September 05, 2014
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Next door, in the orderless wasteland of Libya, Islamic militants now occupy the American embassy in Tripoli. Since the U.S.-backed ousting of Muammar Gaddafi three years ago, the country is on the edge of chaos. The 2012 murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was only the beginning of the violence wrought by a civil war. Bill Kristol, at the time, supported American and NATO air strikes in Libya to help overthrow the Gaddafi regime. Incorrigible as ever, he damned the Obama administration for its weak Benghazi response when it was his advice that destabilized Libya, leading to Stevens” death.
Now Kristol is leading the charge for air strikes against the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria. Only yesterday did he support overthrowing Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad. Both men, for all their faults, kept Islamic terrorists at bay. Saddam was disposed of in the trumped-up invasion of Iraq, cheered on by the neocon brethren. Assad almost saw his military force”one of the few remaining opposing bulwarks against the Islamic State”decimated by U.S. air strikes.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a nice saying, but it makes for muddled foreign policy. For decades, neoconservatives have given support to groups they hope will topple wayward despots”the result of which has almost always been the empowering of a new threat that needs to be forcefully vanquished. The contradiction is once again emerging with the rise of Islamic State rebels. As Daniel Larison writes, “Hawks that believed it to be imperative to attack the Syrian government last year now believe it to be imperative to attack some of the government’s enemies this year.”
Why are neoconservatives so foolish in the face of so many failures? Irving Kristol once admitted that members of the movement he created are “pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers.” Given the breezy manner in which they scoff at the cost of war both in life and dollars, Kristol père’s characterization makes sense. Calling for war while sitting comfortably in spacious D.C. offices is everyday routine for neocons like Bill Kristol. They clearly have no guilt over the blood spilled due to their murderous policies. Just as the Devil never sleeps, neoconservatives won”t rest until the globe is governed by their chosen leaders”even if it bleeds their own country dry in the meantime.
