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America's Messianic War Cult

We have met the hegemony, and he is us

by Matthew Hogan hoganzeroes{at}aol.com

HIJACKING NATIONAL SECURITY: THE WAR PARTY

Who's flying the plane? --- The probable terrifying final thoughts of many 
September 11, 2001 victims.  

Today, many are asking the same thing about the Bush 
Administration's subsequent foreign policy. Despite failing to secure 
Osama bin-Laden's fate, the Administration now careens in search of 
ever-expanding Executive Branch-initiated war against an "axis of evil." 
First stop, Iraq.  

Of course, there may be a case for war against Iraq. The benefit 
potential for Iraq alone of ending the rule of Saddam Hussein is obvious. 
But for those steering the policy, Iraq is only the beginning. And the 
actual Iraq-specific case for war appears to be of secondary importance 
to them at best.  

Now, who's flying that plane? 

President Bush remains the ultimate party responsible, but it is no 
secret that a factional War Party has won the ears, hearts, and minds 
of the President, Vice- President, National Security Adviser and 
Secretary of Defense. As Scott Ritter, the Republican ex-Marine who 
hounded Saddam's secret weapons group for several years, has 
warned:  

"The national security of the United States of America has been 
hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are using their position 
of authority to pursue their own ideologically-driven political ambitions."  

Ritter's warning may be understated. The neoconservatives, or 
"neocons," are some of the most dangerous menaces to America's 
destiny to come along. Moreover, they are a grave danger to the peace, 
progress, and security of much of humanity. And their true agenda has 
features of something that few, if any, have called by a designation that 
is as alarming as it is accurate: a cult.  

Neoconservatism is not merely an ideology, but a cult of war and 
domination that makes conventional and even ideological "hawks" and 
"interventionists" look like doves and isolationists. Many of their fellow 
conservatives fear their aims. For if successful, the neocons' efforts will 
provoke far more terrorism, leave enormous numbers of Americans and 
foreigners dying uselessly in endless far-flung wars, trip-up the world's 
already struggling economy, and midwife a Constitution-shelving 
national security state.  

Outlines of this are seen in a open-ended conflict, military activism 
which has eschewed Congressional debate and oversight, spikes in oil 
prices, domestic spying proposals, secret tribunals, citizen detentions 
without trial, and surging ethnic and religious hatred.  

So, what is it that makes these neocons tick? What lies at their core?

There's a single, easy-to-find, and utterly frightening answer to that. 

THE BIZARRE CORE OF NEOCONSERVATISM

The single thread can be found, explicit and implicit, in neocon writings 
and sentiments. These are worth a read, if only to see that the fate of 
the world may be in the hands of people who are not only dangerous, 
but actually use the word "hegemon" in conversation.  

In an essay in Foreign Affairs in 1996 ("Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign 
Policy" July-August 1996), neocon gurus William Kristol and Robert 
Kagan described their desired goal.  

They are seekers of a "global hegemon [ruler]." (Elsewhere neocon 
writer Charles Krauthammer has called for embracing a "unipolar 
world".) This world- encompassing hegemon would possess a moral 
"exceptionalism", i.e. distinct essential moral superiority. It would 
establish "moral clarity and purpose". It would go forth (hegemonically, 
we must presume) and find "monsters to destroy". Once empowered, 
this world-ruler would exercise "benevolent ...hegemony." Nevertheless 
those otherwise good people who don't actively aid the world-saving 
hegemon's monster-slaying are guilty of "cowardice and dishonor".  

Hang on, it gets weirder. 

"The end of history" is how neocon author Francis Fukuyama in his 
book of the same title has called the period after the collapse of the 
hegemon's main enemy. William Kristol's father Irving has revealed in 
his autobiography ("Memoirs of a Trotskyist") that the neocons in their 
original incarnation saw themselves as the "`happy few' who had been 
chosen by History to guide our fellow creatures toward a secular 
redemption."  

To find the common thread, we need only connect the dots: 

A "benevolent global hegemon" of essentially superior moral character? 
Who destroys monsters to create a "unipolar world," and imposes 
"moral clarity" and "purpose"? Who ushers in "the
end of history"? 
Whose acolytes are a vanguard in the militant salvific redemption of the 
world? What to call such a being?  

One word comes to mind . . . a Messiah. And a pretty darn utopian and 
apocalyptic one at that. That is no exaggerated extrapolation of their 
vision. And so it is no exaggeration to employ the term "cult." 
(Recently, writer Thomas Bray in the online Wall Street Journal referred 
to the Administrationos goals for Iraq as "messianic".)  

The next question: who or what is the neocon's Messiah? Lyndon 
LaRouche? Leon Trotsky? No. Despite some neocons' earlier affiliations 
with the aforementioned, the movement is not so crude, nor avowedly 
illiberal or antidemocratic. The cultic Messiah is an institution. Kristol 
and Kagan tell us which institution.  

The honor of benevolent global hegemony, they write, is to be 
"America's role." Global redemption will come through "actively 
promot[ing ] American principles of governance abroad." Krauthammer's 
"unipolar world" means the period of American sole superpowerhood. 
The "moral clarity" Kristol and Kagan seek is therefore one that forced 
-- hegemonically -- upon benighted humanity by the U.S. federal 
government.  

The militarism is real. Charles Krauthammer has recently postulated as 
constituting one distinctively "conservative" (as opposed to
"liberal" ) 
value: "military power". This is far more than the conservative ideal of 
strong national defense or honoring military service. The explicit 
adulation of military power as an end is a new, i.e. "neo-," twist to 
conservatism, though left-wing critics may not initially notice that.  

Meanwhile, neocon Eliot Cohen, in a book the President has very 
recently read, lionizes historic political leaders who overrule the caution 
of their professional military establishments. Neocon heroes are those 
who outwarrior the warriors.  

Inspired by the age-old impulse for a political Messiah, the 
neoconservatives seek to self-righteously impose world redemption 
through militant imperial American federal government power. In effect 
then, they are America's Messianic War Cult. And so, after the Twin 
Towers have fallen, the neocons turn to empire state building.  

And God help those "evildoers" who disagree or stand in the way. 

The neocons have the energy, and now with Administration allegiance, 
the firepower to pursue these goals in deadly earnest. Their vision 
is not limited government conservatism, nor even Big Government 
left-liberalism. It is Limitless Government insanity.  

Predictably enough, cult-like language (e.g. "evildoers") has cropped 
up in the President's speeches post-9/11. The 2002 State of the Union 
speech gave us the "axis of evil". That phrase did not come from 
Christian Evangelical speech-writers as one might expect, but from the 
neoconnish David Frum. We also increasingly hear a regular insistence 
upon, rather than a mere responsible recognition of, America's place of 
leadership in the world.  

We have met the hegemony, and he is us.

THE PROBLEMS WITH MESSIAHS

Many may well ask: what's wrong with a little American Messianism? 
Real monsters are out there and they've come here, drawing much 
innocent blood. Our values are good for us and the world. Isn't it 
time for righteous rage?  

Rage is one thing, justice another, freedom still another. Nevertheless, 
they can work together. Hunting a monster who attacked us is a valid 
use of power to seek justice, protect our freedom, and express our rage. 
But Messianic missions are wholly different and wholly dangerous.  

First of all, Messiahs are best left to God (atheists: insert "if any," 
here). A genuine Messiah is divinely anointed. Secular ones typically 
bring with them power- madness, statist totalitarianism, and a penchant 
for deadly conquest. The fact that the neocon Messiah is the United States 
national government, and the Messianic rule to be imposed is 
theoretically liberal democracy, serves as no comfort. Secular Messiahs 
-- and false religious ones for that matter -- are not known for moral or 
intellectual consistency.  

Lenin was an egalitarian liberator who set up an elitist slave-state. 
Hitler was a white Germanic pagan racist socialist who nonetheless 
collaborated with capitalist industrialists, promulgated aristocratic 
Russian Christian anti-Semitism, and allied himself with Asiatics. 
Osama bin-Laden purported to be a holy warrior of a religion whose 
tradition has prided itself on the idea of not waging war on innocents 
among the enemy.  

In earlier incarnations, the neoconservatives in the Reagan 
Administration seemed to care little for the liberal democracy they claim 
to revere. This was exemplified by their attitude towards Latin American 
states allied with the neocons' Messianic twist on Cold War anti-
Communism. Jeane Kirkpatrick, to cite one neocon case, seemed never 
to have met an Argentine junta she did not like. Even when they invaded 
the Falklands, cultivated fascist ideology, and made numerous 
dissidents "disappear.".  

Political Messianism is hypocritical and dangerous. It first cultivates a 
visionary ideal for ruling others. Then it acts on that ideal with singular 
ruthlessness. America should subscribe to neither practice.  

/CONT/

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