The Neo-Con Connection:

by Robert A. Sungenis, M.A.


The other day someone sent me a recent article by Deal Hudson. Dated March 9, 2005, it bore the title: “Who Will Win The Catholic Vote?” The following words prefaced the article: “A Catholic Look at Society, Culture and Politics...Deal W. Hudson, Editor...In This Issue: How the Catholic Left and Pro-Abortion Democrats Are Preparing for the 2006 and 2008 Elections.”

 

Hudson, of course, is a Republican who wants to keep the new surge of Catholics in the Republican party. In order to fight the Catholic left, Hudson identifies ten strategies being used by the opposition. He writes:

“The following is a list of the strategic initiatives being launched by the Catholic left in response to the Republican gains in the Catholic vote (from 37% in '96 Who Will Win The Catholic Vote? By Deal W. Hudson to 47% in '00 to 52% in '04). Some of these efforts are coordinated, but most of them are predictable reactions to the prospect of mass-attending Catholic voters staying in the Republican Party.

Mr. Hudson goes on to list the left’s strategies and how the conservatives should combat them. So far so good. Anyone with a smidgen of moral and theological sensibility knows just how much liberalism and modernism has decimated society. Having no viable alternatives, good Catholics have migrated to the Republican party as a refuge of last resort. But latching on to a political party by default inevitably raises questions as to the independent worthiness of that very party. Have Mr. Hudson and his conservative cronies really earned our vote, or have we been commandeered to an agenda that has as many faults as the left, but merely with different labels?

In the past I would have given Mr. Hudson my undivided attention, but the mere fact that this man has been caught in a quagmire of heinous sexual improprieties and yet is still out in public stumping for the Republican party, made me think of the possibility that we Catholics are being hoodwinked by ideological opportunists. It was Mr. Hudson’s hubris that incited me to do my own investigation into the Republican party and its current crop of leaders.

Mr. Hudson, in case you haven’t heard, was “fired” from his job at Crisis magazine a few months ago when report of his various sexual liaisons surfaced in the news. Among other things, Hudson more or less forced himself on a young college girl, afterward attempting to cover up the incident with $30,000 of hush money. While investigating the allegations, the Crisis board of directors found numerous sexual improprieties in his recent past.

After reading Hudson’s political combat strategies, I began to wonder how this man could still view himself as a moral beacon when his own house is built with nothing but glass, most of which is already shattered. At least Bill Bennett had the courtesy to remove himself from the public eye when his gambling weakness was exposed, but Hudson’s hubris seems to go beyond the pale. But then it dawned on me. Perhaps Hudson’s moral turpitude is typical of many of the Neo-con Republicans with whom he rubs shoulders – they use the moral high-ground as a lure to bring conservative Catholics and Evangelicals to their cause, but in reality they are wolves in sheep’s clothing who are often just as immoral as the liberals they decry. This observation, of course, will take some fleshing out.

The first counter-strategy Mr. Hudson advises in his article is to fight the attempt of the left to “demote the legacy of John Paul II.” Normally, we would see such a statement as a sincere effort to support the pope, but I have discovered this is merely the impression Mr. Hudson and his Neo-con colleagues want to create. They know the quickest way to the average Catholic’s heart is through praise of John Paul II. The reality is that Hudson’s and the Neo-con’s affection for John Paul II is only skin deep, if that much, for while they give lip service to his policies, they just as quickly distance themselves when their views do not match his. The most glaring example is the war in Iraq. John Paul II has stated in no uncertain terms that he is against the invasion of Iraq, yet the Neo-cons pretend they don’t hear him.

Case in point: George Weigel, the well known “papal biographer” who penned the 1999 book: Witness to Hope: John Paul II. Although Weigel purports himself to be a papal loyalist, he drew his line in the sand in early 2003 declaring that he fully supported the Iraq war. One would think that such opposition to the pope would diffuse Weigel’s aura of fidelity, but the biographer had an ingenious way of making his defiance palatable. He chose the USCCB as his whipping boy. In remarks quoted by the National Catholic Reporter, Weigel blasted the entire US bishopric, stating that the Just War doctrine “lives more vigorously...at the higher levels of the Pentagon than...in certain offices at the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops” (NCR 1-31-2003). As the NCR commentator correctly sized it up:

“So why doesn’t Weigel fight the real enemy? For the obvious reason that a certain class of conservative commentators in today’s American Catholic church make their living by interpreting the mind of John Paul, and it is inconvenient when his thinking cuts against the geopolitical agenda of the Bush administration.”

All this, of course, leads to investigating George Weigel a little more closely. Is he really pro-Catholic or is he, similar to Deal Hudson, merely a Neo-con plant set in place to win the Catholic vote? Considering his duplicity between Iraq and the pope, I have little doubt that George Weigel’s first allegiance is to the Neo-con political machine. His rap sheet doesn’t help much either. He is on Crisis’ editorial board, and thus has strong connections to Deal Hudson. He is also an active member of the Project for the New American Century, a Neo-con think-tank that cogitates on ways of advancing America’s present imperialism by means of war, financial pressure and other such mafioso-style intimidations. Other members of this elite group include: William Kristol (chairman), William Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Midge Decter, Steve Forbes, Norman Podhoretz, Ellen Bork, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – a virtual “Who’s Who” of the Republican war-party in the Bush administration. Here is its notice of conquest as of its opening date June 3, 1997:

“We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership. As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world’s preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests”?

Obviously, there is nothing Catholic about these people. The above paragraph is a shining example of America’s imperialistic hubris turned into a civil religion. In truth, this global imperialism is only going to enslave the American people to the ideologues who will take their money and their children and squander them both on the battlefield. Rather than, as John Paul II has consistently told them, seek some means of peaceful co-existence, these political prima donnas are bent on conquest, and the worst part is that they are attempting to use Catholic cover to bring in their Trojan horse.

‘Too judgmental,’ you say? Take note of this: George Weigel is also a member of the United States Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), as of 1992. For those who know the history of the CFR, nothing more need be said. It and the former Trilateral Commission have been trying to shape global politics and geography with the same imperialistic intimidations for the last 30 years. Of the other names listed above, members of the CFR include Midge Decter (1992) and Norman Podhoretz (1992), the latter is the editor emeritus of Commentary, the magazine of the American Jewish Committee which incessantly accuses its anti-Iraq-war critics of “anti-semitism.” Another major player is Michael Novak, one of the principle architects of Crisis magazine. Novak is also on the Council of Foreign Relations (1992). Thus it is no surprise why the National Catholic Reporter predicted what precisely happened:

“As for the pope, the challenge is to spin away inconvenient utterances. Thus when American Catholic pundit Michael Novak arrives in Rome in early February to try to convince the Vatican of the morality of ‘preventive war,’ he will no doubt quote John Paul II approvingly, even if his aim is to draw different conclusions about the use of force in Iraq.”

Concluding, NCR states:

“The Bush-friendly line being toed by Weigel and Novak, in open contrast to what we’re hearing from Rome, reminds us that there is a ‘culture of dissent’ on the right in American Catholicism too. Usually it arises when John Paul challenges America’s prerogatives in commerce or war.”

There’s more. William F. Buckley Jr., who is not shy about advertising his Catholicism, is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as a member of the exclusive and mysterious Skull & Bones society, class of 1950. Last we heard of Skull & Bones, one of their initiatory rites included stamping one’s feet on a picture of the reigning pope. Buckley also has ties with the Central Intelligence Agency, and some have surmised that his present outlet, National Review, is a CIA-funded front.

The Neo-cons are smart. Considering that Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 and almost gained the presidency save the Florida mishap, the Neo-cons were not going to take any chances. Migrating as many Catholics out of the Democratic party as possible was their primary goal, for without them, it was commonly conceded that Kerry would be the next president. Unfortunately, the heinously immoral Democratic platform made it rather easy for the Neo-cons to entice the disillusioned Catholics to their side of the aisle.

But in order to bring the Catholics aboard, the Neo-cons needed to plant their seeds. Deal Hudson is one such seed set up in an innocent-looking Catholic media outlet to shore up the Neo-con agenda. As Paul Likoudis exposed in his September 30, 2004 article, Mr. Hudson, and his employer, Crisis, are on the ‘take’ from the well-endowed Neo-con party line. While in Hudson’s tenure, financial support for Crisis came from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the premier Neo-cons of today who specialize in globalization of American political interests through financial and militaristic means (known in the past as Imperialism). Much of AEI’s income originates from the sale of munitions and armaments. Crisis also receives money from the Morley Publishing Group (of which Hudson is the director), who are in turn supported by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, who specialize in setting up Neo-con think-tanks to enhance Middle East war efforts for the Bush administration. Crisis is also supported by the Carthage Foundation and the John M. Olin Foundation, the latter of which is involved in the sale of arms, and the former of which is controlled by Richard Scaife and funded by the Mellon family, another Neo-con outlet whose Internet site “Newsmax” promotes the war in Iraq as if it were the salvation of mankind.

Regarding the connection between William Kristol and Crisis, Likoudis notes:

“...the Bradley Foundation began funding Crisis magazine just about the same time it began funding Bill Kristol’s Project for the New American Century; and as Kristol and his peers began pushing for war with Iraq, Deal Hudson began persuading Catholics to that disastrous viewpoint. It is perhaps in this light that Hudson’s career should be evaluated.”

William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and one of the leading talking heads of the Neo-con movement seen regularly on Fox’s Sunday morning broadcasts, believes that it is the United States’ job to restructure the Middle East and “supplant dictators” around the world by using “pre-emptive” attacks. In other words, Kristol wants Bush to seek out and destroy anyone who would interfere with the American-Zionist efforts to secure the greater part of the Middle East for their own selfish interests. Kristol is such a war monger that, after the 2004 election, he sought for the ouster of Donald Rumsfeld on the basis that he wasn’t being aggressive enough in the Middle East. Adding fuel to the fire, Lawrence Kaplan, writer for the New Republic, charges that Pat Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, promotes that idea that “President Bush has become a client of...Ariel Sharon and the ‘neoconservative war party,’” and that this is “anti-semitic” (March 24, 2003). And why shouldn’t Buchanan? Listen to the shocking words of Ariel Sharon:

“I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about America. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.”

Sharon’s hubris is rather amazing, considering that this tiny nation less in size than New Hampshire and barely 50 years old claims virtual control of the world. Lawrence Kaplan’s colleague, Harvard professor Stanley Hoffman, admits the obvious, stating:

“These analysts look on foreign policy through the lens of one dominant concern: Is it good or bad for Israel? Since that nation’s founding in 1948, these thinkers have never been in very good odor at the State Department, but now they are well ensconced in the Pentagon, around such strategists as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith” [all Jewish members of Bush’s administration].

Richard Perle’s history is revealing as well. In 1970 a federal wiretap heard him discussing classified information from the National Security Council with the Israeli embassy. Not surprisingly, Stephen Isaacs, who wrote Jews and American Politics in 1974, called Perle: “direct Jewish power in behalf of Jewish interests.” The New York Times added in 1983 that Perle had taken enormous payments from an Israeli weapons manufacturer.

These three individuals (Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith), in addition to David Wurmser and Elliott Abrams (son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz), came up again in a February 9, 2003 front-page story of The Washington Post, an article in which Robert Kaiser quotes a senior U.S. official saying: “The Likudniks are really in charge now.” Former Washington Times editor and now United Press International Editor-at-Large, Arnaud de Borchgrave, remarking on what he calls the “Bush-Sharon Doctrine,” states that “Washington’s Likudniks have been in charge of U.S. policy in the Middle East since Bush was sworn into office.” He further states: “The creation of a democratic state in Iraq...was the opening phase of a policy designed to surround Israel with democratic states.” Borchgrave then makes reference to a 1996 paper in which Richard Perle teamed up with Feith and Wurmser to write, on behalf of Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netahyahu: “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The “Realm,” of course, refers to the Middle East. Mind you, this is about five years before 9/11 and America’s declaration of war on Iraq. They write:

“Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – and important Israeli strategic objective in its own right – as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.”

Later in 1997, Douglas Feith wrote another paper titled A Strategy for Israel in which he insisted that Israel should force itself into “the areas under Palestinian Authority control” even though “the price in blood would be high.” Concerning the Perle-Feith-Wurmser connection, Buchanan quotes author Michael Lind:

“The radical Zionist right to which Perle and Feith belong is small in number but it has become a significant force in Republican policy-making circles. It is a recent phenomenon, dating back to the late 1970s and 1980s, when many formerly Democratic Jewish intellectual joined the broad Reagan coalition. While many of these hawks speak in public about global crusades for democracy, the chief concern of many such ‘neoconservatives’ is the power and reputation of Israel.”

It is not mere coincidence that, as of this writing, Perle chairs the Defense Policy Board; Feith is an Undersecretary of Defense; and Wurmser is a special assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control (John Bolton). Already in January 1998, four years before 9/11, Elliott Abrams, Bill Bennett, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz wrote to Bill Clinton urging him to speak of the removal of Saddam Hussein as the primary “aim of American foreign policy.” Do we sense an agenda here? In Perle’s new book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, he demagogues his way through his thesis by claiming that

“There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust...the terrorist threat” puts at risk “our survival as a nation...A radical strain within Islam seeks to overthrow our civilization and remake the nations of the West into Islamic societies, imposing on the whole world its religion and laws.”

This is nothing but fear-mongering rhetoric to incite ethnic hatred against Muslims so that the American public will throw up their hands and give unqualified support to Israel. There is nothing Catholic about it. Never mind that the Jews would like everyone to practice Judaism. Perle is good at making enemies for hire. It is precisely his ‘Israel-first-and-only’ policy that led to the attacks on the World Trade center. We know this because the Arab-Muslim leaders know the motives of their own renegades, and they have told us as much. The reality is, if the Muslims are treated right, they are hardly a threat. Perle’s claim that Islam wishes to force their religion on others is easily countered by taking a good look as history. As Pat Buchanan notes:

“Well, yes. Militant Islam has preached that since the 7th century. But what are the odds the Boys of Tora Bora are going to ‘overthrow our civilization’ and coerce us all to start praying to Mecca five times a day?....Wherever Islamism takes power, it fails...Taken altogether, all 22 Arab nations do not have the GDP of Spain. Without oil, their exports are the size of Finland’s. Not one Arab nation can stand up to Israel, let alone the United States...If death comes to the West it will be because we embraced a culture of death – birth control, abortion, sterilization, euthanasia. Western man is dying as Islamic man migrates north to await his passing and inherit his estate....Fear is what Perle and his co-author David Frum are peddling...we have since discovered, Iraq had no hand in 9/11, no ties to al-Queda, no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear program, and no place to attack us. Iraq was never ‘the clear and present danger’ the authors insist she was” (The American Conservative, “No End to War,” March 1, 2004, p. 7).

In other words, America has been hoodwinked by the Neo-con/Zionist alliance into having us fight their enemies for them. In this regard, Wolfowitz is especially dangerous. A 1992 memo written by Wolfowitz was eventually leaked from the Pentagon. It contained a bold strategy for what appears to be a plan for world conquest. The paper later became the backbone of American foreign policy in a 33-page “National Security Strategy” issued by George Bush on Sept. 21, 2002. Among other shocking things, the paper declares: “We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively.” There is nothing wrong, of course, with “self-defense,” but the operative word here is “preemptively.” The rationale for attacking another country is now based on the America’s subjective judgment as to whether said country merely poses a threat to our selfish interests. It further asserts that America must understand its role in “nation-building on a grand scale, and with no exit strategy.”

This information is no secret among the military high-brass. The outspoken General Tommy Franks said, rather frankly: “The U.S. attacked Iraq for the sake of Israel.” Likewise, General Anthony Zinni revealed who is behind the foreign policy of the United States – the Neo-cons Zionists who have hijacked the Bush administration. He states:

“The more I saw, the more I thought that this [war] was the product of the neocons who didn’t understand the region and were going to create havoc there. These were dilettantes from Washington think tanks...I don’t know where the neocons came from – that was not the platform Bush ran on...Somehow the neocons captured the president....everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do....I think it’s the worst kept secret in Washington” (Interview with CBS).

The cat is out of the bag, we might say, regarding the Bush administrations true motivations in the Iraq war. On the Sunday news program, Meet the Press, Richard Perle was, ironically, ‘pressed’ when Tim Russert flipped the Israel card and asked him: “Can you assure American viewers...that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel” (2003). Wall Street Journal editor, Max Boot, catching the drift, writes: “Buchananites toss around ‘neoconservative,’ and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen, it sounds as if what they really mean is ‘Jewish conservative.’” At the same time, Boot admits that the Israel connection is a “key tenet of neoconservatism” and that George Bush’s strategy “sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible.” As we noted earlier, Commentary is the monthly magazine of the American Jewish Committee of which Norman Podhoretz (CFR 1992) is its editor emeritus. In this light, Pat Buchanan writes:

“On Sept. 20 [2001], forty neoconservatives sent an open letter to the White House instructing President Bush on how the war on terror must be conducted. Signed by Bennett, Podhoretz, Kirkpatrick, Perle, Kristol and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, the letter was an ultimatum. To retain the signers’ support, the president was told, he must target Hezbollah, and overthrow Saddam. Any failure to attack Iraq, the signers warned Bush ‘will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.’ Here was a cabal of intellectuals telling the Commander-in-Chief, nine days after an attack on America, that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be charged with surrendering to terror. Yet, Hezbollah had nothing to do with 9/11. What had Hezbollah done? Hezbollah had humiliated Israel by driving its army out of Lebanon” (The American Conservative, March 24, 2003, p. 4).

Lebanon, of course, is where Israel should not be, since it is not their country. Yet the blackmail against the President apparently worked. Just a short time ago, March 15, 2005, Bush called for an increased attack on Hezbollah, the enemy of Israel. Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Treasury Secretary, stated:

“Bush’s neocon overlords have Bush where they and Ariel Sharon want him, locked on a course toward wider war, with American troops, supplied by conscription, serving as Israel’s legions...Having surely provoked further uprisings and further acts of terror, Bush will use the violence he provokes to call for more troops and wider incursions to deal with ‘thugs and criminals, who are preventing us from bringing freedom to the Middle East.’ We are bringing fire and destruction to the Middle East, and to ourselves. This is exactly what American evangelicals desire...”

Next issue: The Neo-Catholic Connection

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