Rudy Giuliani: Neo-Conservatives’ Dream Candidate

By Brigitte L. Nacos
In spite of his opportunistic turns and twists, Rudolph (Rudy) W. Giuliani remains a moderate on social issues which are most important for the Republican right in that he is pro-choice, pro-gun control, and pro-gay rights. But when it comes to foreign policy, Rudolph W. and George W. are very much alike with Giuliani perhaps more hawkish on what he calls in his article in Foreign Affairs “the Terrorists’ War on Us” and the fight against “radical Islamic fascism.” By embracing the neo-conservative trigger-happy “global war on terrorism” doctrine Rudy W. has become the neo-conservatives’ dream candidate for 2008. Both George W. and Rudy W. derive what they seem to take as their special authority and legitimacy from the positions they held on September 11, 2001. As they cleverly invoke and exploit 9/11 for their political and policy goals, they get away with being righteous and stubborn—as the president once again shows by staying the course in Iraq as the Washington Post reports today.

Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars earlier this week, George W. said,
“I stand before you as a wartime President. I wish I didn't have to say that, but an enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001, declared war on the United States of America. And war is what we're engaged in. The struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it's a struggle for civilization [emphasis added].”

In Foreign Affairs, Rudy W. makes the same point,
”Full recognition of the first great challenge of the twenty-first century came with the attacks of September 11, 2001…Confronted with an act of war on American soil, our old assumptions about conflict between nation-states fell away. Civilization itself, and the international system, had come under attack [emphases added] by a ruthless and radical Islamist enemy.”

And even before George W. made his much reported and criticized comparison between the war in Iraqand the Vietnam War, Rudy W. wrote in Foreign Affairs,

“America must remember one of the lessons of the Vietnam War. Then, as now, we fought a war with the wrong strategy for several years. And then, as now, we corrected course and began to show real progress. Many historians today believe that by about 1972 we and our South Vietnamese partners had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency and in setting South Vietnam on a path to political self-sufficiency. But America then withdrew its support, allowing the communist North to conquer the South. The consequences were dire, and not only in Vietnam: numerous deaths in places such as the killing fields of Cambodia, a newly energized and expansionist Soviet Union, and a weaker America. The consequences of abandoning Iraq would be worse.”

President Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars, “The greatest weapon in the arsenal of democracy is the desire for liberty written into the human heart by our Creator. So long as we remain true to our ideals, we will defeat the extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will help those countries' peoples stand up functioning democracies in the heart of the broader Middle East.”

Similarly, Giuliani wrote, “Our goal is to see in Iraq and Afghanistan the emergence of stable governments and societies that can act as our allies against the terrorists and not as breeding grounds for expanded terrorist activities. Succeeding in Iraq and Afghanistan is necessary but not sufficient. Ultimately, these are only two battlegrounds in a wider war. The United States must not rest until the al Qaeda network is destroyed and its leaders, from Osama bin Laden on down, are killed or captured. And the United States must not rest until the global terrorist movement and its ideology are defeated.”

The difference between today’s George W. and Rudy W. is that the neo-conservative architects of the
Iraq war are no longer part of the Bush administration, while one of the founding fathers of neo-conservatism, Norman Podhoretz, was named by Giuliani senior advisor to his foreign policy team. In his long article about Giuliani The New Yorker, Peter J. Boyer wrote:

“Podhoretz sees Iraq as but one front in the larger conflict. In an essay published this spring in Commentary, he made the case for a unilateral American air assault on Iran as the only way to prevent its otherwise inexorable drive to nuclear status and regional hegemony.”

“Podhoretz is so untempered a neocon that he makes Paul Wolfowitz, Bush’s former Deputy Defense Secretary, and a key architect of the Iraq invasion, seem almost a moderate realist. Podhoretz knows that he carries a certain political radioactivity. While he believes that Giuliani would follow his advice to bomb Iran before it gets nuclear weapons—Giuliani, like other candidates, has said that Iran must be kept out of the nuclear club—Podhoretz hasn’t asked him directly, because he doesn’t want to damage Giuliani’s candidacy with the inevitable controversy that an affirmative answer might arouse.” 

“In any case, Podhoretz said to me, he believes that George W. Bush will settle the matter himself, by bombing Iran before he leaves office. “I’m probably the only person on the face of the earth who thinks that Bush will order air strikes,” Podhoretz says. “But we’ll find out. If Bush doesn’t kick the can down the road, then the issue becomes moot, obviously. But if he fails to do what I think he will do, Rudy seems to me to be the best bet for doing what is necessary.”

Perhaps Rudy W.'s disconcerting ideas of "balancing realism and idealism in foreign policy" explain why this moderate  on social issues is the leading presidential contender among Republican candidates.

Comments

[Jason]

Once again Dondero strikes again. He consistently bills both Giulaini and himself as libertarians - in some weird bizarro universe where libertarian means "give the government control of everything."

Giuliani and his toady Dondero are both hardcore neocons. Dondero is delusional because he thinks he can hold neocon ideas and call himself libertarian.

[Eric Dondero]

Rudy is also the libertarian Republican dream candidate. He is "fiscally very conservative yet socially tolerant."

The libertarian wing of the GOP has been waiting for another Goldwater for 3 decades now. We've had to put up with Moderate to Conservative to Moderate to Conservative. Now we get one of our own, a solid libertarian, and the Mods and the Cons will have to support our candidate for once.

Libertarians for Giuliani:

www.mainstreamlibertarian.com

[libhomo]

Giuliani is a sleaze. The media should investigate the millions he has made. He certainly wasn't rich before he became mayor.