On Demand
Whither Conservatism?
Where is conservatism heading after Bush and Cheney as more Republicans are breaking with President Bush over Iraq? We ask Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and Charles W. Dunn, dean of Regent University's Robertson School of Government. Dunn edited and Kristol wrote the afterword for the new book The Future of Conservatism: Conflict and Consensus in the Post-Reagan Era (ISI Books, 2007).
The Future of Conservatism is available for purchase at Amazon.com.
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"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."-Bill Kristol 2003
Given the success by commanders who followed counterinsurgency doctrine and the lack of success by those who did not, what took the administration so long to embrace counterinsurgency doctrine as a war-wide strategy?
why no democracy for Egypt Saudi Arabia or Pakistan
Kristol has been wrong for all five years of this war. What makes him crdible now?
Things are going well in Afghanistan? A good five and a half years?
render unto me a f@#king break.
ties with al queda!?!?
Brian DO NOT let him get away with that. Plaese.
Wow! This guy is in his own little world.
There is no way we are better of with Iraq as it is now.
Love the top quote,ha!
And he STILL is trotting out that old lie that Al Qaeda had significant ties to Saddam Hussein before the war...something that has been completely disproven!
Kristol just keeps lying and it seems that any lie is ok in his book to further his idiotic agenda.
Just how delusional is Bill Kristol? The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan. Terrorist attacks have skyrocketed around the world. The United States is now -- rightly -- seen as a lumbering monstrosity under Bush.
Kristol continues to repeat the lies of Cheney and Bush. At some point, he must either be treated for severe psychosis. Or he must be condemned as Bush's Lord Haw Haw.
Absurd and pathetic.
re: the first part of Helen Thomas' question, do your guests think it's possible or wise to bring in UN troops, or get some significant international help or input in Iraq?
There was no connection between Al Queda and Iraq and it's been proven.
Why is Brian Lehrer letting him get away with this????
Mr. Lehrer; I think if you are have dillusional guests such as William Kristol on the show, you may as well invite Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan and their counterparts on the left. This is not a meaningful discussion as much as a muddying of the waters.
Democracy? Why do these guys insist on repeating this nonsense that you can insert a western doctrine in a region that has been home to ethnic divisions for thousands of years?
"Kristol has been wrong for all five years of this war. What makes him crdible now?"
Answer: He isn't. He is still arguing that Hussein had significant ties to Al Qaeda before the war...a bold faced lie..a disproven lie. He is not credible but unfortunately the media (NPR included) keeps treating him as if he is. He is partly responsible for this disaster as he was ot there with all the other saber-rattlers before the war
It's a real shame that the media keeps taking him seriously
Don't forget that Kristol is also advocating for an attack on Iran.
This man should be condemned for what he is -- an anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bigot and advocate of war criminals like Bush and Cheney.
Kristol!?, KRISTOL?!! He doesn't seem to know much about anything. The "neo-con" helped ruin this country how can you even consider anything he says? He's a schmuck.
Brian, I am fed up at these softy questions. Why don't you ask this man what he thinks about the war crimes that are being committed in the name of the Project for a New American Century?
Why do the media take any of these guys seriously when they've been consistently wrong on almost every subject for years???
PS: Interviewers are not firm with their guests because it may lead to losing access. In the case of today's guest that is not such a bad deal.
"Don't forget that Kristol is also advocating for an attack on Iran.
This man should be condemned for what he is -- an anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bigot and advocate of war criminals like Bush and Cheney."
Precisely...and it is a terrible shame that Brian is giving him air time and NOT CHALLENGING HIM on the lie about pre-war connections between Saddam and Al-Qaeda.
Why does NPR continue to have war-mongering bigots on their airwaves? It only makes NPR complicit in the policy disasters that come about as a result. Kristol is a liar and has no credibility. You want a right-wing perspective on, then get someone who is credible...not a war-mongering liar!
Oh, give me a break --
Criticism against Bush on Iraq is anything but "Monday Morning Quarterbacking."
In fact much of it is simply the correct calling out of "hypocrisy" -- the lazy sport of the self-righteous who also happen to be right.
A simple apology from Bush for the "Weapons of mass destruction" trick would push those Americans who falsely think their righteousness distances them from their country's problems to deal with them instead.
hacks hacks hacks hacks
hacks hacks hacks hacks hacks
Deity??? What's with that?
Brian:
Your non-Bill Kristol guest said that Bush conducted the press conference with integrity, and that he "taught" us like a professor vis a vis students.
The clip you replayed showed that to be the opposite of truth: when one reporter was brave enough (finally, and despite most of her colleagues' reticence) to challenge Bush on the claims that Al Qaeda is our number one enemy in Iraq, he couldn't give a straight answer, because he's full of it. She asked what evidence he had that Al Qaeda in Iraq are the same people that attacked us on 9/11, a bogus and easily unproveable claim that Bush has made over and over. He gave a muddled non-response, because he knows it's not true, though the media has given him a pass on it. Similarly--and this went unchallenged--he claimed that Al Qaeda was responsible for the bombing of the mosque at Samarra. Where is the evidence of that?
What Bush is doing is counterproductive: he and his administration have pumped up the rhetoric about Al Qaeda as if they are our number one concern there, when in fact it's Sunni and Shiite militias. Bush obviously wants to conflate 9/11 with Iraq and scare Americans into thinking that leaving Iraq will guarantee another 9/11. But what he's doing is giving more credence to Al Qaeda than he should. The more credibility he gives them as our number one enemy, the more radicalized Muslims will want to join with them, and the more likely it will be that we'll be attacked again here.
I really don't need to listen to crazy right-wing conservatism radio, when you have wnyc...
Brian, you really let Kristol off easy by letting
him spew the notion that there was an AL-Queda-Iraq link...
And the below is from the softball corporate media..
Prewar CIA report doubted claim that al Qaeda sought WMD in Iraq..http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/10/iraq.intel/index.html
The Weekly Standard is a publication which loses money every year. It is bankrolled by Rupert Murdoch to promote neo-con republican ideas. If these people really believe in a free market, why not end the publication since it cannot support itself. This publication does not represent a "segment" of society. It represents the interests of a select few.
Brian, your show is becoming more and more like every other segment of media which invites the same people to talk about issues, when their comments in the past have proven wrong. Invite someone else on! I'm sick and tired of hearing the same stupidity from the same people.
I think it's a complete waste of time to have Kristol on the show; his whole purpose is to rape the public airwaves with imperial hubris.
This tactic was perfectly described by a Bush aide in that riveting NYT magazine article written by Ron Suskind just before the '04 election:
__________________________________
The [Bush] aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
___________________________________
Kristol's whole job, while Bush is in power, is to overpower the pessimism of the intellect with the optimism of the will (to borrow Gramsci's phrase). When a democrat takes office he will do the same thing in reverse.
"Brian, your show is becoming more and more like every other segment of media which invites the same people to talk about issues, when their comments in the past have proven wrong. Invite someone else on! I'm sick and tired of hearing the same stupidity from the same people."
Amen to that, I'm finding myself tuning out more and more in absolute disgust lately. I go to NPR because it's more informative and better than FOX or CNN or right-wing radio who trot out the same war-mongering morons in the pretense of showing "all points of view". Puh-lease! If you are just going to bring out the same scumbags like Kristol who are nothing but a walking-talking neo-con propoganda machine and throw ridiculously soft questions at them and let them get away with lying about proven facts just to further their agenda...are you any different in ANY way than right-wing corporate radio? Same guests, same message, same inability to challenge the things they say which are PROVEN to be lies...then you are no different at all. Murdoch may as well buy WNYC if this is the face of where things are headed. I don't want to turn on your show and hear FOX news propoganda ever again. This was just shameful....
Brian,
Kristol is just a smooth-talking propogandist who has been wrong 100% of the time. Why are you giving him air time, without totally nailing him?
I loved his comment about how the cost of the Iraq invasion was meaningless given the wealth of the US. That's why the dollar is so strong!! Kristol is totally full of baloney.
monday morning quarterbacking is easy? how about the person who's not even capable of doing monday morning quarterbacking and is staying in the position as coach? and you call this person a professor-like? you're insulting professors.
history has plenty of examples of wartime presidents with low approval ratings. history ALSO has ample examples of wartime presidents with high approval ratings. but history barely has any examples of a wartime president w/ approval ratings both in the highest and lowest extremes. what does that say about Bush, especially with the trend of his ratings?
with self-justified people like Bill Kristol and president Bush, one really don't want to waste time. because when "he's wrong" he called that "underestimating", so according to his logic, who says he's wrong is wrong. that's a definition of "wrong" i had never known.
if the Iraq war was so much about Bush and his administration wanted to help/liberate/save the Iraqis, how come they don't even count the death toll of the Iraqis like they actually (appear to) care?
Bill Kristol said, in Congress he doubted if 3 people had the foggiest idea what is entailed in the oil sharing law in Iraq. The production sharing agreement or oil sharing law was originated in the U.S. State Department declared.
1.Only 17 of Iraqs 80 known oil fields are in prouction.
2.These 17 oil fields are the only oil fields that would under the control of the Iraq Naional Oil Company and the other 63 oil fields would be under foreign control.
3. All newly discovered oil fields would be developed exclusively for foreign companies.
4. 100% repatriation of all profits earned by foreign oil companies.
5. Oil corporate tax rate drops from a high rate of 40% to flat rate of 15%.
6. Foreign oil companies would be granted long range contract of 25 to 40 years.
This outline of the production sharing agreement is one of the main reasons the U.S. attacked Iraq not WMD as pushed by people like Bill Kristol.
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