Jonathon Chait explains Bill Krystol, editor, liar and thug

You can't watch TV out of Washington, D.C. and ignore Bill Kristol who is the coeditor with Fred Barnes of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard NeoCon Magazine. Kristol writes editorials, which according to Jonathon Chait "...have come to consist of stubborn denials of any bad news, diatribes about internal enemies, and harangues against the cowardice of Republican dissenters."

Kristol is a NeoCon attack dog, hired and paid for by Rupert Murdoch (owner of FOX News and News Corp.) Kristol is clearly a very bright man, and speaks well, but his intent is entirely to push a limited political agenda consisting of militarism abroad and support for right-wing Republican Neo-Conservative Authoritarianism here in the United States. He tries to cloak this political agenda in pleasant sounding ideas and goals, but as the fortunes of the Bush administration and the Republican Party have declined in recent years his covering of positive thoughts has become quite frayed.

He does believe that what he wants to happen is important and is unwilling to admit that the failure of the Bush administration to achieve what he wants is based on the inherent flaws of conservatism. It can't be that the American superpower that defeated (proven by the fact that it outlasted) the inherently flawed Communist USSR does not have the power to enforce its demands on the people of the backwards Iraqi nation.

So Kristol has to find another source for the failure of conservatism. This is the source of his frequent complaint about "traitorous liberals." Ann Coulter and much of the Bush administration is beginning to echo this left-over idea from the Post World War I German complaints that they lost WW I because the Socialists "Stabbed them in the Back."

As I said, Bill Kristol is very bright. He frequently makes his irrational ideas sound well thought out although less so as the Bush administration collapses into itself in both Iraq and domestically. Always remember that to say Bill Kristol is a NeoConservative means that he is a student of Leo Strauss. As Chait says Kristol "...once explained his belief in the philosopher Leo Strauss to journalist Nina Easton thusly: 'One of the main teachings is that all politics are limited and none of them is really based on the truth.' "

This explains the other thing Chait wrote about Kristol. He does not distinguish between his opinion and factual reality. To me that has always been the mark of someone who is insane, but for Bill Kristol it has become a career.

Chait concludes by saying:

There was a time when neoconservatives sought to hold the moral and intellectual high ground. There was some- thing inspiring in their vision of America as a different kind of superpower--a liberal hegemon deploying its might on behalf of subjugated peoples, rather than mere self-interest. As the Iraq war has curdled, the idealism and liberalism have drained out of the neoconservative vision. What remains is a noxious residue of bullying militarism. Kristol's arguments are merely the same pro-war arguments that have been used historically by right-wing parties throughout the world: Complexity is weakness, dissent is treason, willpower determines all.

Kristol's good standing in the Washington establishment depends on the wink-and-nod awareness that he's too smart to believe his own agitprop. Perhaps so. But, in the end, a fake thug is not much better than the real thing.

It is true. Kristol does have good standing in the Washington establishment. This is a deep indictment of the Washington establishment.

---

Scott Horton at Harper's Magazine adds to Chait's discussion of Kristol by describing the utter irrationality of Kristol's attack on Scott Beauchamp for what he wrote about American soldiers in Iraq. In this he was supported by unsourced but official statements from the U.S. military PR operation:

I have no idea whether Beauchamp’s story was accurate. But at this point I have seen enough of the Neocon corner’s war fables to immediately discount anything that emerges from it. One example: back last spring, when I was living in Baghdad, on Haifa Street, I sat in the evening reading a report by one of the core Neocon pack. He was reporting from Baghdad, and recounted a day he had spent out on a patrol with U.S. troops on Haifa Street. He described a peaceful, pleasant, upscale community. Children were out playing on the street. Men and women were out going about their daily business. Well, in fact I had been forced to spend the day “in the submarine,” as they say, missing appointments I had in town. Why? This bucolic, marvelous Haifa Street that he described had erupted in gun battles the entire day. In the view of my security guards, with which I readily concurred, it was too unsafe. And yes, I could hear the gunfire and watch some of the exchanges from my position. No American patrol had passed by and there were certainly no children playing in the street. This was the point when I realized that many of these accounts were pure fabrications.

As the disaster in Iraq deepens and the 2008 election gets closer, we can expect more lies from Kristol and his fellow neocons, stacked on top of efforts to destroy those who disagree with the lies and cover-ups.