March 02, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "The
Intercept" -
Donald Trump’s runaway success in the
GOP primaries so far is setting off alarm bells
among neoconservatives who are worried he will not
pursue the same bellicose foreign policy that has
dominated Republican thinking for decades.
Max Boot, an
unrepentant supporter of the Iraq War, wrote
in the Weekly Standard that a “Trump
presidency would represent the death knell of
America as a great power,” citing, among other
things, Trump’s objection to a large American troop
presence in South Korea.
Trump has done much to trigger the scorn of
neocon pundits. He
denounced the Iraq War as a mistake based on
Bush administration lies, just prior to scoring a
sizable victory in the South Carolina GOP
primary. In last week’s contentious GOP presidential
debate, he defended the concept of neutrality in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is utterly taboo
on the neocon right.
“It serves no purpose to say you have a good guy
and a bad guy,”
he said, pledging to take a neutral position in
negotiating peace.
This set off his rival Marco Rubio, who replied,
“The position you’ve taken is an anti-Israel
position. … Because you cannot be an honest broker
in a dispute between two sides in which one of the
sides is constantly acting in bad faith.”
The Jerusalem Post suggested that Rubio’s
assault on Trump’s views on the Middle East was
designed to win Florida. If that’s the case,
it’s apparently not working — in the Real Clear
Politics averaging of GOP primary polls in the
state, Trump is
polling higher than he ever has.
In his quest to take up George W. Bush’s mantle,
Rubio has arrayed a fleet of neoconservative
funders, ranging from
pro-Israel billionaire
Paul Singer to
Norman Braman, a billionaire auto dealer who
funds Israeli settlements in the West Bank. His
list of advisers is like a rolodex of Iraq War
backers, ranging from Bush administration alumni
Elliot Abrams and Stephen Hadley, to Kagan and
serial war propagandist Bill Kristol.
Kristol also sits on the board of the Emergency
Committee for Israel — a dark money group that
assails candidates it perceives as insufficiently
pro-Israel. The group started airing an ad this
weekend against Trump portraying him as an ally to
despots like Bashar Assad, Saddam Hussein, and
Muammar Qaddafi — mostly because he argued that
military invasions of Libya and Iraq left those
countries worse off:
Even when
Trump echoes certain elements of neoconservative
orthodoxy — he repeatedly and emphatically calls for
strengthening the military — he does so in a
unique way. He talks not about spending more money
but defying the “special interests” who make the
Pentagon order “missiles they don’t want because of
politics … because the company that makes the
missiles is a contributor.”
Jacob
Heilbrunn, author of They Knew They Were Right:
The Rise of the Neocons, suggested
in July 2014 that neoconservatives might be
preparing to ally with Hillary Clinton.
With
Trump’s ascendancy, it’s possible that the parties
will reorient their views on war and peace, with
Trump moving the GOP to a more dovish direction and
Clinton moving the Democrats towards greater support
for war.
Zaid Jilani is a journalist who hails from
Atlanta, Georgia. He has previously worked as a
reporter-blogger for ThinkProgress, United Republic, the
Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and Alternet.
He
graduated from the University of Georgia in 2009
with a Bachelor of Arts in international affairs
and received his master’s in public
administration from Syracuse University in 2014.
Trump not yet on track to win
nomination: Going
forward, Trump would have to win 52 per cent of the
remaining delegates to claim the nomination. That's
doable but difficult with three or more candidates
claiming delegates.
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