The sociopathy of neoconservative politics

Message breakdown.

Just as President Obama was telling NBC News this week that he "think[s] it is entirely possible that we have a strategy formulated before a runoff [in Afghanistan] is determined," his peripatetic secretary of state, John Kerry, was back in Washington, standing just outside the White House and telling reporters that he "would absolutely counsel the president to wait until the runoff. Just as a matter of common sense, he's going to want to know what kind of government he's going to be dealing with before he makes a decision."

For Kerry, who in his spare time doubles as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this was no gaffe. He's been consistent -- and vocal -- on the matter of election first, decision second.

In a television interview last Sunday from Kabul, for instance, Kerry stressed with no little exasperation, "I don’t see how President Obama can make a decision about the committing of our additional forces, or even the further fulfillment of our mission that’s here today, without an adequate government in place."

What's more, Obama's own chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was saying essentially the same thing, same day, as Kerry: It's not about "how many troops you send, but do you have a credible Afghan partner for this process that can provide the security and the type of services that the Afghan people need?"

Let's see, what was it that Tom Hanks blurted in "Charlie Wilson's War?" -- Well, yeaaah. I mean, come on, Barack, pretty much all of us have to go with John and Rahm on this one.

On the other hand, Obama knows that a runoff (if it even takes place) will bring but an encore revival of President Karzai's electoral fraud, and thus another Karzai "victory." Hence even post-runoff the Associated Press' immediate assessment will almost unquestionably hold true: "[T]wo months since the Aug. 20 poll that many hoped would re-establish the legitimacy of Afghanistan's government, the United States is still far from finding a government it can point to as a legitimate partner in the increasingly violent battle against the Taliban."

The above statements, however -- Obama's sudden assurance of an impending decision and Kerry and Emanuel's defenses of cautionary delay -- were less about foreign policy than -- what else? -- domestic politics. Because once again, and for the seventh decade running, Congressional Republicans and ghoulishly assorted neoconservative agitators have found a way to convert legitimate national security concerns into a brawling partisan street fight.

Sunday, for instance, while appearing in tandem with John Kerry, Sen. John Cornyn theatrically warned of Obama's GOP-advertised indecisiveness on Afghanistan, "which then becomes a way of emboldening our enemies." The Afghan "government," to be charitable, may be venal and soaked in opium and extortion and it may even make South Vietnam, circa 1963, look like a nostalgic model of immaculate civic administration, but what the hell, that "shouldn’t be the linchpin," Cornyn continued, "for us deciding whether we’re going to protect our national security interests."

You've heard it -- you've heard it and read it everywhere, it's inescapable; from network Sunday shows to cable news clashes to talk radio drivel to hysterical op-eds -- President Obama is "dithering." He's "indecisive." Above all, he's "weak," characteristically weak -- you know, just like every Democratic president of the preceding century, from Wilson (WWI) to Roosevelt (WWII) to Truman (Korea) to Johnson (Vietnam). Those lads, too, had no stomach for a fight.

Who writes these clowns' material? Why of course.

The president is afraid of decision-making, squealed Dick Cheney two nights ago. There they are, our armed forces, "in danger," and yet the White House "dithers" while "signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries." Obama is "waffling," which only "endangers" our brave "troops on the ground." And, naturally, he's "giving in to the angry left."

I just started to write that such demagogic offensiveness is immeasurable. But that would be wrong. For it's quite measurable: the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that "more than two-thirds of all Republicans favor an increase" in U.S. troop commitment to Afghanistan, with Independents roughly split. The troop issue, concluded the Post, clearly exposes the partisan divide.

A purely invented divide, I would add, which, as the dividers know, has little to do with actual national security. To them, American deaths and "collateral damage" are merely about holding or regaining domestic political power. As a political philosophy, it is clinically sociopathic. There's just no better, no more accurate, way to put it.

Earlier I mentioned the "seventh decade," because Republicans have been running this neocon scam ever since Harry Truman "lost" China and "dithered" in Korea. They sensed easy political exploitation then, and have poisoned every national security debate since.

They've done it not out of ignorance or stupidity, but, to repeat, out of pure, sociopathic ambition. They're worse than demagogues. They're cold-blooded killers of a deeply fraudulent patriotic perversity.

That's bad enough. What's worse is that so many among the electorate -- two-thirds of all rank-and-file Republicans (once known for their unyielding isolationism) and half of all Independents -- are influenced by these opportunists. And the commander in chief? -- even when, or rather especially when, a Democrat? He's also a politician.

Kennedy, for example, knew he was facing an aggressive Goldwater in '64, and after that, Johnson remembered well what Republicans had done to Democrats over the twin issues of China and Korea. Vietnam -- and millions of deaths -- resulted. And need I add that every Democratic president in modern history has zealously -- self-defensively -- nurtured the national-global plague of our military-industrial complex.

I would hope that Obama could break the cycle, but note the subjunctive burdens of that clause. He's a politician, and as such splitting the difference, under tremendous domestic pressures, will likely come naturally. If that is indeed his decision, after he's through "dithering," it'll be the worst mistake of his young, hopeful presidency.