Inside the neo-con echo chamber

[babylonsister]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ID04Ak02.html

Inside the neo-con echo chamber
By Eli Clifton

With the United States bogged down in an increasingly ugly war in Iraq, tensions rising between Tehran and Washington, and public sentiment - which has turned en masse against deeper US commitment in the Middle East - often seeming a non-factor in White House decision-making, it is hard to believe that in the past few months some pundits and politicos have been optimistically predicting a dramatic shift in US foreign policy that could, like a deus ex machina, resolve the country's overseas debacles.

The Iraq Study Group (ISG), co-chaired by inside-the-Beltway heavyweights James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, seemed to represent the "adult supervision" so desperately lacking in the blind idealism - or, as others see it, fervid ideology - behind the Bush administration's misadventures in the Middle East.

While President George W Bush reportedly called the ISG report a "flaming turd", some observers have held on to the hope that at the very least one cornerstone of the current political scene, the neo-conservatives, at long last are being pushed out the door, and along with them their radical ideas about reshaping the Middle East.

"Like Bush, look to the long span of history for vindication. It will indeed be eons before anyone trusts them again," wrote Financial Times columnist Jacob Weisberg in March, after recounting his disappointment at the lack of contrition or regret expressed by neo-conservatives for the bungled war in Iraq.

Although many of the core Bush neo-cons, including Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, have been pushed out of the administration, and recent weeks have witnessed the emergence of a more conciliatory posture toward America's "enemies" that is the antithesis of neo-conservative policy proposals, neo-conservatism remains a force to contend with. This fact is highlighted by the influence of American Enterprise Institute (AEI) ideologues in shaping the "surge" plan announced by Bush in January.

So how do they do it?
One partial answer to this puzzle is the continued strength of neo-conservatism and its standard-bearers in the US media, a point made recently by Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. Wrote Rachman: "The neo-cons stand accused of many errors: imperialism, Leninism, Trotskyism (New York school), militarism. Some believe that the real problem is that so many of them are Jewish - this is an alarmingly popular theme, to judge by my e-mails. But the problem with the neo-cons is not that so many of them are Jews. The problem is that so many of them are journalists."

more...