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The neocons’ dishonesty
Victor Hanson’s weekly column at NRO a few weeks ago began this way:
Public relations between the so-called West and the Islamic Middle East have reached a level of abject absurdity. Hamas, whose charter pledges the very destruction of Israel, comes to power only through American-inspired pressures to hold Western-style free elections on the West Bank. No one expected the elders of a New England township, but they were nevertheless somewhat amused that the result was right out of a Quentin Tarantino movie.Now focus on that last phrase: “they were nevertheless somewhat amused that the result was right out of a Quentin Tarantino movie.” “They” refers to the people who thought democracy, while not perfect, would lead the Mideast away from Muslim extremism. But that “they” includes Hanson himself, doesn’t it? Yet instead of speaking of “I, we, our team,” he speaks of an unspecified “they.” Second, notice that this “they” was not shocked or surprised by the Hamas election (which was Secretary Rice’s own characterization of her and her collegues’s reaction), but only “amused.” So Hanson, instead of honestly saying, “I was shocked and surprised that the results of Mideast democracy were the opposite of what I’ve been touting for the last four years,” remarks that some unspecified observers were “somewhat amused” by it.
This dishonesty—this refusal to take responsibility for the failures of the policy of which they have been the principal promoters—runs rife among the pro-Bush neoconservatives. In a well-ordered society it would disqualify them from positions of intellectual leadership. But because their only mainstream alternatives at present, the Democrats, are floridly irrational, and disloyal to boot, the neocons appear as intellectual paragons. Email entry |