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Announcement :: Regime |
"THERE'S BEEN A MILITARY COUP...." |
Current rating: 3 |
by Rosalinda (No verified email address) |
12 May 2003
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"THERE'S BEEN A MILITARY COUP...." State Department
officials are "seething" over the "hijacking of foreign
policymaking by the Pentagon," the {Los Angeles Times} reports today. |
One foreign service officer told the {LAT}: "I just wake
up in the morning and tell myself, `There's been a military
coup,' and then it all makes sense.... Why aren't eyebrows raised
all over the United States that the Secretary of Defense is
pontificating about Syria?" the "fuming" offical said.
"Can you imagine the Defense Secretary after World War II
telling the world how he was going to run Europe?"
No State Department official spoke on the record with the
{Times} reporter, but various were more than willing to go after
the administration's "arrogance" and "indifference to world
opinion" anonymously, especially in the wake of the Gingrich speech.
A mid-level official recalled that "goodwill is an element
of national security -- and perhaps one of the most profound
elements of national security."
Many at State supported the war,
the LAT author says, but one young diplomat who did not,
denounced current policy as the "`Dr. Strangelove' syndrome."
This diplomat believes it's time to "check a Pentagon run amok,"
the {Times} wrote; he says: "I, like many others, am carrying a
great deal of anger and at times even shame over the way we as a
nation are conducting ourselves."
Said another middle-aged State Department veteran, about the
neo-cons at the Pentagon: "Their willingness to roll the dice
with people's lives, I find troubling."
[source: as identified]
STRAUSS COVERAGE EXPANDING:
* The Jim Loeb/IPS article was published in Asia Times
online under headline "Neocons Dance a Strauss Waltz," and also
in other locations as far away as Uruguay.
* An interview with Seymour Hersh appears as a New Yorker
online exclusive. Hersh reiterates that a lot of people in this
government are Straussians, such as Wolfowitz, Shulsky, and
Cambone. He notes that Shulsky wrote about deception, and that
this may explain why people in the Pentagon Special Plans
(intelligence unit) rationalized whatever concerns they may have
had about the quality of intelligence on Saddam and WMD.
* Jack Shafer in Slate magazine attacks the Hersh article,
while citing Hersh's statements about Straussians, with a link to
article on "Leo Strauss and the Straussians," by Karl Jahn. The
Jahn article, among other things, describes the "esoteric"
Straussians -- the followers of Allan Bloom -- as mocking the
American Revolution, citing the "cult of the Founding Fathers"
and professing that the Founders "deliberately created a squalid
regime ruled by self-interest, sacrificing virtue to liberty and equality...."
[Corriere della Sera May 7]
LARGEST ITALIAN DAILY EXPOSES LEO STRAUSS AS OPPONENT OF THE
VALUES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. {Corriere della Sera}
columnist Gianni Riotta reproduces Jim Atlas's exposure of the
Straussians from the {New York Times}. In quite an effective way,
Riotta condenses Atlas's article in his regular CdS column,
entitled "Titanic", under the headline "Strauss's grandchildren
in power in the United States".
The report includes a list of
influential Straussians inside and outside the US administration
and George W. Bush's praise of them as "the best brains in the
country". "Strauss's thought is obscure, esoteric.... Strauss in
Europe has grown libertarian roots.
In America ... his heritage
is a conservative one. The task of the philosopher is to whisper
in the Prince's ear the truth which the Wise alone can derive
from the ancients."
"I spoke to you about Strauss," Riotta concludes, "to
remind you that it is ideas, in the end, that determine the flow
of history. The arcane texts of a European philosopher mold the
theories of the White House...."
"The difficult road to reconciliation between USA and Europe
goes through ideas, and not through plottings. To understand what
Strauss preached can be useful, also because his severe theory
often ends up with polemizing with the ... American Revolution of
1776. That is a possible issue of debate, for those who want reasoning!"
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