Donald Devine on Neocon hijacking of the right
Writing by abuhatem on Monday, 2 of June , 2008 at 4:27 am
Donald Devine, the head of the American Conservative Union, and an official in the Reagan administration offered a striking critique of the neoconservatives and their desire for empire before the war in Iraq even began. Devine, like Paul Craig Roberts another Reagan administration official, and other antiwar traditional conservatives, have been drowned out by pro-war neocon voices within the Right. Devine is highly educated in political theory and so his comments are always poignant. Here are some of Devine’s comments right after the war in Iraq:
Intellect abhors a vacuum as much as physical matter. So “national greatness” neo-conservatism soon replaced limited government as the ideal and filled the pages of the journals on the right, very much including NR, which at one point even called for a revival of colonialism under U.S. auspices and the building of an American empire. Bill Buckley himself was forced to repair to the pages of rival Human Events-which remained faithful to the original ideals but saw its role as a news magazine rather than as a journal of opinion—to condemn empire-building as incompatible with American conservatism. With the Weekly Standard message boosted by the TV stardom of its editor Bill Kristol—who recently boasted, “If people want to say we’re an imperial power, fine”—neo-conservatism became the dominant public face of the movement. The alternatives were the paleo-conservative magazines, Chronicles and the American Conservative, which were equally disdainful of mainstream conservatism.
Empire or National Interest? For a movement that began uniquely united in opposition to communism, it is strange that the conservative split would become most profound on foreign policy. From its founding document, the Sharon Statement, conservatives had agreed that all foreign policy had to be justified on the criterion—was it in “the just interests of the United States”? Communism was the “greatest threat” to those interests, so it had to be opposed. Iraq was not so simple for the question was empirical, not principled—was that war in the U.S. interest or not? Was it necessary to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and control terrorism or was Iraq not a threat unless the U.S. invaded and stirred up Mideast terrorism? Buckley and many others calculated war was necessary but still opposed empire building. Philosophically, either he was right that building an American world empire was against conservative principles or Bill Kristol, Max Boot and Paul Johnson-with some NR and the Wall Street Journal support—were correct that a new American colonialism was required to bring peace and democracy to the world. Even President Bush had said: “America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish”-but neo-conservatives were still trying to push him there anyway.
The New York Times reports Devine’s (incorrect) wishful thinking about a Bush-led Iraq war withdrawal after the 2004 elections:
A few months ago, Donald Devine, a vice chairman of the American Conservative Union, publicly apologized to Mr. Bush after it was reported that in disgust at the war he had failed to applaud a presidential speech. But in a column shortly before the election, Mr. Devine wrote that conservatives should vote for Mr. Bush precisely because he was likely to withdraw from Iraq sooner than Senator Kerry would.
Arguing that the president had dropped hints like a quickly retracted statement in a television interview about the impossibility of winning a war against terror, Mr. Devine argued that “the president’s maddening repetition of slogans” about the war was the “only politically possible tactic for a candidate who has already made up his mind to leave at the earliest reasonable moment.” He added: “The neoconservatives will be devastated.”
And in 2005, the Asia Times reported Devine said that “The only solution is for the US to exit before the whole thing comes apart.”
Devine is no saint traditionalist conservative, but at the very least him and Mickey Edwards and others part of the American Conservative Union are speaking out against empire, preemptive and aggressive war, and American support for oppressive regimes.
Category: International Relations, Political philosophy
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