Three Dogmas of Neoconservatism
Friday, May 22nd, 2009Three things that neocons and right-wing hawks in general (though perhaps not the To Hell With Them Hawks) seem to feel pretty strongly about:
1.) They’re all in it together. Phrases like ‘the Global War on Terror’ and ‘the Axis of Evil’ are not just fluff. Sure, there are differences between our enemies, and indeed they have fought against each other in the past, but they represent a single, unified threat. It’s important to use the word ‘proxies’ a lot when talking about Hamas and Hezbullah. Talk of nuance, or of understanding and exploiting the differences between our enemies, is really just a manifestation of a naive refusal to see evil for what it is.
2.) It’s the Muslims, stupid. Whenever people mention the terrorist threat without explicitly mentioning that it is Islamic terrorism that we’re up against, they are obscuring an important fact about the enemy for the sake of craven political correctness. The unified threat we face is inherently an Islamist menace, and that has serious implications for how we should combat it.
3.) North Korea is a sponsor of terrorism and a member of the Axis of Evil. The one doesn’t take much explaining. North Korea’s Muslim population is generally estimated to hover around 0%.
I’m not wild about any of these propositions, but surely one can’t believe all of them. But they do, don’t they?
