Makiya's Malady

Another War Party stalwart cuts and runs

By Justin Raimondo

"In the late Sixties, the Iraqi-born Kanan Makiya was a Trotskyist, a card-carrying member of the Socialist Workers Party in the U.S., and later, in Britain, an activist in the International Marxist Group, the British section of the Trots' Fourth International. Then, as Edward Said put it,

"He switched sides and during the early 1980s he and his father, who own a firm called Makiya Associates, were employed by President Saddam Hussein to build a large number of buildings and projects, including a military parade ground for the observation of Saddam's birthday in Tikrit [Saddam's hometown], so he benefited from his connection with the Iraqis. And it was during this time that he used his second pseudonym, Samir al-Khalil, to write Republic of Fear [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989]."

The book was taken up by the War Party as one of its seminal texts, cited by the regime-changers as evidence of the moral and practical necessity of ridding the world of Ba'athism. From a "full-time political activist" in the service of the Fourth International, Makiya, like so many others, made a surprisingly smooth transition to activism in the service of the 101st Airborne......

We can only hope that Makiya's malady is contagious and the rest of the neocons will come down with writer's block before too long. Like the dinosaurs, in one fell swoop an entire species, Homo neoconservatismus, will become extinct – and suddenly the world will be a much more peaceful place.

Oh well, I can dream, can't I?"