Neocons: Trotskyite Don Quixotes

Left-wing hit man James Pinkerton denounces the Administration’s “neocons,” likening them to Don Quixote. Pinkerton recently visited Iraq and took a copy of Don Quixote along: “[S]ince much of what was said about Iraq was so obviously fiction, I figured that the work would be an enlightening travel companion.” Nothing like keeping an open mind.
Oddly, however, Pinkerton is utterly silent as to what he actually observed in Iraq, with this single exception: “In my trip there, I met lots of uniformed Americans who had not written any neocon propaganda, but who had obviously read or heard a lot of it. They believed they were there to help the Iraqi people, and they were determined to do their best. To believe that, they had to look past the fact that the United States had to bomb and shoot its way in.”
So our troops are committed to their mission. Beyond that welcome fact, Pinkerton’s commentary is simply stupid: the fact that Saddam’s troops had to be defeated militarily is obviously not incompatible with an intention to help the Iraqi people.
What I really like about Pinkerton is the way he weaves together the threads of liberal prejudice into a seamless whole. Not only is the “chickenhawk” theme present, but he also describes the “neocons”–incomprehensibly, no doubt, to anyone who has not followed the arcana of left-wing denunciations of the Administration–as “well-versed, particularly, in the literature of such past master-propagandists as Leon Trotsky and Leo Strauss.” This linkage of Trotsky and Strauss as though they were two peas in a pod, not to mention the characterization of Strauss as a “master-propagandist,” is priceless.
BIG TRUNK adds: One of our readers has written to correct Rocket Man’s description of Pinkerton as “left-wing.” According to his Newsday bio, he worked in the White House for Presidents Reagan and Bush as well as in their respective presidential campaigns. He first came to public attention as the proponent of the fatuous “new paradigm” under President Bush (41). He appears to have gone off the rails.
HINDROCKET adds: Sorry for the error. I see through a Google search that Pinkerton actually suppported the President’s tax cuts. So he is certainly not a conventional left-winger, even now–although it is hard to see a conservative perspective from which the neocons look like Trotskyites. I guess he is, as the Trunk put it, “an idiot of a different stripe.”

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