Neo-cons of today: premium ignorance
The old Boston Consulting Group team of Republican US presidential nominee Mitt Willard Romney and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who was briefly known in Boston as Benjamin Bin Nitai, is telling enough.
Romney’s sycophantic support for Netanyahu and his reliance on neo-conservative retreads from the Bush-Cheney administration has all but erased any standing the Republican nominee has in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Romney’s hitching of his Middle East foreign policy wagon to Netanyahu received a severe blow when Netanyahu delivered a school teacher-like lecture to the UN General Assembly on setting a “red line” representing 90 percent uranium enrichment for Iran’s nuclear program.
Netanyahu displayed a cartoon image of a sizzling bomb that evoked memories of American cartoons that used similar bombs in scenes of the “Road Runner” outwitting his nemesis, “Wile E. Coyote” and “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” in which Russian agents Boris Badenov and Natasha tried to kill Rocky the Squirrel and Bullwinkle the Moose.
Former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, an adviser to Romney and a stalwart supporter of Netanyahu, said, “Bibi’s use of that chart was one of the most effective, gripping, uses of a chart I’ve ever seen.” Fleischer probably thought that “Rocky and Bullwinkle” was a documentary on US-Soviet relations during the Cold War.
Netanyahu’s and Romney’s supporters said it was wise for the Israeli Prime Minister to keep his message “simple” for the “uneducated.” In fact, the only “simple” and “uneducated” ones appear to be those like Romney and his neocons who believe Netanyahu is intelligent.
Netanyahu’s cartoon gimmickry suggests that there is a simple reason why Netanyahu, Romney, Fleischer, and the other neocons cling to their beliefs that Iran’s nuclear energy program must be stopped through military action: the spokespersons for neo-conservatism and Zionism are just plain stupid, regardless of their academic credentials and high-compensation salaries.
The fact that Romney and Netanyahu worked together at the Boston Consulting Group also suggests that the firm is a front of mediocrity and stupidity for having on its payroll such dullards.
Even the Atlantic magazine’s ardently Zionist polemicist Jeffrey Goldberg lamented that Netanyahu could have come up with a better graphic considering “all the Jewish comic book talent out there.”
Israel’s racist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called last month’s Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran a “parade of stupidity and hypocrisy.” Lieberman, a former bouncer at a Moldova night club, is hardly the person to refer to anyone else as stupid. Night club bouncers are not known for possessing much in the intellect department.
But profiles in stupidity do not end with Netanyahu, Romney, and their advisers but carry on with other world leaders who blindly support Netanyahu’s aggressive policies. These include British Prime Minister David Cameron, who, in a recent appearance on the US “David Letterman Show,” could not answer simple questions about his own nation’s history, including the composer of “Rule Brittania!” and the English translation of the “Magna Carta.” More blatant stupidity from one of Israel’s major supporters.
As Netanyahu and Cameron made fools of themselves in New York, two Canadian radio jocks famous for impersonating world leaders in prank phone calls to actual political leaders and celebrities, managed to convince UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that one of them was pro-Zionist Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Only after radio jock Marc-Antoine Audette, impersonating Harper, apologized to Ban for sending his “lap dog” Foreign Minister John Baird to the UN General Assembly annual meeting instead of attending himself and describing his putting Krazy Glue into his own hair to keep it perfect did Ban begin to get suspicious.
Harper has made no secret of his disdain for the UN and the mere fact that Ban left an important meeting to take “Harper’s” call is an indication that neocons Harper and Baird are insignificant players at the UN, bereft of any close contact with senior diplomats at the world body.
Harper and Baird are two more poster boys for neocon stupidity. Harper supplemented his stupidity factor by once telling the US neocons that their movement “is a light and an inspiration to people in this country [Canada] and around the world.”
Neocons like Netanyahu, Romney, Lieberman (both the Israeli ones and the American senator from Connecticut), Cameron, Harper, Fleischer, and their ilk should be treated like their slapstick, pantomime, minstrel singing, and ventriloquist counterparts in the world of vaudeville: with belly laughs and head shaking. Jesters in the old royal courts of Europe demonstrated more intellectual prowess than the neocons of today.
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Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. Has some twenty years experience in security issues. As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He has been a frequent political and national security commentator on Fox News and has also appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and MS-NBC. He has been invited to testify as a witness before the US House of Representatives, the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and an terrorism investigation panel of the French government. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club. Lives in Washington, D.C. His website is here.
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Article published here: PressTV
URL: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2012/10/01/neo-cons-of-today-premium-ignorance
