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How Jesus Endorsed Bush’s Invasion of Iraq

The following is an excerpt from Damon Linker’s new book The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege (Doubleday, 2006). For much of the past 25 years, a small group of Catholic intellectuals has worked to inject its radical religious ideas into the nation’s politics. The leader of this theoconservative movement is Father

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The following is an excerpt from Damon Linker’s new book The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege (Doubleday, 2006).

For much of the past 25 years, a small group of Catholic intellectuals has worked to inject its radical religious ideas into the nation’s politics. The leader of this theoconservative movement is Father Richard John Neuhaus. In the pages of his monthly magazine First Things, Neuhaus and his ideological allies set the theocon agenda on a range of policies. Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute argues that the American founders were orthodox religious believers who thought of the United States as a Christian nation -- and that American-style capitalism perfectly conforms to Catholic social teaching. Robert P. George of Princeton University insists that abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage (and perhaps even contraception and masturbation) should be outlawed. And George Weigel of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center uses Catholic just-war reasoning to justify neoconservative foreign policy. As the U.S. began to prepare for war in Iraq in 2002, the theocons set out to provide theological justification for the coming conflagration.

Around the time of the January 2002 State of the Union speech -- when President broadened the scope of the "war on terror" to include an "axis of evil" consisting of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea -- the mood on the American right began to grow fierce. What had been a uniform chorus of patriotic support for the president and the Afghanistan campaign quickly evolved into a frenzy of bellicosity. Some columnists denounced deterrence and stability in favor of unilateral preemptive war to overthrow hostile regimes. Others openly advocated American imperialism. Still others proposed that the United States act to topple the governments of a series of sovereign nations in the Muslim Middle East, including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. And these were the intellectually respectable suggestions, published in mainstream newspapers and long-established journals of opinion. Farther down the media hierarchy, on cable news, Internet websites, and Web blogs, conservatives of all stripes closed ranks, unleashing a verbal barrage on any and all who dissented from a united front in favor of unapologetic American military muscle. The participants in this endless pep rally were insistent on open-ended war, overtly hostile to dissent, and thoroughly unforgiving of the slightest criticism of the United States abroad. They were dismissive of complication and analysis, defensive by default, worshipful of "manliness," admiring of swaggering bluntness, contemptuous of doubt and indecision, addicted to hyperbole, eager to expose "appeasement," and prone to paranoia. Self-congratulation and self-righteousness ruled the day.

The theocons contributed to this atmosphere of pro-war hysteria in several ways. Neuhaus established himself as the rare priest who would grant interviews to National Public Radio in order to defend the justice of invading Iraq. Weigel spoke on college campuses about the administration’s firm grasp of the just war tradition. And Novak traveled to Rome to lecture Vatican bureaucrats on the importance of deposing Saddam Hussein and transforming Iraq into a democratic oasis in Middle East. But by far the most significant theocon statement on the invasion of Iraq was Weigel’s "Moral Clarity in a Time of War," which he delivered as a lecture in the fall of 2002 at the Catholic University of America Law School before publishing it as a lengthy essay in the January 2003 issue of First Things. The essay was clearly written to provide moral and theological justification for the Bush administration’s Iraq policy in every one of its details.

Weigel’s case for war ran as follows. In the post-September 11 world, the "peace of order" among nations is fundamentally threatened by international terrorist organizations and rogue states that traffic in weapons of mass destruction. In an ideal world, the UN would possess the means and the will to deal with these threats through the use of coercive military force. But, alas, the UN is deficient in both means and will. Luckily, the United States possesses both in abundance, just as it recognizes the unique responsibility for maintaining global order that flows from its status as the world’s preeminent military power. America thus has the solemn duty to act as the worldwide enforcer of international justice -- including the punishment of those who flout the peace of order -- regardless of whether the other nations of the world recognize the legitimacy of such action. In serving as providentially appointed prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner of international justice around the world, the United States furthers its own good (at home and abroad) as well as the good of all decent human beings on the planet. The unilateral overthrow of the government of Saddam Hussein is one example of such righteous American action, but it is hardly the only likely or defensible one to take place in the near future.

When Weigel provided the Bush administration with this moral and theological go-ahead for unilateral war with Iraq (as well as with any number of other rogue states around the world), he was well aware that most religious leaders and a great many public intellectuals both in the United States and abroad did not share his assessment of the situation. Based on any number of considerations -- suspicion about administration evidence of the Iraqi threat, a desire to allow UN inspectors to complete their work, fear that an invasion would spark a regional conflagration, doubts about America’s ability to manage an occupation and transition to a decent and stable post-Hussein political order -- these writers had concluded that the coming invasion would fall far short of meeting the standards for a just war.

In response to such critics, Weigel insisted that the question of whether the war was just had to be bracketed off from the question of whether it was wise -- and that the second question could only be answered by the political powers-that-be, who had access to privileged information and intelligence not possessed by private citizens. Going further, Weigel suggested that statesmen reached their final decision for war through the exercise of a "charism of political discernment" enjoyed by all "duly constituted public authorities." This charism -- or gift of the holy spirit -- is "not shared by bishops, stated clerks, rabbis, imams, or ecumenical and interreligious agencies" -- all of whom should exercise "a measure of political modesty" in addressing questions of war and peace. (Nowhere did Weigel indicate that modesty was a quality required of politicians and their foreign policy advisors.) It was difficult to read these words without concluding that the theocon message to critics of the administration’s foreign policy was to keep their mouths shut and put their faith in the divinely inspired wisdom of the President of the United States.

Without expanding on Weigel’s speculations about special political charisms, Neuhaus amplified his friend’s point four months later, in an essay written just as the American invasion of Iraq began. On the one hand, Neuhaus had considerable "confidence in those responsible for making the relevant decisions" in the Bush administration. On the other hand, he viewed the many antiwar statements of church leaders, and especially those emanating from the Vatican, with "disappointment, and more than a little embarrassment." As far as Neuhaus was concerned, the lesson to be drawn from the whole sorry episode was obvious:

 

Ranking ecclesiastics took the time of U.S. decision-makers, badgering them about whether they had thought of this possible consequences or that. ... The simple truth is that such consequences are unknowable and therefore unknown, except to God. I know that possible consequences have been considered, day and night for many months, by competent parties. ... Religious leaders should bring more to the discussion than their fears. Nervous hand-wringing is not a moral argument.

 

As American troops began their march to Baghdad, the theocons made it clear that the moral duty of religious leaders was to stop "badgering" the administration so that it could get on with waging its unquestionably just war to disarm Saddam Hussein.

As the Iraq war got underway on March 20, 2003, Neuhaus grew noticeably tense. On the Monday following the start of the invasion -- after a weekend during which millions of Americans entertained themselves by watching U.S. missiles flatten the Baghdad skyline while "embedded" television reporters swooned over their up-close-and-personal views of the country’s military machine in action -- Neuhaus appeared preoccupied but pleased. Quietly discussing the progress of the war on the phone with Weigel, who conveyed inside information from their friends and allies in the administration, Neuhaus felt reassured about his decision to support the war so emphatically. Yet his underlying uncertainty and stress rushed to the surface as he skimmed through a powerful antiwar essay by historian Tony Judt in the New York Review of Books. In Judt’s view, the United States under George W. Bush was driven by "an eschatological urge to tear down a frustrating international order," all the while exaggerating the threats to its power and underestimating the risks of acting recklessly in the world. Reading these words, Neuhaus exploded in anger, lashing out in acidic sarcasm at the suggestion that the president had acted out of any motive besides his duty to protect the innocent against Iraqi aggression. As far as Neuhaus was concerned, Judt was just another smug liberal, failing to acknowledge and appreciate America’s obligation as the world’s preeminent power to punish injustice and maintain order around the globe, regardless of worldwide public opinion.

Over the next few weeks, as the American invasion continued its press toward Baghdad, Neuhaus’s temper would flare again and again, sparked by what he viewed as the defeatist coverage of the war in the New York Times. The Times had been a constant source of annoyance, and an inspiration for several snide remarks in nearly every one of his monthly magazine columns, for many years. Not only was its influence unmatched by any other media outlet, but its reporting and editorial outlook perfectly expressed the elitist, secularist ideology that his own movement had been conjured to oppose. But now, perhaps egged on by several right-wing websites that had made a habit of accusing the paper of treason on a daily basis, he insisted that the bias in the Times’s coverage of the war was unprecedented. Each day Neuhaus entered the First Things office in a foul mood, threatening to cancel his subscription to the paper and fuming about the latest front-page story to imply that the war was already on the verge of becoming a quagmire. "Two weeks in and they’re already calling it Vietnam!" Neuhaus considered it indefensible to draw even the most casual comparison between the invasion of Iraq and America’s ill-fated war in Southeast Asia.

These outbursts would stop very soon, replaced by pride and satisfaction as American troops entered Baghdad in early April nearly without a fight. Within days, Neuhaus’s mood swung from defensive to euphoric, eventually leading him to give in to the temptation to gloat. At the May meeting of the First Things editorial board, just days after President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" from the deck of an aircraft carrier, Neuhaus and Weigel invariably spoke of the war in the past tense and expressed open admiration for the manifest skill of the Bush administration in waging such an overwhelmingly successful military campaign. When questioned by a skeptical participant in the meeting about whether it was sensible for the nation’s leaders to continue to craft policy under the assumption that all goods -- the good of the United States at home and abroad, the good of the Iraqi people, the good of Israel, the good of Europe, and the good of the entire world -- were compatible with one another, Neuhaus tersely replied that "it may very well be God’s will that all good things do go together at this moment in history."

Adopting a similarly triumphant tone in his column for the August/September issue of First Things, Neuhaus confidently asserted that critics of the war had been "abysmally wrong on almost every point" -- a fact that needed to be "clearly established on the public record" so that their concerns could be easily dismissed in the run-up to whatever military campaign might follow the liberation of Iraq. That American troops had thus far failed to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction was, he admitted, "troubling." Yet this (temporary) failure did not for a moment raise "questions about the liberation of Iraq." On the contrary, the invasion had been so successful -- above all in combining military potency with precision targeting of weapons, thus keeping civilian casualties to a minimum -- that the time had come to rethink a crucial aspect of the just war tradition. In future conflicts, Neuhaus suggested, it might become possible to conceive of "military action in terms not of the last resort but of the best resort."

Neuhaus would not mention Iraq again in the pages of the magazine for over a year, as the hunt for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons dragged on and conditions under the American occupation at first failed to improve and then began to deteriorate. It took many months for Neuhaus and the other theocons to acknowledge the truth of the situation, even in private. By this point, they were relying almost entirely on conservative opinion journals, editorial pages, and White House memoranda for their information, and these sources naturally went out of their way to highlight the little good news emerging from Iraq while attributing the seemingly endless stream of bad news in the mainstream media to liberal bias.

As the months passed and the number of insurgent attacks on American forces and Iraqi civilians multiplied, theocon confidence began to waver. Yet there was little they thought they could do about the situation. Bush was heading into an election year, and they still considered the administration’s domestic agenda to be far more crucial to their plans than the progress of the war; criticism of the president or members of his cabinet, which would only weaken him politically and antagonize theocon contacts in the White House, was therefore unthinkable. Although Neuhaus’s spirits were buoyed after a May 2004 meeting at the White House during which the president appeared calm and confident about the situation in Iraq, the effect was temporary.

Over the next six months, as conditions in Iraq continued to worsen and the president ran a tight race for re-election against Democrat John Kerry, Neuhaus expressed public exasperation with the Bush administration only once -- in response to stories of torture and abuse of detainees at the American-run Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad. Yes, he admitted to his fellow conservatives, much of the worldwide criticism of the United States in the wake of the torture scandal had been "motivated by opposition to American policy or generalized America-bashing." But the fact was that the U.S. had provided these critics with everything they needed to make the country look bad. Taking a strong stand against the abuse, Neuhaus declared flatly that torture was "never morally permissible" and that "we dare not trust ourselves to torture," which should be forbidden "absolutely." Strangely, though, Neuhaus made a point of stepping back from this position five months later, several weeks after Bush had been safely re-elected to a second term in office. Assuring his readers that he still believed that "we dare not trust ourselves to torture," he now "acknowledged" that such a stance was not "sufficient." Whether his change of heart had come about through independent reflection or the influence of powerful friends who had taken offense at his criticism of the Bush administration was something about which readers were left to speculate. (On the First Things Web blog, On the Square on November 28, 2005, Neuhaus seemed to revert to his original statement of absolute condemnation of torture, endorsing Senator John McCain’s proposed ban on torture against the pro-torture arguments of neocon Charles Krauthammer.)

Other than his harsh words about Abu Ghraib in the October issue of First Things, Neuhaus and the other theocons kept silent about conditions in Iraq through the summer and fall of 2004. By late summer this silence had inspired a First Things reader named Peter Dula to pen a lengthy missive attacking the journal for its refusal to revise its pre-war position in light of subsequent events. Writing from Jordan after having spent several months in post-invasion Baghdad, Dula understood it was unlikely that the magazine would publish his criticisms, yet he submitted his essay nonetheless, perhaps in the hopes that it might have some influence on Neuhaus’s and Weigel’s thinking. In the version of the essay eventually published as a cover story in the December 3, 2004 issue of Commonweal magazine, Dula accused the theocons of having gone out of their way to provide theological and moral justification for the administration’s plans for Iraq -- and then of succumbing to "moral muteness in a time of war." It was as if the theocons had given the president a green light and then neglected to acknowledge that doing so had led directly to a fatal multi-car collision. As for the question of whether or not theocon claims for the justice of the war had been vindicated in light of events since the fall of Baghdad, Dula left no doubt where he stood: "the absence of weapons of mass destruction and the absence of compelling evidence of a link with Al Qaeda mean there was no just cause for this war." Moreover, "the incompetence and duplicity of the current administration mean that there was no competent authority for this war." And no such war -- one lacking in a just cause and one waged by an incompetent authority -- could be considered just.

Neuhaus never seriously entertained the possibility of publishing this attack on Weigel and himself (and the Bush administration). Yet behind the scenes, Dula’s accusations struck a nerve, eventually inspiring Neuhaus to write an essay of his own in which he attempted to defend himself against the indictment. Published in the December issue of First Things, safely after the presidential election, the essay inadvertently illustrated the dangers of making moral judgments in a condition of self-imposed ignorance of the facts. Writing days after the release of the final report on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs by Charles Duelfer and the Iraq Study Group, Neuhaus chose to base his analysis not on the report itself but instead on a heavily redacted and deceptively interpreted version that had been provided to him by Karl Rove’s White House deputy, Peter Wehner. Whereas the published report definitively showed that at the time of the invasion Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction (having destroyed them, as required by UN Security Council resolutions, many years earlier) and no active programs to develop such weapons, Neuhaus nevertheless claimed to be convinced that "Saddam had the intention and, if America had dallied or left it to the UN, would have had the weaponry to dominate the Middle East and, in collusion with terrorist networks, inflict massive damage on America and the West."

From this and several other statements in the essay it appeared that Neuhaus had decided to reaffirm his pre-war position -- namely, that the "just cause" of the invasion was the attempt to disarm the profoundly dangerous regime of Saddam Hussein. That no weapons were ever found did nothing to undermine the justice of this cause, he claimed, since "leaders do not have the convenience of making decisions retrospectively," and the belief that Iraq possessed such weapons was thoroughly justified "on the basis of what was known" before the war. With this assertion, Neuhaus chose to ignore the numerous post-invasion press reports that had uncovered the alarming extent to which Bush administration officials, along with a compliant media, had deliberately distorted intelligence in the run-up to the war, claiming that the administration knew far more than it did and greatly exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq, at every opportunity. Far from seeking to undermine the invasion, as Neuhaus and other conservatives believed at the time, the New York Times and other mainstream news organizations had published several prominent stories that hyped administration claims (many of which later turned out to be false) without seeking independent confirmation of any kind.

And these media outlets were far from being the only ones to create and perpetuate the illusion that the administration possessed greater knowledge of Saddam’s weapons capabilities than it did. The theocons themselves had contributed to fostering the illusion, too -- in their insistence on deferring to the "charism of political discernment" supposedly possessed by the president. As Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams put it in an essay critical of theocon arguments in favor of the war, Weigel’s extreme deference to governmental competence and authority encouraged a "weakening of ... the self-critical habit in [the] nation and its political classes." Williams went on to point out that a country benefits when "lawyers, NGOs, linguists, anthropologists, religious communities, journalists, strategists, [and] military and diplomatic historians" are encouraged to share what they know with political leaders and their advisors -- and when those leaders and advisors remain open-minded enough to listen and learn from the advice. Yet the Bush administration took the diametrically opposite approach, trumpeting its contempt for the "reality-based community" and deliberately closing itself off from dissenting opinions. And the theocons had treated such empty self-assurance as the better part of wisdom.

As if tacitly acknowledging how unconvincing his argument would appear to informed readers, Neuhaus did not simply reiterate his pre-war case for the invasion but actually added to it. Following the lead of President Bush, whose defense of the war had similarly evolved in the eighteen months since he prematurely announced the end of major combat operations, Neuhaus now claimed that "success in Iraq" followed not merely from disarmament but also from "having removed the regime of Saddam Hussein, thus ending the monstrous rule of a systematic perpetrator of crimes against humanity." Contrary to Dula’s allegations, then, there was still a just cause for the war, even though Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction had proven to be an imaginary threat. In shifting from one justification to another, however, Neuhaus unintentionally highlighted the disturbing flexibility of the just war tradition, which now appeared to be quite capable of sanctifying a remarkably wide range of conflicts.

Neuhaus’s essay contained other noteworthy claims -- among them the denial that America’s post-war policies in Iraq had been an "unmitigated disaster," which Dula and other critics had used to demonstrate that President Bush was an "incompetent authority." Abstracting completely from his own role in advocating for the war, as well as refusing to render even the slightest judgment of the Bush administration’s handling of the aftermath of the invasion, Neuhaus now insisted that "those who condemn the war because soldiers and innocent civilians are killed and maimed are not being serious. This is what happens in war, and is a very good reason for avoiding war."

But perhaps the most extraordinary passage in the essay concerned President Bush’s plan to use the American invasion and occupation to transform Iraq into a democracy that could then be exported to the rest of the Middle East -- an aim that promised to serve as yet another retroactive justification for the war. Neuhaus expressed some skepticism about Bush’s democratization project, wondering if it made sense to set the standard for success in Iraq quite so high. It would be far more prudent, he suggested, to judge success in Iraq by whether or not, "three or thirty years from now," Iraqis lived under a "reasonably decent and stable government." Given the importance in the just war tradition of precisely defining the anticipated end point to military actions and intentions, this 27-year-long window for determining success was more than a little peculiar.

All told, Neuhaus’s self-defense proved less than convincing. But by the time the essay appeared in print, it hardly mattered. By this point -- with Bush about to begin his second term in office -- the theocons had long ago traded in any intellectual respectability they once possessed on matters of war and peace for the opportunity to serve at the pleasure of the president. It was thus hardly surprising that, despite his published reservations about Bush’s plans to democratize the Middle East, Neuhaus responded rapturously to the president’s astonishingly ambitious second inaugural address, which committed the United States to the goal of "ending tyranny in our world." Just minutes after the conclusion of the speech, Neuhaus received a call from Weigel, who was thrilled that some of the lines he had proposed to the president’s speechwriting team had made it into the address. As for Neuhaus, savoring the moment and dreaming of the next four years with his friend and ally on the phone from Washington, he gave every appearance of being a man supremely satisfied.

Excerpted with permission from THE THEOCONS: SECULAR AMERICA UNDER SIEGE, by Damon Linker, published by Doubleday 2006.

Damon Linker is the former editor of First Things and the author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege (Doubleday, 2006)

External links

• The Word Spy explains the word "theocon"
• "American Jihad" by Nancy Goldstein for RawStoryQ, 3/31/2005
• Bluegrass Theocon website
• Cox and Forkum cartoon dealing with U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris’ Theocon tendencies

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Key figures To the left are some of neoconservatism’s most influential leaders. Click on a person to learn about his background. Irving Kristol Widely referred to as the "godfather" of neoconservatism, Mr. Kristol was part of the "New York Intellectuals," a group of critics mainly of Eastern European Jewish descent. In the late 1930s, he studied at City College of New York where he became a Trotskyist. From 1947 to 1952, he was the managing editor of Commentary magazine, later called the "neocon bible." By the late 1960s, Kristol had shifted from left to right on the political spectrum, due partly to what he considered excesses and anti-Americanism among liberals. Kristol built the intellectual framework of neoconservatism, founding and editing journals such as The Public Interest and The National Interest. Kristol is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of numerous books, including "Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea." He is the father of Weekly Standard editor and oft-quoted neoconservative William Kristol. Norman Podhoretz Considered one of neoconservatism’s founding fathers, Mr. Podhoretz studies, writes, and speaks on social, cultural, and international matters. From 1990 to 1995, he worked as editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine, a neoconservative journal published by the American Jewish Committee. Podhoretz advocated liberal political views earlier in life, but broke ranks in the early 1970s. He became part of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority founded in 1973 by Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson and other intervention-oriented Democrats. Podhoretz has written nine books, including "Breaking Ranks" (1979), in which he argues that Israel’s survival is crucial to US military strategy. He is married to like-minded social critic Midge Decter. They helped establish the Committee on the Present Danger in the late 1970s and the Committee for the Free World in the early 1980s. Podhoretz’ son, John, is a New York Post columnist. Paul Wolfowitz After serving as deputy secretary of defense for three years, Mr. Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, was chosen in March 2005 by President Bush to be president of the World Bank. From 1989 to 1993, Wolfowitz served as under secretary of defense for policy in charge of a 700-person team that had major responsibilies for the reshaping of military strategy and policy at the end of the cold war. In this capacity Wolfowitz co-wrote with Lewis "Scooter" Libby the 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance, which called for US military dominance over Eurasia and preemptive strikes against countries suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. After being leaked to the media, the draft proved so shocking that it had to be substantially rewritten. After 9/11, many of the principles in that draft became key points in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, an annual report. During the 1991 Gulf War, Wolfowitz advocated extending the war’s aim to include toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime. Richard Perle Famously nicknamed the "Prince of Darkness" for his hardline stance on national security issues, Mr. Perle is one of the most high-profile neoconservatives. He resigned in March 2003 as chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board after being criticized for conflicts of interest. From 1981 to 1987 he was assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. Perle is a chief architect of the "creative destruction" agenda to reshape the Middle East, starting with the invasion of Iraq. He outlined parts of this agenda in a key 1996 report for Israel’s right-wing Likud Party called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." Perle helped establish two think tanks: The Center for Security Policy and The Jewish Institute for National Security. He is also a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, an adviser for the counter-terrorist think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and a director of the Jerusalem Post. Douglas Feith The defense department announced in January 2005 that Mr. Feith will resign this summer as undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon’s No. 3 civilian position, which he has held since being appointed by President Bush in July 2001. Feith also served in the Reagan administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy. Prior to that, he served as special counsel to Richard Perle. Before his service at the Pentagon, Feith worked as a Middle East specialist for the National Security Council in 1981-82. Feith is well-known for his support of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party. In 1997, Feith was honored along with his father Dalck Feith, who was active in a Zionist youth movement in his native Poland, for their "service to Israel and the Jewish people" by pro-Likud Zionist Organization of America at its 100th anniversary banquet. In 1992, he was vice president of the advisory board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Mr. Feith is a former chairman and currently a director of the Center for Security Policy. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Mr. Libby is currently chief of staff and national security advisor for Vice President Dick Cheney. He’s served in a wide variety of posts. In the first Bush administration, Mr. Libby served in the Department of Principal Deputy Under Secretary (Strategy and Resources), and, later, as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Libby was a founding member of the Project for the New American Century. He joined Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and others in writing its 2000 report entitled, "Rebuilding America’s Defenses - Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century." Libby co-authored the once-shocking draft of the ’Defense Planning Guidance’ with Mr. Wolfowitz for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992. Libby serves on the advisory board of the Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies of the RAND Corporation. John Bolton In February 2005, Mr. Bolton was nominated US ambassador to the UN by President Bush. If confirmed, he would move to this position from the Department of State where he was Under Secretary for Arms Control, the top US non-proliferation official. Prior to this appointment, Bolton was senior vice president of the neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. He also held a variety of positions in both the George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan administrations. Bolton has often made claims not fully supported by the intelligence community. In a controversial May 2002 speech entitled, "Beyond the Axis of Evil," Bolton fingered Libya, Syria, and Cuba as "other rogue states intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction." In July 2003, the CIA and other agencies reportedly objected strongly to claims Bolton made in a draft assessment about the progress Syria has made in its weapons programs. Elliott Abrams In February of 2005 Elliott Abrams was appointed deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy. From December 2002 to February 2005, Mr. Abrams served as special assistant to the president and senior director for Near East and North African affairs. Abrams began his political career by taking a job with the Democratic Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson. He held a variety of State Department posts in the Reagan administration. He was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute from 1990 to the 1996 before becoming president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which "affirms the political relevance of the great Western ethical imperatives." Abrams also served as chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. In 1991, Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. President George H. W. Bush pardoned him in 1992. In 1980, he married Rachel Decter, daughter of neocon veterans Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Robert Kagan Mr. Kagan writes extensively on US strategy and diplomacy. Kagan and fellow neoconservative William Kristol co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. Kagan signed the famous 1998 PNAC letter sent to President Clinton urging regime change in Iraq. After working as principal speechwriter to Secretary of State George P. Shultz from 1984-1985, he was hired by Elliott Abrams to work as deputy for policy in the State Department’s Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. He is a senior associate at the Carnegie endowment for International Peace (CEIP). He is also an international affairs columnist for The Washington Post, and contributing editor at The New Republic and The Weekly Standard. He wrote the bestseller "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order." Kagan’s wife, Victoria Nuland, was chosen by Vice President Dick Cheney as his deputy national security adviser. Michael Ledeen Seen by many as one of the most radical neoconservatives, Mr. Ledeen is said to frequently advise George W. Bush’s top adviser Karl Rove on foreign policy matters. He is one of the strongest voices calling for regime change in Iran. In 2001, Ledeen co-founded the Coalition for Democracy in Iran. He served as Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s adviser during the Reagan administration. Ledeen is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works closely with Richard Perle. he is also a member of the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs’ advisory board and one of its founding organizers. He was Rome correspondent for the New Republic magazine from 1975-1977, and founding editor of the Washington Quarterly. Ledeen also wrote "The War Against the Terror Masters," which advocates regime change in Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. William Kristol Son of "godfather" of neoconservatism Irving Kristol, Bill Kristol is currently chairman of the Project for a New American Century, which he co-founded with leading neoconservative writer Robert Kagan. He is also editor of the influential Weekly Standard. Like other neoconservatives Frank Gaffney Jr. and Elliott Abrams, Kristol worked for hawkish Democratic Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson. But by 1976, he became a Republican. he served as chief of staff to Education Secretary William Bennett during the Reagan administration and chief of staff to former Vice President Dan Quayle during the George H. W. Bush presidency. Kristol continuously called for Saddam Hussein’s ouster since the 1991 Gulf War. With the like-minded Lawrence Kaplan, Kristol co-wrote "The War Over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission." He is on the board of advisers of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, established as a counterterrorist think tank after 9/11. 1 Neoconservative: Definition and views 1.1 Usage and general views 1.2 Overview of Neoconservative views 1.3 Distinctions from other Conservative movements 1.4 Shortcomings and criticism of the term "Neoconservative" 1.5 Pejorative use 2 History and origins of neoconservatism 2.1 Great Depression and World War II 2.2 Drift away from New Left and Great Society 2.3 Left-wing roots of Neoconservative organizations 2.4 Reagan and the Neoconservatives 2.5 Neoconservativism under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton 3 Administration of George W. Bush 3.1 China spy plane incident 3.2 September 11, 2001 3.3 "Bush Doctrine" 3.4 Impact of 2003 Iraq War on Neoconservative philosophy and influence 3.4.1 Neoconservatism and charges of Appeasement 3.4.2 Practical impact of the 2003 Iraq War on Neoconservative influence 4 Criticism of neoconservatism 4.1 Jacobinism, Bolshevism 4.2 Conflict with Libertarian Conservatives 4.3 Disagreement with Business Lobby, fiscal conservatives 4.4 Friction with "Paleoconservatism" 4.5 Neoconservatism, Judaism, and "Dual Loyalty" 5 Related publications and institutions 5.1 Institutions 5.2 Publications 6 References in popular culture 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links