The neoconservative movement was started in the 1960s by a Democrat - Henry Martin "Scoop" Jackson. Scoop Jackson served as both a U.S. Senator and Representative from the state of Washington from 1941 until he died in 1983. Joshua Zeitz, a former editor for American Heritage magazine, compared Jackson to Joe Lieberman in an August, 2006 article titled: Scoop Jackson’s Ghost?
Certain Beltway elites have been constructing an odd metaphor over the past few days, and it goes something like this: Joe Lieberman is to Scoop Jackson as Ned Lamont is to George McGovern. In other words, Lieberman is a latter-day version of Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, the ardent Cold War liberal from Washington State who made a valiant run for the Presidency in 1972 only to be thwarted by effete New Left forces aligned with Sen. George McGovern. Like Jackson before him, Lieberman knows the value of being strong on defense and progressive on domestic issues. Like McGovern, Lamont does not recognize that America faces an existential threat—instead of 1970s Communism, twenty-first century Islamo-fascism.
Of course, ultimately, George McGovern was right about Vietnam. However, America still has not accepted this truth and chose to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Perhaps American’s will learn this time around.
More from the article:
Where Lieberman and Jackson are alike is in their failure to evolve intellectually and politically. By 1972 Scoop Jackson was one of only a handful of Democrats who didn’t understand the urgency behind leaving South Vietnam; neither did he appreciate the folly of his support for the war throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Today Lieberman is one of only a small number of Democrats who do not appreciate the strategic folly and cost of the Iraq war.
It's easy to see the similarities between the two. Jackson never admitted the Vietnam War was wrong and Lieberman still continues to be the number one cheerleader for the Iraq war today, a position he is unlikely to ever change.
In 2004, Alex Fryer of the Seattle Times wrote:
But it's easy to understand why Jackson's hawkish views are suddenly in vogue: Many of the young aides who were drawn to work for Jackson in the 1970s because of his unwavering opposition to the Soviet Union now help shape the Bush administration's foreign policy.
More importantly than his views on the Soviet Union, his protégés have been instrumental in advacing the war in Iraq.
The list of former Jackson staff members reads like a who's who of foreign-policy experts.
• Richard Perle is an adviser to the Defense Department and considered a major influence on Bush administration foreign policy.
• Doug Feith is undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon.
• Elliott Abrams, special assistant to the president focusing on Middle East affairs, worked as special counsel to Jackson.
Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and one of Bush's Iraq policy experts, never served directly under Jackson. But they had a long relationship that began when Wolfowitz, then a 29-year-old graduate student, helped Jackson prepare charts when the senator wanted to persuade fellow lawmakers to fund an antiballistic-missile program in 1969.
Those are some pretty big names in the neocon community, three former staff members of the former Democratic Senator and another with close personal ties to Jackson. Three of these people were signers of the 1998 PNAC letter to President Clinton that called for millitary action against Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein. And the one person who did not sign the PNAC letter, Doug Feith, was responsible for cooking the books to make the case for war with Iraq.
He cited Gimble's findings that Feith's office was, despite doubts expressed by the intelligence community, pushing conclusions that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague five months before the attack, and that there were "multiple areas of cooperation" between Iraq and al-Qaida, including shared pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
"That was the argument that was used to make the sale to the American people about the need to go to war," Levin said in an interview Thursday. He said the Pentagon's work, "which was wrong, which was distorted, which was inappropriate ... is something which is highly disturbing."
While Scoop Jackson initiated the Neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol is considered the founder and "godfather" of Neoconservatism. He advocated four key positions: low taxes, a strong and active military, conservative social policy, and a fewer Constitutional protections. The is exactly the policy implemented by the George W. Bush presidency with disastrous consequences. And to this date, Bush continues to believe in the neoconservative philosphy, proposing more tax cuts, moving towards war with Iran, vetoing stem cell research, and of course, violating our Constitutional rights. This failed policy approach led to the Deomocratic takeover of Congress in January and will continue to drive people away from the neoconservative philosophy. Let us hope that no more damage is done before the neocons become irrelevant in American politics.