Now that the U.S. Senate is being bludgeoned into investigation of the circumstances leading to the continuing war in Iraq it may be time to take a look at the forces girding for political combat in the U.S. To aid the long present, long ignored and heretofore beleaguered antiwar base, new forces are being successfully recruited. Finally, the congressional leadership of the Democratic party seems willing to lend a hand in the struggle which had been left to a small but gallant band of original Democratic opponents of the war. Indeed, radical, principled opposition to the Iraq misadventure has been cultivated largely in traditionally conservative gardens: military, diplomatic and intelligence professionals, libertarians, gold-star mothers and classical small-government Republicans. The fact that Jay Rockefeller has signed on to the ruckus raising removes all doubt that at least one Democratic faction of the monied elite has decided to invalidate the blank check it gave to Bush after September 11, 2001. The expanding contours of the Iraq fiasco, and the frantic Likud-Aipac agitation for doubling the bet with moves against Syria or Iran have given renewed urgency to resolving what seemed to be a manageable domestic political rebus. Moreover, the Libby indictment and the continuing Fitzgerald investigation have served to bring the dreaded word "conspiracy" into the realm of respectable discourse. Although Fitzgerald, perhaps surprisingly, did not resort to indictment for conspiracy to obstruct justice, (but rather for "obstruction of justice"), it is clear that Libby did not act "motu proprio", nor for a mere passing whim or momentary lapse of judgment. He acted at the direction of, in collaboration with, or as counterpoint to others. Many other luminaries in the Bush administration and neocon galaxy shared his agenda. Indeed, the question now coming to the fore is whether that agenda constituted the outcome of normal administrative machinations, or was rather preconceived and imposed by forces extraneous to the American political dialectic. Evidence for the latter hypothesis is not lacking, indeed the neocon program of agressive restructuring of the MidEast was bruited openly in the now infamous PNAC charter document, whose architects moved easily between positions of influence in the Israeli and American ruling elites. Perhaps the major objection to viewing the implementation of the neocon agenda as the result of a conspiracy is the very openness with which it was proclaimed.
That, however, is a question of ends, whilst the point now at issue is exquisitely a question of the means adopted to achieve those openly declared ends. It would be naive to the point of absurdity to expect that those who had so intimately collaborated in the formulation of the PNAC agenda would not, once in power, act in concert to realize its goals. Moreover, such concertation would be well within the normal dialectic of policy making in a republic of laws. The Libby indictment, and the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation raise a much more disquieting specter: that of a conscious sabotage of the normal policy-making mechanisms. To dispell that specter the arrayed panoply of neocon flackery must don new robes and assume with alacrity the role of TINCons: There Is No Con-spiracy-ists. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post has already assumed his role as master of this new confraternity of dark illumination, but we may be sure that many others will aid him in joining battle with the insurgents who have breached the outer parapet of the dark neocon castle.
The sounds of battle between the Tin-foil hat brigade and the Tincon army will be heard well beyond the confines of the futures market for non-ferrous metals. |
