"Yet the distortions of history he perpetrated with Bill Buckley may prove, ultimately. his most damaging and pernicious forgeries."
As I’ve said here before, when Buckley and two fellow disaffected (against Eisenhower and “containment,” and a “restrained” CIA [putting aside Iran, 1953, Guatemala, 1954) versus their preferred “Roll-back” strategy of preemptive war, even nuclear) CIA officers, Willmoore Kendall (Latin America) and James Burnham (Europe), all engaged in “Disinformation,” or, Influence Operations (now, Cognitive Operations), as “Psychological Operations,” was more commonly used then, they merely continued in private (?) life what they had done as CIA officers. Founded National Review magazine as a PsyOp; as propagandists on behalf of the Military Industrial Complex they did so much to build, and legitimize. With a continuous drumbeat for war! Recently, Responsible Statecraft published a bit of a panegyric to Buckley, attesting to his alleged turning away from “Neoconservatism,” with this statement: "Once the Cold War ended, Buckley and his movement might have done well to reconsider the utility of continuing their alliance with the neoconservatives — after all, the rationale for so doing pretty much evaporated with the Soviet menace.” How absurd that is should be seen in how “Neoconservatism” was itself in large measure a Buckley creation, one and the same, as “Conservatism,” as he personally hired the pro-Iraq War neocons so identified with National Review magazine, as he tells in a book! That he later professed dissatisfaction with the Iraq War must be viewed with suspicion as he personally did so much to incite it and promote it, to the bitter end! When what a debacle it was could no longer be denied, by the end of 2003. Like Kaiser Wilhelm might have said about WW I: https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/01/anti-war-conservatives/231173/ (by Andrew Sullivan) JANUARY 30, 2007 "Bruce Bartlett (TimesDelete) notes a major difference between Iraq and Vietam. In Vietnam, conservatives generally supported Nixon until the bitter end. In Iraq, many conservatives bailed very quickly, once the shambolic war-management of Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney came to light. Among these conservatives are some major figures. William F Buckley Jr, in June 2004, wrote, "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war." Newt Gingrich in April 2006 said "it was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003. We have to pull back and we have to recognize it.” (TP-duh!) . . . "Those of us who jumped off this bus in 2003 have found ourselves in an increasingly crowded wilderness. Our job now is to think creatively and strategically about how best to manage the failure in Iraq for our long-term advantage, at minimal moral cost. That is the current conservative challenge. Everything else is spin." Raising the question in my mind: why are New Right Conservatives doing so much to resurrect these old warmongers, but claiming they’re some kind of Right-wing Peaceniks, and claiming Trump as in that fallacious “Tradition,” as the most extreme of Zionist (Fascist) Conservatives supporting Israel’s fascists in their war against Palestinians, Iran, et al.? Here are some more correct depictions of the Troika of the founders of American Fascism; Buckley, Burnham, and Kendall! Why do we keep getting a “Sanitized Copy” of them, as if this disinformation of the kind the three of them perpetrated then, must never cease, as they’re now “sanitized” for a “New Right” generation!
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