Stephen Colbert Schools William Kristol

Thursday night, William Kristol (neocon ringleader and Weekly Standard editor) was the guest on "The Colbert Report". It was a fantastic interview, the kind that suits Stephen's style perfectly. I've been waiting for video of this to be show up online today and it has... and apparently it's creating a lot of blogosphere buzz too!

Video: William Kristol On The Colbert Report (Alternate- C&L)

Transcript: Colbert Report Transcript, 4/28/06

Key section-

COLBERT: Speaking of thinking alike, you were a member, or are a member of the Project for a New American Century, correct?
KRISTOL: I am

COLBERT: Were or am?

KRISTOL: Were and am.

COLBERT: How’s that Project coming?

KRISTOL: Well it’s…

COLBERT: How’s the New American Century? Looks good to me, right?

KRISTOL: I think it, I…I’m speechless.

This was by far, one of the best interviews Stephen has done yet. I actually did a double-take when he brought up the Project For A New American Century. Even though that group and their writings is clearly the key to understanding the entire Bush administration foreign policy and power structure (I did a writeup on the group last June), the media does not touch it. It's never brought up. Ever. So for Stephen to so casually ask Kristol how the "Project" is going was a shock- a pleasant one. Kristol was clearly taken aback and visibly flummoxed, struggling to figure out a way to defend himself. Seeing him pretend it's been going well and that Rumsfeld wasn't a key part of the group was fun. It's clearly not a subject he's comfortable with.

As for watching Stephen digging at his chickenhawk nature by bringing up the Vietnam draft, exposing the hypocrisy of going after some dictators while ignoring others, and getting him to accidently endorse spousal abuse? Icing on the cake.

On a related note, Bill Maher also schooled loyal neocon player Victor Davis Hanson (who argues that war is the natural state of man) on last night's 'Real Time'. After Hanson restated the neocon worldview, Maher replied, "But if we had to go around the world and attack all the countries that were evil, we'd never really stop... If Iraq was really so intolerable, why don't we attack Darfur?... If there's evil in the world and we have to fight, I don't understand why we stop at one country." And then when Hanson responded by noting how we're using diplomatic solutions in other countries, Maher quickly turned it around to expose the foreign policy hypocrisy of these fools.

Mostly, I admit it is a pleasure for me (after years of reading stuff from their section of the right calling opposition to their worldview treasonous and unamerican) to see people like Kristol and Hanson humbled. Maybe that's not the most mature attitude, but I'm basking in it nonetheless.

For years, Kristol and his ilk had waited for the chance to get into power and start pushing their military agenda. That chance came in 2000 with George W. Bush. His staff was packed with the neocon elite- Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, etc- and the planning was underway, even before 9/11 gave them the selling point. Of course, their grand experiment has blown up in our faces and proved to be one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in American history.

So what's a disgraced neocon to do? Admit failure? Apologize? Agree that preemptive wars and a "might makes right" approach to spreading democracy is wrong and choose now to work with the other side to repair the damage? Nope. They're just as dedicated to their "project" as ever... although, as we see in this interview, they're a bit less confident about it publicly.

The post-Iraq neocon strategy has been that of the pseudo-apology. Many neocons figures, like Kristol and Francis Fukuyama, have publicly conceded that much of the war has been a failure, but they then maintain that the idea itself was fantastic, there just a few unexpected bumps along the way. Like, ya know, the Iraqi people actually defending their country and the fact that no one in the Bush administration apparently knows how to manage a war. On that last point, the neocons are quite happy to throw their old puppet George W. under the bus. They know Bush is a liability to their cause, so they're cutting him loose, calling him "incompetent", all so they can turn around and represent their freshly-polished turd of an agenda as a great idea all over again. After all, they insist Iraq would've worked out great... if only it didn't fail.

This sacrificing of Bush for the greater conservative/neoconservative good is a common theme these days on the right. Digby recently explored this theme, looking at how many arch-conservatives like Rush Limbaugh are now blowing Bush off, stating he's not a real conservative, and ignoring that he is the guy they have been worshipping almost cult-like for the last 5 years. The purpose of this is to protect the conservative agenda. They know that Bush is going down in flames and they don't want him to take them down with him. So all of the sudden, he's not their guy anymore. At 32%, it's not safe to pretend that George W. Bush is the new Ronald Reagan anymore.

It's the 'President Bush may have made a few mistakes (probably the fault of the Democrats anyway), but the agenda was solid and strong and we were still right the whole time' defense. They'll get it right the next time, they swear.

What is truly disturbing to me about these pseudo-mea-culpas is the arrogance surrounding them. All of the conservative war critics- even those genuinely principled ones like Andrew Sullivan who abandoned Bush before the '04 election- maintain that they were both right to support the Iraq war in 2003 and right to have turned against it now. Liberals and moderate conservatives who opposed the war in 2002/2003 on principle or based on beliefs that there were no WMDs/Al Qaeda ties were, apparently, still misguided even in retrospect. It was right to support the war (suck on it, Dixie Chicks), but now that it's gone to crap, it's right to speak out against it. Liberals now are apparently still wrong in our opposition, because we don't have principles; we just hate Bush and don't support the war on terror and yada yada yada... Even in their newfound humility, they have to act superior and smug.

Steve Anderson at the Huffington Post recently looked at at Francis Fukuyama's 'redemption' from neoconservativism and wasn't impressed with what he saw. Anderson states-

The reason many of us on the left still don't feel inclined to accept your non-apology is that it's really not so much an apology as a snotty declaration that you really knew what was right all along, when you clearly didn't. As far back as your PNAC letter it seemed clear to many that the idea of Democratiztion of the Middle East was a really fanciful disaster waiting to happen.

That you have partially distanced yourself from the goals is a great thing. But to still maintain that many of the rationales for the Iraq war were good and noble ideas indicates that you're still not getting it.

Bingo.

This isn't to say, of course, that they all have given up. Many neocons, particularly pundits like Charles Krauthammer and John Podhoretz (still somehow respected, after being proved wrong on pretty much everything they've ever written about), and even Kristol too for the most part, have never given up the faith. They're too far in to jump out now.

History, I believe, will not judge them kindly.

[PS- Don't forget to watch C-SPAN tonight as Colbert hosts the annual White House Correspondents Dinner.]