Best products from r/neoconNWO

So first of all, this is a really shitty article. He links to this RAND report to say "even when host countries like Japan and Germany cover some of the costs, U.S. taxpayers still pay an annual average of $10,000 to $40,000 more per year," completely missing that this same report concludes the following points:

• In many cases, but not all, overseas presence enhances contingency responsiveness
  
  • In-place forces are critical for the initial stage of major contingencies.
    
  • The global en route infrastructure enables reinforcement of in-place forces and broad responsiveness.
    
  • Access to bases from which direct air support can be provided is important.
    
  • Global naval presence contributes to response flexibility.
    
  • Overseas ground forces may not provide an advantage for regional responsiveness when not proximate to the area of conflict.
    
• Overseas forces targeted to specific threats provide deterrence and regional assurance.
  
  • In-place forces signal the ability to thwart quick victories and assure allies of U.S. commitments.
    
  • Regional air and missile defenses protect and assure allies and partners.
    
• Overseas presence enhances security cooperation, which builds U.S. capabilities to work with partners and helps develop their capabilities.
  
  • The marginal cost of security cooperation activity for forces based overseas is low, resulting in higher activity.
    
  • The greatest benefits accrue from working with advanced partners.
    
• Some posture changes could be advisable, depending on judgments about national security priorities and the relationships between posture and strategic benefits.
  
  • Further reductions in Europe would reduce costs, but at some penalty in terms of security cooperation and assurance of allies.
    
  • The emerging threat from long-range precision-guided weapons needs to be part of the calculus when adjusting posture in the Asia-Pacific region in the pursuit of deterrence and assurance goals.
    
  • In Asia, another key consideration is the value of having ground forces stationed in the region versus in the United States for flexible contingency response, assurance, and security cooperation with partners across the region.
    
  • In the Persian Gulf, policymakers must weigh the deterrent benefits of presence against the costs and the risks driven by host nations' political sensitivities to U.S. presence.
    
    The only conclusion that he cites is that cutting bases reduces financial cost, which is obviously true, but it isn't like there's an immediate tangible financial cost to our basing. On that point, Barry Eichengreen found here that if the US were to pull out, our interest rates would be like 0.8% higher, attributable to the preference of nations where the US has military bases to store additional FX reserves in dollars than they otherwise would.
    
    This isn't to say that the author isn't right that there's a financial cost component, but it kind of shows that they didn't even make the effort to engage with the literature.
    
    Most of his other arguments are also either out-of-date or just straight up false. For instance, he cites that: In contrast to frequently invoked rhetoric about spreading democracy, the military has shown a preference for establishing bases in undemocratic and often despotic states like Qatar and Bahrain. In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, U.S. bases have created fertile breeding grounds for radicalism and anti-Americanism. The presence of bases near Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia was a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and part of Osama bin Laden’s professed motivation for the September 11, 2001, attacks.
    
    The US pulled its troops out of Saudi Arabia in 2003 and, more importantly, the creation of the air base in Doha came with broad support from the Qatari government. Despite my less than savory view of Saudi Arabia/Qatar, the presence of al-Udeid was most certainly a deterrent factor preventing Riyadh from straight-up invading Doha, which they had clearly shown inclinations of doing. The same argument could also be made about Iranian illicit activity in Bahrain, which is likely deterred by the presence of the Fifth Fleet when we compare it to other Shia hot zones, like Iraq, Yemen, etc.
    
    It seems quite interesting that the only country with significant Shia resentment where the Iranians have yet to establish a strategic foothold is the one with a US military base, isn't it?
    
    And, AGAIN, he links back to the SAME RAND study with those EXACT conclusions that UPHOLD basing to argue that changes in transportation render these military bases moot. THE VERY STUDY HAS, IN ITS FIRST CONCLUSION POINT, AN ARGUMENT THAT WOULD OTHERWISE COUNTER THAT LINE.
    
    And finally on the last point, of course, he mentions the China building a base in Mexico example- every isolationist does. His argument assumes that the reader already believes that Russia is opposed to the United States because of NATO expansion, which is pretty funny, considering we spent most of the 1990s also supplying financial aid to the Kremlin and welcoming them back to the community of nations through initiatives like the G8. It also, of course, ignores the close relationship that was enjoyed by Putin and Bush in the early part of their presidencies.
    
    The defining moment, which most scholars agree on, is the Orange Revolution in 2004, that was responsible for the chasm in US-Russia relations, not the abstract expansion of NATO or any mythical bases (which we don't actually have) in territories like Poland.

So cleaning out my downloads folder today, I found I had a PDF copy of Irving Kristol's The Neoconservative Persuasion tucked away in a little cobwebbed corner of the hard drive, and I have no idea how it got there. Either I'm having serious memory loss, or the CIA has put four hundred pages of wonderful malware on my computer.

In any case, after having perused it for a short while, I can confirm that Mr. Kristol is a brilliant writer:

>Finally, for a great power, the “national interest” is not a geographical
term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation.
A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins
and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a
defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations
whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and
the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to
more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will
always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack
from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our
national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War
II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival
is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest
are necessary.

But I'm also finding that the views Our Glorious Founder, perhaps more than expected, don't necessarily align with those of this sub and a lot of modern Neoconservatism, at least from what I've read so far. From the same essay (emphasis added):

> And then, of course, there is foreign policy, the area of American politics
where neoconservatism has recently been the focus of media attention. This is
surprising since there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign
policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience. (The favorite
neoconservative text on foreign affairs, thanks to Professors Leo Strauss of
Chicago and Donald Kagan of Yale, is Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War.)
These attitudes can be summarized in the following “theses” (as a Marxist
would say). First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be
encouraged by both private and public institutions. Precisely because we are a
nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment. Second, world
government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded
with the deepest suspicion. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability
to distinguish friends from enemies. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the
history of the Cold War revealed. The number of intelligent men who could
not count the Soviet Union as an enemy, even though this was its own selfdefinition,
was absolutely astonishing.

I get the feeling that many of the lines that jumped out at me as rather strange utterances from the Godfather of Neoconservatism are merely instances of miscommunication; Kristol had a very specific way of putting things -- supposedly "not having beliefs" on foreign policy is really, if you read further, a statement on the practicality and the importance of the lesson of history regarding that policy -- but the break between Kristol's philosophy of Neoconservatism and the modern persuasion -- for it remains, I'll agree with him, a "persuasion" and not a philosophy or a doctrine -- is very real and much more easily spotted than I'd previously assumed. As he says in this essay, however, our roots are in the American-led rules-based world order, not necessarily in the precise words of various moral justifications for it. Regardless of Kristol's particular suspicions of policies or institutions we might hold dear, he did a mighty fine job of defining this here ideology's place within American conservatism.

On just this, he opens:

> What exactly is neoconservatism? Journalists, and now even presidential candidates,
speak with an enviable confidence on who or what is “neoconservative,”
and seem to assume the meaning is fully revealed in the name. Those of
us who are designated as “neocons” are amused, flattered, or dismissive, depending
on the context. It is reasonable to wonder: is there any “there” there?
Even I, frequently referred to as the “godfather” of all those neocons, have had
my moments of wonderment.

And soon concludes, after mulling a bit on the subject of just where his "persuasion" should be in the world:

> Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past
century that is in the “American grain.” It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forwardlooking,
not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic. Its
twentieth-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican
and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight
Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked. Of course, those worthies
are in no way overlooked by a large, probably the largest, segment of the Republican
Party, with the result that most Republican politicians know nothing
and could not care less about neoconservatism. Nevertheless, they cannot be
blind to the fact that neoconservative policies, reaching out beyond the traditional
political and financial base, have helped make the very idea of political
conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters. Nor has it passed
official notice that it is the neoconservative public policies, not the traditional Republican
ones, which result in popular Republican presidencies.

---------------------

Tl;Dr

I'm glad I downloaded this, even if I don't remember it. I think I'm in for a wild ride.

When Bush left office, America marked 2,688 days without a terrorist attack on its soil. It was an achievement few thought possible in the days after September 11, 2001.Al Qaeda tried repeatedly to strike us during those seven years,but they failed because Bush put in place a set of tools that successfully protected the country for more than seven years after 9/11.

Consider the Justice Department memo of May 30, 2005. It notes that:

>"The CIA believes 'the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qaeda has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.' In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques."

The memo continues:

>"Before the CIA used enhanced techniques KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, 'Soon you will find out.'Once the techniques were applied, "interrogations have led to specific, actionable intelligence, as well as a general increase in the amount of intelligence regarding al Qaeda and its affiliates."


The memo notes that "interrogations of Abu Zubaydah -- again, once enhanced techniques were employed -- furnished detailed information regarding al Qaeda's 'organizational structure, key operatives, and modus operandi' and identified KSM as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks." This information helped the intelligence community plan the operation that captured KSM. It went on: "Zubaydah and KSM also supplied important information about al-Zarqawi and his network" in Iraq, which helped our operations against al-Qaeda in that country.

But just as the memo begins to describe previously undisclosed details of what enhanced interrogations achieved, the page is almost entirely blacked out. The Obama administration released pages of unredacted classified information on the techniques used to question captured terrorist leaders but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved.

Yet there is more information confirming the program's effectiveness. The Office of Legal Counsel memo states "we discuss only a small fraction of the important intelligence CIA interrogators have obtained from KSM" and notes that "intelligence derived from CIA detainees has resulted in more than 6,000 intelligence reports and, in 2004, accounted for approximately half of the Counterterrorism Center's reporting on al Qaeda." The memos refer to other classified documents -- including an "Effectiveness Memo" and an "IG Report," which explain how "the use of enhanced techniques in the interrogations of KSM, Zubaydah and others has yielded critical information." Why didn't Obama officials release this information as well? Because they know that if the public could see the details of the techniques side by side with evidence that the program saved American lives, the vast majority would support continuing it.


Critics claim that enhanced techniques do not produce good intelligence because people will say anything to get the techniques to stop. But the memos note that, "as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, 'brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship." In other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can -- and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that "Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable." The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.

Marc Thiessen in his book Courting Disaster documents the evidence for the efficacy of the CIA interrogation program — based not on the testimony of the actual interrogators, interivews with top CIA and other intelligence officials, the evidence presented in the CIA inspector general’s report, and other top-secret documents declassified by the Obama administration. I urge you to read it and judge for yourself. The evidence is overwhelming.

Before these documents were released, there was room for debate on the efficacy of CIA interrogations — because the facts had not been declassified. No longer.

Released Docs by Wikileaks actually support the claim that EIT's worked. Furthermore I recommend reading Hard Measures by Jose Rodriguez:How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9-11 Saved American Lives.

Also read page 520 of the SSCI Minority Report. Waterboarding was how we in fact got Bin Laden. Something the Obama administration never gave these Patriots credit for.


The evidence that CIA interrogations played a key role in the operation that got Osama bin Laden is overwhelming. Countless intelligence officials, including CIA Director Leon Panetta, have confirmed that detainees interrogated by the CIA provided information that helped lead us to bin Laden. But the CIA deniers continue to insist it is all a “big lie.” Despite this testimony, and the mountains of documents declassified by the Obama administration in 2009, they contend that CIA interrogations did not work.

So did EIT's work? Yes. Does Torture work? That's another debate entirely. And like you, this is a subject that I will not compromise on. I oppose Torture in most instances (Save for ticking time bomb scenarios), But I wholeheartedly support Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, Waterboarding etc and hope Trump Brings them back.I view them as both Moral and Just

"There is a God"

I had him as a professor for a US History course and he was brilliant and fascinating. Turns out his PhD is in history and philosophy. He acknowledges in the beginning of the book that he has a flaw of occasionally being combative (and he gets that way a couple times in the book) but the overall thing was quite fascinating.

The book is written towards an LDS audience, so I don't know how well it translates into generic Christianity, but it made some incredibly fascinating arguments that changed how I understood Christianity in general and he seems to be pretty well read in a lot of atheist arguments, so my assumption is that he isn't attacking a straw man.

I wish I could be more familiar with this particular area of philosophy so I could assess how good of a book it is or not and the strength of its arguments. All I know is that, for me at least, it's up there with Mere Christianity for best Christian literature that I have read in a long time.

Asked previously on Tuesday, but this sub is more active.

Any good recommendations for important conservative readings? Books, classic articles etc. Any good contemporary pundit is also welcome, especially if they write on international issues or for an international audience.

e: These seem v interesting

Ideas Have Consequences, Richard M. Weaver

After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre

The City and Man, Leo Strauss

>There are areas in the UK that are Islamised (suburbs of Luton, for instance). The country itself is still obviously British, but areas persist. Most European radicals can be linked to one of about a dozen families in the UK.

The original claim.

>I said, from the beginning, that Islamism exists in areas. This is trivially true.

The claim just then.

Gee, look at how far the goalposts have moved.

Exactly 0cm.

>You also think the city centre = suburbs (although more likely you're lying about that as well and legit thought the suburbs were Muslim). You don't have a clue what you're on about.

In Australia all areas of a city are a suburb. If you live in a city you live in a suburb. The CBD of Brisbane is the suburb of Brisbane City.

>We've reached a point now where you've shifted the goalposts so much about what the definition of Islamism is that so much of the UK is now Islamist that Luton doesn't particularly stand out.

If it makes you feel better about yourself.

>The weaselling to try and give the appearance "that's what I meant anyway" when it's clearly nonsense is pathetic as well. Jog on.

Bye bye friendo. Here's some fun books for you:

https://www.amazon.com/Can-Learn-Read-Collection-Level/dp/054568255X

In case you guys haven’t seen it, there is a really well-written, insightful book comparing the United States to Rome in a positive way.

It is called Empires of Trust: How Rome Built — And America is Building — A New World by Thomas Madden. It’s a bit outdated, since it doesn’t consider Donald Trump and his attempts to tear down the new world order, but it is nevertheless an excellent rebuttal to people who think America is declining and that being like Rome is automatically a negative thing.

https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Trust-Built-America-Building-/dp/0452295459?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-ipad-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0452295459

Have any of you read this and can recommend it? I thought it sounded really interesting.

You are ready, padawan learner

Edit: And then I thought, weeeelll, not everyone likes academic writing like me. So here's
some more bite-sized Irving Kristol stuff.