Niebuhr and the Neoconservatives

David Brooks writes today about the Christian moral realism that Obama has espoused at various time in the last few years but never so profoundly as in his Oslo Nobel Peace Prize speech, calling that speech the most profound of his young Presidency.

It is no accident that it is neoconservatives like Brooks (though he now calls himself a 'moderate') who are praising this speech.  It is precisely when I became a neoconservative in the 80s that I first began to read Niebuhr seriously.  Neocons are simply 'cold war liberals', as Brooks calls them (himself), who have become even more militant in their 'faith', in reaction to anti-war liberals, such as really showed up in force during the late 60s and early 70s because of the Vietnam War.  They really love Niebuhr, because he seems to give them moral justification for their wars and their militarism.  (I don't necessarily believe this was Niebuhr's intention, but it seems to be what has happened.  It probably indicates a deep fallacy somewhere in his ethical and political philosophy).

The problem with all this is that history has moved on.  Neocons (and I believe cold war liberals too) didn't want to let go of the Cold War and the Communist enemy.  When the Soviet Union simply melted away around 1989, neocons seemed very disoriented for a while, and then settled on the Islamic menace as the new world enemy.  That, in turn, gave us the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (which we are all enjoying immensely right now).  Somewhere in the 90s, I let go of that neocon faith and sought out something different.  That 'something different' led me to oppose the Iraqi invasion and to wonder why few others did.

There is, and always has been as I see it, a hidden agenda behind the neoconservative née Cold War liberal ideology, and that is American global hegemony and military/political/economic/cultural domination.  This agenda is support by our political/economic/military/media elites, because they benefit tremendously from it.  When I was a neocon, I was so captivated by the ideology and its Manichean worldview, that I didn't clearly see this agenda, but once I had unblinkered my eyes, I began to see it more clearly.

This is the so-called 'Establishment' that controls both political parties, and they simply will not allow any President to deviate from it, primarily by making sure that anyone elected buys into said agenda from the beginning.  Obama has, it seems clear to me, bought into it, and if we had been listening carefully, we would have understood this better during the campaign last year.