Scary, Mad and Powerful - why the Henry Jackson Society is coming your way.

I've been aware of this crowd for a while, but yet again a fusion of disparate messages from the political spin machine*, plus a few forward-thinking bloggers have brought the strands together with a jerk. Actually, quite a few jerks, as we'll see.

Late last month the Henry Jackson Society, a Cambridge University-based talking shop produced something called the 'British Moment', although even a superficial examination suggests 'Blonde Moment' would be more appropriate. This is an effusion of true ghastliness that should only be read with the images of death and destruction in Iraq and Lebanon close at hand, in order to strip off the comforting verbiage of the college Common Rooms and reveal the nihilistic horror underneath. It could, however, by safely ignored if it wasn't for the startling number of really quite powerful figures who enthusiastically reject reality for this tripe. What, for instance, are we to make of this from Alan Mendoza, a leading HJS light, academic and Conservative councillor (and doubtless future MP, if he carries on moving in the circles he's in), but evidently a man at right angles to reality:

There it is, the neocon position in a nutshell, with a British twist. Reality (i.e. murder, torture, destruction, extrajudicial State activities) doesn't matter if your *ideals* are right. There's a perfectly good word for this and that word is 'Nazism'. Not fascism, Nazism. The End is what matters, the Final Solution which ushers in the Thousand Year Reich. Let's just get rid of these uncooperative or dangerous People Who Are Not Like Us, or those subversives who stand in the way of Progress. How? Don't worry about it, you'll thank us once they're gone and we've secured our oil supply and your shares are booming. It's for the best. If you don't get it, you'll Get It.

Now, back on Earth several problems appear:

1) The HJS/neocon options for achieving what they call 'democratic geopolitics' include (with a barely suppressed shiver of delight) the 'military domain' and 'expeditionary capabilities with a global reach'. In other words 'Become Like Us Or We'll Bomb You'. The limits to this form of warfare (which is supposed to work on the Rumsfeld homeopathic principle of sending lots of missiles and very few troops) are evident in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, and doubtless the result would be identical anywhere else - a ruined country, piles of dead civilians, a highly pissed off population and increased militancy. The disconnect is between the envisaged ideal of democratic, moral military action and the reality that any invasive military action will *inevitably* result in the moral degradation of the very military forces you idealise. Hitler thought his soldiers were supermen, and they suffered for it, and the countries they invaded suffered even more.

2) The total absence, indeed the explicit avowal that undemocratic states should have no say at the global level - this naturally means no UN. Global power should be recognised solely as the right of democratic states, although this seems to be restricted to the US, EU and presumably Australia, Canada and Israel and their associated groups such as the OECD and NATO. There are flaws here - firstly, the Good Guys, and the UK in particular, have an increasing democratic deficit and secondly democracy is a sliding scale, there are elements of democracy in places like Venezuala, Lebanon, Iran and Palestine which would quite definitely be in the Bad Guys camp. That democracy actually grows from the people (which is the lesson of history) rather than being imposed from without is entirely missing from the HJS lexicon. Instead, there's a firm rule that you don't talk to someone you don't agree with, just blow them away and *whoosh* - the world is magically the way you want it. This is again straight from the Blair DNA.

3) There's an implicit assumption that Western liberal democracies are political perfection, which legitimises the monotheistic belief that the whole world should be stamped into the same mould and that any amount of tampering with freedoms doesn't count, because we're perfect. This is suspiciously like the more evangelical forms of Protestantism - you're already saved, so do what you like, as it must be right because you're doing it, and if you're doing it then it's God's will. Thus what should be legitimate democratic dissent (last Saturday's march, for instance) can be ignored or denigrated as the 'forces of conservatism' or 'supporters of terrorists').

4) Reality is the enemy. The worst insult they throw is 'realist', meaning one who deals in facts rather than ideals. This is stupid and wrong, as proved so many times in Iraq, where the reality on the ground keeps coming up at inconvenient moments, and of course in Lebanon where Hezbollah are refusing to die when told to. It must be much easier to declare reality the enemy than reexamine your strategy - after all, the strategy is right because you, a Western liberal democratic leader, came up with it, and you're always right. Sound like anyone we know?

5) There's no definition of what comprises an HJS-style democracy, although one can have a good guess by looking at Blair and Bush's recent behaviour. There seems to be no space for an independent judiciary that can get in the way of supreme executive power. Likewise Parliamentary scrutiny is out of the window, as it might slow down the implementation of the Leader's decisions (which are of course right, anyway). Much better to have Leg Reg, or the Enabling Act, isn't it? Bush takes a similar 'get-outta-my-way' attitude to the US Constitution, of course, and as for Human Rights, well, you've got to be a terrorist-loving wet liberal to even think about supporting that.

6) The magic word 'values'. This is where Blair most closely aligns himself with the HJS recently, so much so that one senses that a dog whistle is being blown. There's the implicit assumption that there is a single set of perfect values possessed uniquely by Western liberal democracies and not by, say, undemocratic Middle Eastern states. This is clearly bollocks - many in the US have attitudes to abortion and gay rights that are closer to Saudi Arabia than Sweden. That not all Western states share the same values is as blindingly obvious to the reality-minded set as the fact that not all undemocratic countries work the same way. The imposition of regimented, one-size-fits-all mindsets fails to recognise this just as much as it would seem to exclude any form of democratic dissent.

Mendoza's article is just full of fisking material it's hard to start, but someone who thinks that the policies of Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld, Olmert and co. have any chance of creating a better, more just, more secure and safer world really needs quite strong psychoactive medication. That this is not only believed by some but that these people are in positions of power *everywhere* is frankly far more frightening than any terrorist vapourware the police think they've found. Let's review a few key players:

* Gisela Stuart MP - right wing New Labour loyalist, German born, strongly pro-EU, on the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee.
* Denis MacShane MP - right wing New Labour loyalist, German speaker, strongly pro-EU. Talks a lot of shit.
* Sir Richard Dearlove - head of MI6 during the whole Iraq thing. About as trustworthy as a dodgy dossier.
* Ed Vaizey MP - nasty right wing Tory, very pro-Israel at the moment and rather close to David Cameron
* Baron Trimble - former UUP leader, well up for a bit of flag-waving British nationalism
* Irwin Stelzer - Rupert Murdoch's mate who tells Tony Blair what to do. The coincidence of Blair's visit to California and simultaneously coming out with a frightening load of quasi-HJS tosh about 'values' and 'extremism' is revealing.
* Richard Perle - one of the original neocons, mixed up with the scandal of (fervent Israeli right-wing supporter) Conrad Black and Hollinger
* Billy Kristol - don't know much about him yet, but Jesus' General takes the piss out of him, and his targets are usually spot on. Enlightenment sought please.
* Oliver Kamm - oh dear
* Stephen Pollard - Blunkett's biographer, now reduced to screaming 'anti-Semite' at people in the Guardian. Git.
* James Woolsey - another former spook (CIA this time), also a member of PNAC, something called the 'Set America Free Coalition' (why do I instinctively *know* that's going to be a nasty lot?*) and thinks the US should bomb Syria.

Of course, what's blindingly obvious is that not only the Murdoch press, the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, Cambridge University and MI6 are in on this, but also the losers and nuts responsible for the Euston Manifesto**. That document is so closely allied to the HJS that it's quite obvious there's a link.

So that's the two main UK parties, the intelligence services, our most important ally, the right wing press and the left wing press in the hands of Nazi lunatics who refuse to live in the real world. What does that leave? Well, us, I suppose, the lefties and centrists, the Muslims, blacks (are there any black neocons?), humanists, pacifists and people who like living with truth and without fear. Better start practicing those barricade building skills.

* It's ostensibly a pressure group to reduce dependence on foreign (read Middle Eastern) oil. In reality it's full of friends of Israel and has a quote from Thomas Friedman on the front page. Ask yourself who reduced US demand for oil would piss off in the Middle East...clue: Israel has no oil. List of members.

** That the EM was full of piss and wind is borne out by the current crisis in Lebanon, which has split the signatories, according to this article. That was a few weeks ago - it would be interesting to do an update.