Sanders might say, too, that he realizes neoconservatives believe in tricking the American people to support preordained policies that the neocons have cooked up in one of their think tanks, as happened with the Iraq War and the Project for the New American Century.
But a Sanders administration, he might say, would show respect for the citizenry, putting the people back in charge and putting the think tanks -- which live off the largesse of the Military-Industrial Complex -- back in their subordinate place.
Yes, it's true that such a call for democracy, truth and pragmatism would infuriate the mainstream media, which has largely accepted its role as a propaganda organ for the neocons. But Sanders could take on that fight, much as Donald Trump has on the Republican side.
It was Trump who finally confronted the Republican Party with the reality about George W. Bush's negligence prior to the 9/11 attacks and his deceptions about Iraq's WMD. So far, it appears that the Republican base can handle the truth.
The GOP establishment's frantic efforts to sustain the fictions that Bush "kept us safe" and his supposed sincerity in believing his WMD falsehoods fell flat in South Carolina where Trump trounced the Republican field and forced Bush's brother Jeb to drop out of the race.
Does Sanders have the courage to believe that the Democratic base is at least as ready for the truth about Hillary Clinton's entanglement in the serial deceptions that have justified a host of U.S. imperial wars, including the current ones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria? Sanders might even respond to the accusations that he is a "closet realist" by not just admitting to his foreign policy pragmatism but asking whether Hillary Clinton is a "closet neocon."
After all, Robert Kagan, who co-founded the neocon Project for the American Century, told The New York Times in 2014 that he hoped that his neocon views -- which he now prefers to call "liberal interventionist" -- would prevail in a possible Hillary Clinton administration.
Secretary of State Clinton named Kagan to one of her State Department advisory boards and promoted his wife, neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who oversaw the provocative "regime change" in Ukraine in 2014.
The Times reported that Clinton "remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes" and quoted Kagan as saying: "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. ... If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue ... it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."
Indeed, with populist billionaire Donald Trump seizing control of the Republican race with victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, the neocons may find themselves fully siding with Hillary Clinton's campaign as it becomes the last hope for their interventionist strategies. Ironically, too, many "realists" and anti-war activists may find Trump's rejection of neocon orthodoxy and readiness to cooperate with Moscow to resolve conflicts more appealing than Clinton's hopped-up belligerence.
Obviously, many anti-war Democrats would prefer that Sanders step forward as their champion and offer a cogent explanation about how the neocons and liberal hawks have harmed U.S. and world interests by spreading chaos across the Middle East and now into North Africa and Europe. But that would require Sanders embracing the word "realist" and asking whether his rival is a "neocon."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
2
