Why the neocons endure
By Justin Raimondo
"As the ugly reality of what we had gotten ourselves into in Iraq settled on the national consciousness, like a viral infection settling on the lungs, the conventional wisdom was that the authors of this war – the political tendency known as the neoconservatives – were utterly and completely discredited. Where were the "weapons of mass destruction"? Where were the crowds of Iraqis throwing rose petals in our wake? Where was the cakewalk? And – most of all – where were the friggin' neocons, anyway? Most were in hiding, having resigned and slunk back to academia or some neocon "think tank"; very few were in the line of fire. They left that one for the troops......
The neocons, we were told, had been "marginalized," and their dreams of "benevolent global hegemony" were pronounced dead. Yet, not much more than a year later, the beast has reawakened; the corpse is animate. Frankenstein lives! As Jacob Heilbrunn, a senior editor at The National Interest, a former neocon himself, and author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, put it the other day, the idea that the neoconservatives are finished "could be the biggest whopper of them all."....
Like vampires risen from the dead each night, these creatures who shun the light and feast on pain and suffering, are refreshed and ready to take wing again. What they seek is what makes them feel alive and energizes them to want more, and that is war. They are the War Party, and they are Democrats and Republicans. They are columnists and publishers and academics, as well as politicians and publicists. They don't have much of a mass base: they prefer to work in the shadows, manipulating rather than inspiring. By such Machiavellian means have they managed to stay viable, in spite of the disasters they have wrought through the years – giving them more scope for fresh disasters yet to be imagined."
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