases in foreign policy.  Give me a break, PNAC?!  In the article I show that a lot of these fruitcakes came from the cabal of Sen. Henry Jackson. He was not called the senator from Boeing for nothing.  His ideas about foreign policy were opposed to Kennedy's.  But after the Kennedys were killed, and with the rise of the neocon movement through Ford, they came to a position of primacy.  Especially under Bush I and 2, and Reagan. 

It was a sad day when Ford gave Rumsfeld and Cheney the keys to the castle.

Edited July 9, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

17 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

 It was a sad day when Ford gave Rumsfeld and Cheney the keys to the castle.

What kind of day was it when Donald Trump appointed John Bolton and Mike Pompeo as his foreign policy chiefs?

<crickets>

[Ron Ecker]

8 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

What kind of day was it when Donald Trump appointed John Bolton and Mike Pompeo as his foreign policy chiefs?

 

What kind of day was it when Donald Trump was born?

 

[James DiEugenio]

I don't know, why don't you look up the weather report?

Getting back to the history in the article, what it says is that both the Democrats and GOP were inflicted with this neocon strain.  As I point out, many of the followers and admirers of Henry Jackson ended up going over to the GOP.  A good example I used was maybe the nuttiest fruitcake of them all, Wolfowitz.  The guy who is usually given credit for being the architect of the invasion of Iraq.  He used to work for Carter.  Richard Perle actually began his career on Jackson's staff.  He is usually given credit for convincing Reagan to turn down the Iceland deal from Gorbachev.

So when Cheney and Rumsfeld started this whole Team B override of the CIA, they really opened up Pandora's Box and let all the nutcases out.  Thus began the neocon movement which managed to infect both parties.  And , it was the end of Kennedy's foreign policy also.  Because although LBJ and RMN had ended the aspect of engagement in the Third World, NIxon and Kissinger did have the detente attempts with China and Russia. (As Hilsman noted, JFK first surfaced the China overture in 1961 with him.) . But it was  that policy that Team B was supposed to stamp out.  And it did.  That is why I say, this moment under Jerry Ford marked the ultimate burial of Kennedy's foreign policy.

The Neocon movement mushroomed from there. And it really flowered under Reagan, Bush I and 2, and it stayed alive under Obama in HRC.  Trump has employed two of the advocates, Bolton and Abrams.

If you read this essay along with my introduction to A Lie too Big to Fail, I think more of the history becomes evident. With the assassination of RFK, the Democratic party was pretty much wrecked by the Chicago Convention. At RFK's funeral, both Daley and Hayden  were fighting back tears during the mass. But in Chicago, at the convention, they did battle. As I wrote, RFK was the glue that kept that from happening.  After that, the Democratic party, or what was left of it, split in two along that divide--the McGovernites and the CDM, which was led by Henry Jackson and was a reaction to McGovern. The CDM found both the Democrats, and the Nixon/Kissinger crowd, too liberal for them--that is how nuts they were.  So Cheney and Rumsfeld performed a coup under Ford in 1975: among other things, they weakened Kissinger and brought in Bush as CIA Director.  Bush did two things: he helped Teams B roll the CIA and he defended CIA from Frank Church, e.g. he helped get Dan Schorr fired. Schorr originally wrote that Ford was determined to cover up assassinations with the Rockefeller Commission.

It always helped understanding the past to explain how we got into this mess. Although, I have come to agree with Santayana, we don't learn from history.  And I blame that on the MSM.

 

[James DiEugenio]

One more point on this.

If you recall, way back at the beginning of his campaign, Trump actually was running as opposed to the neocons.  He attacked Jeb Bush for his brother destabilizing the Middle East, he wanted to explore ways to be friendly with Russia, he talked about the plight of the Palestinians, and he called in Tulsi Gabbard to discuss her views of regime change wars.  He did not invade Syria.

But as time has gone on, and as one after another advisor has left him, it appears he has now been influenced.  As WN has said, there is evidence that this came from AIPAC, which is a real danger on the scene I think.  And he brings in Abrams for Venezuela.

Its an interesting story, this pirouette that no one in the MSM has addressed.

Edited July 10, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Ecker]

Trump also pirouettes from JFK conspiracy theory (Ted Cruz's dad in league with Oswald) to withholding documents. And I wonder, with his expressed disdain for the intelligence community, why he follows its orders on JFK.

 

 

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

On more point on this.

If you recall, way back at the beginning of his campaign, Trump actually was running as opposed to the neocons.

And those of us familiar with Trump knew it was BS.  The man has no core principles, no core philosophy.  He says whatever strikes him as the most self-serving thing to say in the moment.

Quote

 

  He attacked Jeb Bush for his brother destabilizing the Middle East,

And he lied about his own support for that war.

Quote

he wanted to explore ways to be friendly with Russia,

Sure.  Putin was willing to help him get elected.

Quote

he talked about the plight of the Palestinians, and he called in Tulsi Gabbard to discuss her views of regime change wars.  He did not invade Syria.

Civilian deaths from drone strikes went from 80 a month under Obama to 360 a month under Trump.

Quote

But as time has gone on, and as one after another advisor has left him, it appears he has now been influenced. 

Trump is always influenced by the last person he talks to.

Quote

 

As WN has said, there is evidence that this came from AIPAC, which is a real danger on the scene I think.  And he brings in Abrams for Venezuela.

Again: Trump is always influenced by the last person he talks to.

 

Edited July 10, 2019 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

Here's Donald "Peacenik" Trump in 2015:

More "Peacenik" Trump:

So sad to see so many people fall for Trump's"Peacenik" Neo-Con scam.

Edited July 10, 2019 by Cliff Varnell

[Andrew Prutsok]

It was always my understanding that the neocon movement was launched by William Kristol (senior), Norman Podherotz, David Hororwitz and like-minded former left wing (hawkish)Jewish intellectuals in the 1960s. The Ford Administration may have given its followers their first taste of power, but the movement pre-dates his administration.

[James DiEugenio]

If you want to do an intellectual type of history Andrew, then you can trace it to Wattenberg and his book The Real Majority in 1970. Horowitz was still part of Ramparts in the late sixties.

From what I know the first time the word was actually used was by Mike Harrington in 1973.

But that is not what I was doing.  I was trying to show when their doctrines first came to power.

[Anthony Thorne]

Robert L. Richardson's online thesis from 2009, NEOCONSERVATISM: ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION 1945-1980 is a really useful piece of work, and could have been a book. He jumps back a bit earlier than the Ford era and digs into the participants and players, to show how the whole movement came together. That whole thesis can be read online for free here. The PDF is well worth getting.

https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/dissertations/7w62f9133

Also worth reading - and I only heard of the book for the first time a couple of weeks ago - is Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould's INVISIBLE HISTORY - AFGHANISTAN'S UNTOLD STORY. They have a very long central section where they follow the creation of the Team B group, and look both back and forward to the neocon/defence establishment's use of pretexts to start wars. The authors are no dummies and despite the book having accolades from guys like Chomsky, the volume follows the thread of things a little bit further than I'd typically expect from a mainstream volume. They discuss the Safari Club, and there's even reference to a political assassination or two. That volume is on Amazon but there's also a free online copy at Archive.org for those interested.

I haven't read it but Wolfowitz apparently appears as a nutcase supporting character in Saul Bellow's RAVELSTEIN, disguised as a defence official named Philip Gorman. Bellow knew a lot of the neocons socially and was a signatory to the late 70's variant of the Committee on the Present Danger.

 

[Ron Bulman]

I'm not well versed in the subject of the neocons coming to power.  But one book I have read, Nancy McLean's Democracy in Chains seems to relate.  The group Ford elevated in November 1975 seem to taken the Powell memo to heart.

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

Especially the part on the judiciary.  "The judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change".  "This is a vast area of opportunity … if in turn, business is willing to provide the funds".  James Buchanan at George Mason and Henry Manne at the university of Miami started cranking out the conservative/libertarian/right wing lawyers - future jurists, necessary.  

Thanks to Mitch McConnell's stonewalling when Scalia died then Trumps appointments they seem to have achieved that goal.  A supreme court majority that won't address gerrymandering.  One that had already given US citizens United, making corporations people, in essence legalizing the purchase of the government.   

[James DiEugenio]

The McLean book is an important volume.  I used it in my four part essay on the Kennedys and Civil Rights.  Because she shows how this movement began with resistance to Brown V Board in Virginia.  And how they schemed every which way they could to avoid that ruling.  It got so bad that the Kennedys had to literally create a school district since the Virginia legislature would not spend the money to educate African American kids. 

http://edu.lva.virginia.gov/dbva/items/show/204

What people do not understand is how complete the takeover of our institutions has been.  And the Federalist Society has been crucial to that. Which is one of the reasons I have such a problem with Biden and the Anita Hill episode.  

With the Koch brothers money, the neocons began a long march to dominance which extends not just throughout Washington but also with the GOP at the state level.  ANd the damage they do while in power is extremely difficult to undo.  See Scott Walker in Wisconsin.  Through voter suppression and gerrymandering they manage to control the agenda even though they are in a minority hence the title of McLean's book, Democracy In Chains.