April/May 1992, Page 12, 13

To Tell the Truth

The Neoconservatives: A Last Hurrah All Over Again

By Leon T. Hadar

In April 1991 I brought to the attention of Washington Report readers the plight of one group of victims of the end of the Cold War. As I explained then, the neoconservatives, or "neocons," who during the Reagan era perpetuated the notion that Israel was serving as America's anti-Soviet "strategic asset" in the Middle East, were facing political extinction.

With the end of the American-Soviet rivalry, it was becoming difficult to market the Jewish state as a bastion against Moscow's Middle East expansionism. Many of the neocons, including former Reagan administration officials Richard Perle and Elliot Abrams and journalists A. M. Rosenthal and Charles Krauthammer, had hoped that Saddam Hussain's aptitude for the role of Washington's new bogeyman would create American-Muslim tensions, divert attention from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and would relaunch Israel as America's "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the Middle East.

The neocons have changed their marketing techniques.

Instead, President George Bush engineered his Desert Storm victory in a coalition with Arab allies, and Israel ended up being a diplomatic and military burden instead of an asset in the war with Iraq. Moreover, after routing Saddam Hussain's military forces, the U.S. diplomatic bulldozer started moving in the direction of the Israeli prime minister's office. Focusing on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Bush administration pressured the Likud government for concessions it was unwilling to make, leading to dramatic tensions between Israel and the United States. In short, the neoconservative house of cards collapsed, again.

The neocons, who had helped produce such major diplomatic and military "successes" as the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Iran-Contra affair and the Palestinian intifada, were becoming irrelevant. That is the worst thing you can say about someone in Washington.

The neoconservative dogma that what is good for Israel is good for America has been demolished. Now even the dimmest members of Congress are raising questions with their handlers from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) about the political feasibility of voting continued massive U.S. aid to the Jewish state. As some of the neocons found cushy positions in this city's "think tanks," or began making decent living as "beltway bandits," the conventional wisdom was that maybe they would finally shut up.

But then there appeared full-page advertisements in The New York Times and The Washington Post headlined: "Statement of the Committee on U.S. Interests in the Middle East." It was a call for the Bush administration to stop pressuring Israel to make territorial concessions and for revival of the U.S.-Israel alliance. The signatories were 40 of the top neocons, including Eugene V. Rostow, former director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Dov Zakheim, former deputy undersecretary of defense, and Alan Keyes, former assistant secretary of state. All are ardent supporters of Likud policies, and are opposed to any Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.

The goal of the committee, a Washington Times story on the subject suggested, was to "counter Bush on Israel." In the midst of the $10 billion loan guarantee battle, as Bush's victory over Israel's lobby on Capitol Hill seemed secure, the new group looked like veteran troops called back to halt the rout of Shamir's army of occupation from Washington.

The veteran members of the group insisted, however, that unlike AIPAC they are not operating out of some parochial obsession with Israel. Hence the name "Committee on U.S. Interests in the Middle East." As Frank Gaffney, a former deputy assistant secretary of state and one of the leaders of the group put it, they want to demonstrate that the concern for Israel is not "the exclusive interest of the American Jewish community."

That sounds great until one looks again at the names of the signatories. Morris Amitay, identified only as a "former foreign service officer," was in the foreign service only briefly but was for years executive director of AIPAC. Amitay now directs National PAC, the second largest pro-Israel political action committee in the U.S. It is technically not affiliated, but never out of synch, with AIPAC's recommendations. When another signatory, Linda Chavez, a former Reagan White House aide, ran for a Maryland Senate seat, as had Keyes twice, both enjoyed broad financial and political support from the deceptively named pro-Israel PACs that take their cues from AIPAC.

Another signatory, Leonard Garment, former Nixon White House official and a consummate pro-Israel Washington power broker, served as an attorney to some of the Israeli officials involved in the Jonathan Pollard case. Still another, Stephen Bryen, a former Pentagon official, was accused when he was still a legislative assistant to the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee of offering highly classified U.S. government documents to an Israeli diplomat and an Israeli Defense Ministry official. The question of whose interest the committee serves doesn't take long to sort out.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

Perhaps, however, the neocons are just taking a walk down memory lane. Polls show rising public disenchantment both with Israel's policies and with to aid to Israel. The presidential candidates seem to choke up when asked to recite the politically correct pledges to Israel. And the concept of Israel as America's "unsinkable aircraft carrier" sank at the end of the Cold War.

In the ad published by the new committee of old neocons, however, there was no reference to Israel's "strategic services" to the United States. Instead, the neocons advanced what they called "moral considerations" for reviving the old relationship between the two countries.

Israel is one of the "good guys," to use the ad's language, representing the values of "freedom" and "democracy of Western values." Most of the Arabs, it seems, are the "bad guys," representing the forces of "totalitarianism, tyranny and anti-Western ideology." There is no "moral equivalency," therefore, between the Israelis and the Arabs, according to the ad's signatories.

In fact, the advertisement marks a major metamorphosis for the neocons. Podhoretz, when I interviewed him a few years ago, tried to convince me to forget about "sentimental" components in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. You have to understand, he explained, that what counts in relations between states in power, and especially military power. America's commitment to Israel is based on strategic considerations, he argued, and if those disappeared, other factors would not make any difference.

And then there was the 1979 article in Commentary in which neoconservative idealogue Jeane Kirkpatrick argued that Washington should play down human rights considerations in its pursuit of foreign policy goals, and instead base them almost exclusively on cold military and strategic calculations. It was that article that got her a Reagan administration appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Indeed, during the Reagan era, whenever Israel was accused of disregarding freedom, democracy and human rights in its conduct in the West Bank, for example, Kirkpatrick and other neocons (virtually all of them pre-Reagan Democrats who switched parties when Jimmy Carter made human rights and a land-for-peace settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy) were always quick to explain that Israel was, after all, our ally (the Palestinians, you recall, were part of the "pro-Soviet terrorist network") and therefore the U.S. must concentrate on the "real issues."

So the neocons have changed their marketing techniques. If you cannot sell Israel as a "strategic asset," try the "freedom, democracy, and Western ideology" formula all over again.

Another element in this course reversal undoubtedly was the challenge to President Bush by Patrick Buchanan for the 1992 Republican presidential nomination. One of Buchanan's major targets has been the neoconservative movement. He represents the traditional "paleo-conservative" Republicans who argue that with the Cold War behind it, the United States should reduce its foreign policy commitments abroad, lower taxes by diverting resources from the military, and concentrate on the trade competition with Europe and Japan.

In advancing this so-called "America First" agenda, the feisty television commentator promised he would neutralize the influence of the neocons as well as neocon support for more extensive U.S. military intervention abroad (to protect Israel). In particular, Buchanan has challenged the neoconservative core insistence on maintaining the "American-Israeli alliance." He calls for reducing aid to Israel as well as to other foreign aid recipients.

Although I find myself in strong disagreement with much of what Buchanan says, when it comes to Israel and the Middle East, Buchanan's opposition to the Likud government's policies is not much different from that of the major opposition party in Israel. While maintaining his commitment to Israel's security (he supported rescinding the U.N. Zionism-is-racism resolution), Buchanan also has expressed support for Palestinian self-determination and he has called on Israel to cease its West Bank settlement policy. That sounds no different than the views of Israel's Peace Now movement, but it is too much, apparently, for the neocons.

Too Much For the Neocons

What really concerns them is the possibility that Buchanan will emerge as the major conservative spokesman and political heir to Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Hence, the attempts by the neocons to portray Buchanan as an "anti-Semite," a "bigot," and therefore "beyond the pale."

Buchanan's views on civil rights and his criticisms of Black leaders or gay groups, however, did not bother the neoconservatives so long as the conservative columnist said the right things on Israel. It was only after Buchanan belatedly began criticizing Israeli policies, finally suggesting that Congress "is an Israeli-occupied territory" and that the Israeli government and its Washington lobby were pushing the U.S. into war against Saddam, that the neocons discovered that Buchanan was a "racist," a "nativist," and an "enemy of the Jewish people."

There is no love lost between Bush and the neocons, who will never forgive the president for not "using" Israeli forces during the Gulf war and for not going all the way to Baghdad and deposing Saddam. They perceive him and Secretary of State James Baker as "anti-Israeli" and, through innuendo and unsourced accusations like that in a recent Ed Koch column in The New York Post, even are trying to portray both as "anti-Semitic." No less important, they deeply resent Bush's reluctance to appoint any neocons to major foreign policy positions in his administration.

But Buchanan is the major obstacle to their long-term strategy. They regard Bush as nothing more than a transitional figure with whom they will have to co-exist for, at worst, only another four years. They hope, then, to choose the next Republican presidential candidate. The three names on their list are Vice President Dan Quayle, Secretary of Housing Jack Kemp, and former "Drug Czar" William Bennett.

All have close ties to the neocon family and have been groomed politically by its leaders. Kemp's close adviser is Irving Kristol, a writer who is considered the guru of the neoconservative movement. Kristol's son, William, is Quayle's chief of staff. Podhoretz' son, John, served as press secretary for Bennett while he led the fight against drugs.

All three, while defending Bush against the Buchanan candidacy, pushed the neocon line on Israel. Bennett signed the statement of the "Committee on U.S. Interests." Kemp, despite strong State Department objections, was the only member of the Bush cabinet to meet with Housing Minister and "Settlement Czar" Ariel Sharon during the latter's latest visit to Washington. Quayle, while not disagreeing publicly with Bush's policies toward Israel, has made it clear through leaks to the press that he intends, if elected president, to return to the more pro-Israel orientation of the Reagan era.

The formation of the "Committee on U.S. Interests" is, therefore, part of the effort to rebuild the neoconservative movement and revive its pro-Israeli messages in preparation for the great battle for the leadership, as well as the heart and soul, of the Republican Party in 1996. The neocons hope that the new group will help turn the issue of support for Israel into a major tenet of American conservatism and a litmus test for a future Republican presidential candidate.

That explains the frenzied efforts by neoconservatives to demonize Buchanan. Their hope is that Buchanan will be sufficiently damaged to give up his presidential ambitions and leave the 1996 field to their Israeli-correct candidates.

Beyond Reach

Whatever the political fate of Buchanan, the neocons' reach may exceed their grasp. With the end of the struggle with communism, it is unlikely that support for Israel can be included among the ideological tenets of the Republican Party.

Secondly, the neocons failed to deliver the Jewish vote to the Republican party or to place the American-Jewish community in the conservative camp. Most American Jews regard themselves as liberals or moderates and fewer than one-third of American Jewish voters supported Reagan and Bush during their two races for the White House, despite Reagan's support for Israel.

Moreover, unlike Democratic party candidates, who are heavily dependent on Jewish financial contributions, GOP candidates can turn to other sources. Since Republicans don't owe their electoral success to the American Jewish community, they feel less obliged to support its agenda.

Finally, with public opinion polls confirming a decline in favorable ratings for the Jewish state, visible support for Israel has ceased to be a political asset. With the growing outcry against foreign aid, it may be turning, instead, into a political burden.

Ironically, although Buchanan's agenda may be rejected by most Republicans, when it comes to his outspoken stand on Israel, Buchanan is probably in tune with most Republican activists, as well as with the voters who support the GOP. This leads me to suggest, once again, that this time we may be witnessing the neocons' very last hurrah.

Leon T. Hadar teaches at the School of International Service at the American University.

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