Verbosities

Although soon-to-be Presidential candidate Fred Thompson is being hailed as the next savior of the right-wing conservatives, his current position as a Visiting Fellow with the American Enterprise Institute calls into question whether Thompson represents the throwback candidate with true conservative values that his supporters allege, or whether electing Thompson threatens to put four more years of neoconservative foreign policy mistakes on our national agenda.



To this effort, I read through nearly every article Thompson has posted at AEI (linked and dated below), and found intersections where his values seem to intersect nicely with those on the neocon persuasion.



Is Fred Thompson a neocon? Will anyone ask him to dissociate with those people who have continuously bungled their optimistically hawkish predictions on Iraq? That remains to be seen. Here's Fred's words, alongside those of acknowledged neoconservative lineage:



We fight our enemies by showing our strength:



Fred Thompson @ AEI - Campaigning on Defeat - Washington Post Column 4/16/04

The global war on terrorism is not a game from which we can simply walk away when it seems it isn't going our way. At the same time critics of the Bush administration insist it should have done more to combat al Qaeda in Afghanistan before Sept. 11 (on the basis of intelligence far weaker than that pointing to Hussein's weapons of mass destruction), they miss the more profound lesson that national tragedy should have instilled: that the only deterrent to terrorism is strength and that weakness--real and perceived--is an incitement to further attacks.

Fred Thompson @ AEI - Gandhi's Way Isn't the American Way - National Review Online article - 3/15/07

(W)hen Saddam Hussein was being given a last chance to open Iraq to U.N. weapons inspectors, posters appeared around America asking "What would Gandhi do?"



And that's a pretty good question. At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?



It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is never.

Michael Leeden @ AEI - Nonnegotiable - National Review Online article - 3/12/07

No matter how much evidence of Iran's determination to destroy or dominate us, no matter how many times Khamenei or Ahmadinejad leads the chant of "Death to America," no matter how many American fighters and Iraqi citizens are killed as a result of Iranian support for the terrorists, she and the Kissingers of this world continue to convince themselves that things are getting better, that Iran shares our goals for peace in the region, and that if we only make one more generous offer, the whole unpleasant situation will work out for the best.



It is not so. They are not like us, and they do not share our dreams. Diplomacy will not tame them. Only our victory will.

We should defend our political cronies:



Fred Thompson @ AEI - Law and Disorder - National Review Online article 3/7/07

Doesn't Patrick Fitzgerald look like a man who has dodged a bullet and is ready to get out of town? That was my first impression after watching the special-prosecutor's press conference after news came down Wednesday about Scooter Libby. It would seem that prosecuting a Bush official before a Washington jury is not necessarily a slam dunk after all when the gruel is this thin.



Two crucial decisions were made in order for this sorry state of affairs to have played out this way. The first was when the Justice Department folded under political and media pressure because of the Plame leak and appointed a special counsel. When DOJ made the appointment they knew that the leak did not constitute a violation of the law. Yet, instead of standing on that solid legal ground they abdicated their official responsibility.



The Plame/Wilson defenders wanted administration blood because the administration had had the audacity to question the credibility of Joe Wilson and defend themselves against his charges. Therefore, the Department of Justice, in order to completely inoculate themselves, gave power and independence to Fitzgerald that was not available to Ken Starr, Lawrence Walsh, or any prior independent counsel under the old independent-counsel law. Fitzgerald became unique in our judicial history in that he was accountable to no one. And here even if justice had retained some authority they could hardly have asked Fitzgerald why he continued to pursue a non-crime because they knew from the beginning there was no crime.

Pardon Libby Now - Weekly Standard

Let us stipulate--appealing to the authority of such diverse legal authorities as David Boies and Victoria Toensing--that the Scooter Libby perjury case should not have been brought in the first place. It is also true that decisions by the trial judge made it difficult for Libby's team to put its best defense forward and that a D.C. jury was going to be tough for any Bush-Cheney official. Still, the verdict of guilty on the part of the jury was, as Hamilton might put it, "unfortunate."

The strength of the President should not be called into question in times like these:



Fred Thompson @ AEI - Power of the President - National Review Online article 3/14/07

The only problem is: There was nothing wrong with firing eight U.S. attorneys. Of course the Department of Justice was inept in the way they did it, trying to conceal things that didn't need to be concealed but the U.S. attorneys, like innumerable other public officials serve at the pleasure of the president. He fired eight of his own appointees apparently because they we not aggressive enough in pursuing voting fraud cases. In 1993 Attorney General Janet Reno rode into town and fired every U.S. attorney in the country but one--all Republican appointees.



Amidst all this foolishness there is a serious question here. Considering the times we live in, do we really want to continue to try to chip away at the traditional powers of the president?

9/11: Five Years Later / Bush Continues to Wield Power - San Francisco Chronicle - 9/10/06

(Quoting AEI Scholar John Yoo) We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch.

Iran should submit to our will:



Fred Thompson @ AEI - Hollywood vs. Iran - National Review Online article - 3/19/07

People who want to blow Jews off the face of the earth. The regime that stormed our embassy in 1979 and kept Americans captive for 444 days. Iran’s Hezbollah puppets have killed more Americans, than any other terrorist group except al Qaeda. Explosive devices from Iran are being used right now against our soldiers in Iraq. They’re clearly more skittish about cultural warfare than the sort that actually kills people--like the one against Israel that Iran financed just a few months ago.



I must say that I’m impressed that Hollywood took on a politically incorrect villain. Must have run out of neo-Nazis. So now these sensitive souls in Iran think that Hollywood is part of a U.S. government conspiracy to humiliate them into submission. I can only wish we were that effective.

The Case for Bombing Iran - Wall Street Journal - Norman Podhoretz

But Ahmadinejad's ambitions are not confined to the destruction of Israel. He also wishes to dominate the greater Middle East, and thereby to control the oilfields of the region and the flow of oil out of it through the Persian Gulf. If he acquired a nuclear capability, he would not even have to use it in order to put all this within his reach. Intimidation and blackmail by themselves would do the trick.



Nor are Ahmadinejad's ambitions merely regional in scope. He has a larger dream of extending the power and influence of Islam throughout Europe, and this too he hopes to accomplish by playing on the fear that resistance to Iran would lead to a nuclear war. And then, finally, comes the largest dream of all: what Ahmadinejad does not shrink from describing as "a world without America." Demented though he may be, I doubt that Ahmadinejad is so crazy as to imagine that he could wipe America off the map even if he had nuclear weapons. But what he probably does envisage is a diminution of the American will to oppose him: that is, if not a world without America, he will settle, at least in the short run, for a world without much American influence.



Not surprisingly, the old American foreign-policy establishment and many others say that these dreams are nothing more than the fantasies of a madman. They also dismiss those who think otherwise as neoconservative alarmists trying to drag this country into another senseless war that is in the interest not of the United States but only of Israel. But the irony is that Ahmadinejad's dreams are more realistic than the dismissal of those dreams as merely insane delusions.

War is for spreading democracy and freedom:



Fred Thompson @ AEI - War-Funding Puzzlement - National Review Online article - 3/26/07

There's a lot in the bill I don't understand, but this sort of makes sense. There's $50 million for repairs to the plant that supplies electrical power to the Capitol--where Congress works. To fund and win the war, Congress does need electricity at least to do its job.



Ah, I get it. This bill isn't just about funding the war for democracy and freedom in Iraq. It's a political statement. And it's about buying enough votes with pork in order to make that statement. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing, if Congress did have its power cut off every once in a while.

Max Boot - The Case for American Empire - The Weekly Standard - 10/15/2001

Over the years, America has earned opprobrium in the Arab world for its realpolitik backing of repressive dictators like Hosni Mubarak and the Saudi royal family. This could be the chance to right the scales, to establish the first Arab democracy, and to show the Arab people that America is as committed to freedom for them as we were for the people of Eastern Europe. To turn Iraq into a beacon of hope for the oppressed peoples of the Middle East: Now that would be a historic war aim.

Tax cuts encourage growth, and should go to those who are deserving:



Fred Thompson @ AEI - Case Closed: Tax Cuts Mean Growth - National Review Online article - 4/20/07

Now, as before, politicians are itching to fund their pet projects with the short-term revenue increases that come from tax hikes, ignoring the long-term pain they always cause. Unfortunately, the tax cuts that have produced our record-breaking government revenues and personal incomes will expire soon. Because Congress has failed to make them permanent, we are facing the worst tax hike in our history. Already, worried investors are trying to figure out what the financial landscape will look like in 2011 and beyond.



This issue is particularly important now because massive, unfunded entitlements are coming due as the baby-boom generation retires. We simply cannot afford higher taxes if we want an economy able to bear up under the strain of those obligations. And beyond the issue of our annual federal budget is the nearly $9 trillion national debt that we have not even begun to pay off.



To face these challenges, and any others that we might encounter in a hazardous world, we need to maintain economic growth and healthy tax revenues. That is why we need to reject taxes that punish rather than reward success.

Irving Kristol @ AEI - The Neoconservative Persuasion

One of these policies, most visible and controversial, is cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth. This policy was not invented by neocons, and it was not the particularities of tax cuts that interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth. Neocons are familiar with intellectual history and aware that it is only in the last two centuries that democracy has become a respectable option among political thinkers. In earlier times, democracy meant an inherently turbulent political regime, with the "have-nots" and the "haves" engaged in a perpetual and utterly destructive class struggle. It was only the prospect of economic growth in which everyone prospered, if not equally or simultaneously, that gave modern democracies their legitimacy and durability.

War is righteous if the threat is existential:



Fred Thompson @ AEI - Sticks & Stones - National Review Online article - 4/30/07

We're also hopeful that, eventually, our ostrich-headed allies will realize there's a world war going on out there and they need to pick a side--the choice being between the forces of civilization and the forces of anarchy. Considering the fact that the latter team is growing stronger and bolder daily, while most of our European Union friends continue to dismantle their defenses, that day may not be too long in coming.

Thomas Donnelly @ AEI - The Underpinnings of the Bush Doctrine - 2/1/03

Taken together, American principles, interests, and systemic responsibilities argue strongly in favor of an active and expansive stance of strategic primacy and a continued willingness to employ military force. Within that context, and given the ways in which nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction can distort normal calculations of international power relationships, there is a compelling need to hold open the option of--and indeed, to build forces more capable of--preemptive strike operations. The United States must take a wider view of the traditional doctrine of "imminent danger," considering how such dangers might threaten not only its direct interests, but its allies, the liberal international order, and the opportunities for greater freedom in the world.

Saddam was a threat:



Fred Thompson @ AEI - Tenet's Tim Time - National Review Online article - 5/9/07

Tenet acknowledged that before the Gulf War, the CIA had underestimated how far along Saddam was on his nuclear program.



All of this hardly fits with the notion that Saddam posed no threat. As Tenet made the media rounds, he may have helped the administration as much as hurt it

PNAC Letter to Bill Clinton on Iraq, 1/26/98

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

We're solidly on Israel's side, should they want to start the war with Iran before we do:



Fred Thompson @ AEI - Terrorized - National Review Online article - 5/30/07

Imagine what it would be like to live, knowing that a rocket could fall on you or your children at any minute. Half of those who live nearest to Gaza have fled their homes. Those remaining are traumatized by daily warning sirens and explosions.



The irony is that Israel has the military might to easily win the war that is being waged against them today. They haven’t used that might, in the past, out of compassion for Palestinian civilians and because it could trigger a wider regional conflict.



That balance of power is about to change, though. If Iran develops nuclear weapons, the very existence of this tiny nation of Israel will be threatened. The Iranian regime has left little doubt that it intends to see Israel "wiped off the map." Hamas is using the same language, not coincidentally, and has announced it will begin launching missiles into Israel from the West Bank too.



If the world doesn’t act to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions, it must be prepared for the consequences of Israel defending itself.

Irving Kristol @ AEI - The Neoconservative Persuasion

Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.

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