Lobe: The Role of the Weekly Standard, Devoted to Israel, in Promoting War

• Lobe: The Role of the Weekly Standard, Devoted to Israel, in Promoting War
  by Jim Lobe, Lobelog, “On Boys, Frogs, And The Weekly Standard”, via https://israelpalestinenews.org/
  Pro-Israel neocons at the Weekly Standard, Project for a New American Century, & Wall Street Journal promoted disastrous U.S. invasions…  
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  … The meaning is pretty clear (and its application to U.S. policy in Central America both then and now particularly pertinent), and I recalled it with special force a couple of weeks ago when I read this sentence in the eulogy by New York Times columnist David Brooks to the staff and contributors of the about-to-be-deceased Weekly Standard, for which he was a senior editor. [David Brooks’ son served in the Israeli military, a fact that Brooks failed to divulge while he was commenting on Israel.]
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  It was and remains a warm, fun and convivial group.
  I witnessed a tiny fragment of that “fun” back around 2005 at an afternoon Council on Foreign Relations event, where frequent Standard contributor Max Boot had offered his latest wisdom on the challenges faced by the U.S. in Iraq and elsewhere. During the reception that followed, I was standing at the side of the room when a chuckling Bill Kristol half-ran by me with his iconic shit-eating grin chased by a laughing-out-loud Brooks—to what end, I had no idea. They were clearly having a good time, albeit in a way that reminded me quite a lot of playing tag during recess in third grade. This “horsing around” was taking place at a moment when the occupation in Iraq, which all three men eagerly promoted, had devolved into a full-scale insurgency, and U.S. troops and Iraqis were dying in growing numbers.
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  I have no doubt the Standard’s associates were a “fun” bunch, if not of the elementary grade-school kind, then more like the highly privileged Ivy-League frat-boy type sitting around for late-night liquor-fueled bull sessions about whatever comes to mind—from Victorian mores, to what constitutes real manliness (read any number of articles by Kristol’s Harvard mentor, Harvey Mansfield), to “political correctness” and popular culture, to past sexual escapades and fond reminiscences of summer camp in the Berkshires or Poconos. As noted approvingly by Brooks, these “boys” loved esoterica (especially if embedded in western civilization) but also “delight[ed] in the latest good movies and TV shows, the best new cocktails and the casual pleasures of life.”
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  Just the kind who, given their privilege, wit, literary talent, and family connections, would graduate into a pseudo-intellectual elite whose views about all the above subjects and more could and would eventually bring about real-world consequences for millions of people, let alone frogs. The kind, to use another metaphor from the animal kingdom, who richly deserve the moniker, “chickenhawk.”
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  The Standard’s staff and authors reached the zenith of their influence during George W. Bush’s first term, when the advice offered on the magazine’s pages and website—especially regarding the desirability of invading Iraq, not to mention throwing Washington’s military weight around the Middle East and beyond more generally—far too often translated into official U.S. policy.
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  “We have a funny relationship with the top tier of the administration,” explained Kristol on the eve of the invasion in a New York Times article entitled, “White House Listens When Weekly Speaks.” They very much keep us at arm’s length, but Dick Cheney does send over someone to pick up 30 copies of the magazine every Monday.” Or, as Slate’s David Plotz, added: “The Weekly Standard is hugely influential in policy making, much more so than any other magazine. What they are doing seems to sway what is going on in the administration. This has become a good and important war, in part because of what they have written.”
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  Project for a New American Century
  There was really no surprise in this. Just a few floors up from The Standard’s offices were those of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a veritable hive of pro-war activity and part-time Pentagon “consultants.” AEI was, more specifically, the home of Richard Perle, a favorite of Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who, as chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, played a critical role in getting Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith placed into their posts as Deputy Secretary of Defense and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, respectively, and of positioning Iraqi expatriate con man par excellence Ahmad Chalabi at the center of the administration’s policy- and decision-making. And with Gary Schmitt–co-founder (with Kristol and Robert Kagan [husband of Victoria Nuland] and executive director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)—holding court within a spitball’s distance of The Standard staff in Kristol’s warren of offices on the fifth floor, the line between the top echelons of the war party within the administration, AEI, and The Standard was about as straight and true as one could ever find between an administration, a think tank (actually, more of a “letterhead organization”), and a publication.
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• whoobie2008 Published on Jul 26, 2013
  Published on May 4, 2013 On Morning Joe, an honest and courageous Carl Bernstein says that because he’s Jewish, he could be permitted to reveal on national television that “Jewish” neo-cons were responsible for persuading President George W. Bush into starting an “insane” war against Iraq.
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• “The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservatives, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history.”
  – Ari Shavit Ha’aretz News Service (Israel) April 5, 2003
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  “A new generation has its hands on the tiller of power…Jewish neocons have emerged as the Pentagon’s Paladins…Most striking is how unmentionable this is in the liberal press…These well-placed hawks are Jewish-Americans and it is their hardcore Zionism that is shaping American foreign policy. Zionism is fast becoming a poisoned chalice…There is real madness here, but who will stop it?”
  – Ann Pettifer Common Sense December 18, 2002 

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