What is a Neocon?...Who is a Neocon?

As someone who has spent the last five years on university campuses I have heard just about every neocon slur in the book. With each one I heard it became much more obvious that my professors and classmates had no idea what the term neocon means, but where just using it to express their righteous rage against President Bush and his cabinet. This came as no surprise because most professors take no time to understand what neocons or other conservatives stand for or what they have argued. These professors were already trapped inside their ideological boxes and refused to think outside of the box. (sorry for using that over used phrase) Over the past few years the term has been carelessly thrown around by the media, academe, and ordinary Americans. Some have used the term as a way to vent their antisemitic feelings and thoughts. Others have used it in the same way that my professors have; as a way to express their anger at Bush. Yet, nobody has really taken the time to understand what the term means.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson, who has been labelled an 'evil' neocon, has written about the neocon slur. He wrote:

"Much of my correspondence centers on “neocon,” as in Buchanan’s wrong label “neocon court historian.” I’ve written no biography of any administration official, much less been subsidized or asked to do any particular writing to further an administration goal. I have been to the White House only on 3-4 occasions, always accompanied by a larger group of historians of widely differing views."

"Neocon means “new conservative” and I suppose refers to those of the once hard left who, largely in distrust of the Soviet Union and disillusionment with Great Society programs, moved right, most prominently during the Reagan era. Buchanan himself worked with them in the Reagan White House, and I would imagine supported their tough, correct stance on rollback, and the questioning of 1960s entitlements."

"The word became a pejorative slur with gusto in 2003 with the lead-up to Iraq. Perhaps some essays by neo-cons questioning the motives and patriotism (wrongly I think) of paleo-cons accentuated the falling out. But the big break came in 2004-6 with the insurgency in Iraq, when neocon became de facto synonymous with “Jew” and there were overt efforts to tie Kristol, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and others to a sort of covert cabal that had forced us to go to war for Israel — this despite the fact that Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice were neither Jews nor neocons nor malleable dupes. That Francis Fukuyama, James Woolsey, or Bill Bennet were neocons seemed likewise to have had little effect on the Israel “amen corner” thesis."

Hanson went on to outline his personal poltical history:

"I have always detested communism, and have never been a hard-left, disillusioned Trotskyite, but rather a conservative Democrat. In the past, my only real political jousting had been in two areas, academia in which Who Killed Homer?” questioned postmodernism and contemporary leftwing academic theory, and in books on farming such as The Land Was Everything and Letters to an American Farmer, which were defenses of the agrarian tradition and won no support from either corporate agriculture or new-age organic growers who did not like the conservative rural ethos expressed. Much of my speaking in the 1990s was to small audiences of farmers, who were being squeezed by corporate subsidized agriculture and yet were not new-age, organic leftists. Mexifornia reflects that conservative worry about the effects of unchecked illegal immigration — at a time when many or most neo-cons were Wall-Street Journal open-borderites."

"I thought the 1998 letter to Clinton asking for regime change and an attack on Saddam was wrong, but, after 9/11, came to the conclusion, like 75% of Americans, that there would never be peace in the region, nor a chance to rollback Islamic radicalism with Saddam’s terrorist-sponsoring regime in power. The 12 years of no-fly-zones, embargo, oil-for-food, and U.N. sanctions were not only weakening and losing support, but playing into the hands of our enemies."

Hanson concluded by summing up his position on the war in Iraq. After all, the neocon slur came into common usage as a way to voice anger over the Iraq war. His conclusion:

"I disagreed with many of the decisions made about the Iraq war, and voiced them several times in print during the last few years — especially the concentration on WMD rather than on all 23 Congressional writs to go to war, the pull-back from Fallujah, the fiery “bring ‘em on” rhetoric that sometimes was not followed up by equally aggressive action, the mysterious sudden retirement of Tommy Franks as soon as the insurgency started, the inability to find generals who believed they could win the peace, and a number of other issues."...

"But unlike some other critics, I never thought such lapses were either fatal to our cause, or by any standard unusual in military history. I took issue with those who had supported the war, and then suddenly abandoned it, and with the thinking that a brilliant three-week campaign reflected their views, while a botched occupation could only have belonged to others. Rather, I assumed that the U.S. military would always find a way to win, that the victory would be of enormous importance, and that while observers should point out perceived mistakes in operations, it was easy to do so from the rear and such criticism should never reach a level to cause a loss of morale either here or abroad, especially while soldiers were in the field of fire."

Full article.