Talk:Neoconservatism/Archive 3

message: Michael Lind, a self-described ex-neocon, writes in the Feb 23, 2004 issue of The Nation (p.24, in the article "A Tragedy of Errors", nominally a review of a recent book by David Frum and Richard Perle), that the term "Neoconservative" was Michael Harrington's. Does anyone know if this is true, and if so, where Harrington coined it? That's an interesting person for it to have come from, and would merit mention in the article if true. -- Jmabel 01:17, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The credit (or blame) for the term was confirmed in the National Review.  I've added it to the article on the theory that anything those two magazines agree on is pretty much NPOV by definition. :)   JamesMLane 02:10, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of term

message: I seem to be in danger of an edit war with User:66.227.210.253. I would appreciate if someone else would weigh in.
* 19:02, 28 Mar 2004: User:66.227.210.253 removes "pro-war" from lead paragraph.
* 19:32, 28 Mar 2004: I restore it, with the comment, "Reverting to last edit by 194.125.8.172: restoring pro-war. Willing to see this change debated in talk page, but not to see it made unliaterally and anonymously."
* 15:59, 29 Mar 2004: User:66.227.210.253 makes different, more extensive edit elsewhere in the article, which (in my view) replaces a description biased in one direction with a description biased in the other direction (I will discuss below).
* 15:59, 29 Mar 2004: User:66.227.210.253 again removes "pro-war" from lead paragraph, still with no justification given. 
-- Jmabel 02:43, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Trying to avoid an edit war

message: 15:59, 29 Mar 2004: User:66.227.210.253 replaced:
: "After talks with April Glaspie, the United States ambassador to Iraq, assured him that the US considered the Iraq-Kuwait dispute an internal Arab matter, Saddam sent his troops into Kuwait. Thus, the actual historical record would seem to cast doubts on the view among neoconservatives that Saddam's wars have been tantamount to Hitler's."
With 
: "After talks with April Glaspie, the United States ambassador to Iraq, assured him that the dispute over small islands on the Iraq-Kuwait border was an internal Arab matter, Saddam sent his troops into Kuwait, taking the entire nation (instead of just the disputed islands)."
I agree with the removal of the Hitler remark, and neither of these versions is an epitome of NPOV, but the new version is factually more dubious than the old. While some historians believe that April Glaspie meant to signal only that a dispute over small islands on the Iraq-Kuwait border was an internal Arab matter, that is certainly not what she said in readily available transcripts. This new wording implies that she was clear and specific. In fact, she was lamentably vague, and Saddam Hussein could well have seen what she said as a green light for a full scale takeover of Kuwait. See for example  (one of several places where transcripts of the key meeting can be found on the web). Glaspie simply said,
: "... I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.
: "I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly. With regard to all of this, can I ask you to see how the issue appears to us?"
This is, at best, ambiguous.
Since I seem to be in danger of an edit war with User:66.227.210.253, I am not going to edit the article myself, but I would appreciate if someone else will step in and deal with this. -- Jmabel 03:00, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Seeking a middle ground

message: Since it seems likely that User:66.227.210.253 will simply ignore the talk page, I have placed the previous two issues on Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment, hoping to get someone else involved and avoid an edit war. -- Jmabel 03:12, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Request for comment

message: It talks about the famous accusation that the US somehow lured Saddam in Kuwait in order to provoke the war or something. First, the way it is put in the entry, while NPOVed, still could be improved. For example: No country would lend it money except the United States and borrowing money from the US made Iraq its client state. Iraq had also borrowed a tremendous amount of money from other Arab states, including Kuwait, which somehow did not make it Kuwait's client state, and also contradicts the first part of the phrase. And second, how is it relevant to the article about neoconservatism?
The whole thing has an aftertaste of an honest, but partisan, attempt to express someone's curent political agenda on a tangentially relevant topic in the guise of an encyclopedia article.
Cema 00:58, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: The last paragraph

message: Woah, woah, woah, nobody ever says "in US".  Makes it sound like weird bureaucratspeak.  I don't see what was wrong with the old location, but it should at least be "Neoconservatism in the United States" or "Neoconservatism in the U.S." - Nat Krause 06:49, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  This move was a bad idea, and at any rate should have been discussed in Talk first.  I'm undoing.  Let's keep it there until/unless consensus emerges that the old title is inadequate. - VV 07:02, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Just to add to above, the old title is more appropriate, because this proposed one implies that neocon'ism is a worldwide movement, and this article is just about the US branch of it.  But in fact we're talking about wholly different ideologies, and so a disambiguator is more appropriate. - VV 07:04, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Neoconservatism in US

message: Saying that neocons "have been influential in formulating U.S. foreign policy" was proper because the point isn't seriously disputed.  If VeryVerily insists on "credited with influencing," however, thus implying that their influence was a good thing, then we need to acknowledge that some people disagree.  Hence "credited with (or blamed for)," although I think that the simple statement that they did influence it is better.
As for their attitude toward other governments (especially Third World), it's objective to say that they opposed regimes "deemed hostile to the interests of the United States."  If we want to add "values," then we need to note the opposing POV that the neocons didn't really give a damn about traditional American values.  (What would Thomas Jefferson have said about Ferdinand Marcos?)  I think it would be simpler to go back to the simple "interests of the United States," undoing both my edit and VV's.
I don't want to just revert VV's edits, so if he or anyone else agrees with me, please change to the shorter versions suggested above. JamesMLane 02:00, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: (1) Well, the issue here is mostly that imputations of neoconservative are controversial enough that I want it to be stated that this influence is imputed rather than be stated outright.  I don't mean credited with to imply it is a good thing but rather a successful thing.  (2) Saying it's just for US interests is highly prejudicial and negative, and it's not accurate either, in that as I see it neocons have something of a "global" vision, with America as a tool for pursuing it.  Neocons do talk about and argue for American values, so it's fair to say that they support actions on their behalf, even if their vision is non-Jeffersonian; recurring talk of democracy is one example - VV 02:46, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Some minor NPOV issues

message: A recent addition said, "the left has not adopted a similarly sympathetic attitude toward Taiwan" (comparing it to Tibet). I'd question that. Many on the left question the goal of Taiwan independence (which, as I understand it is a rather fraught issue even in Taiwan), but the type of leftist that wants autonomy or independence for Tibet pretty consistently wants autonomy for Taiwan, now that the latter has developed democratic institutions. When support for Taiwan meant support for Chiang Kai-Shek, this was, of course, an entirely different matter. Given that the statement was unsourced, not particularly on the topic of the article, and I don't think it was true, I'm deleting it. -- Jmabel 17:14, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
:I agree.  The "source" of the comment seemed to be someone's impressions of bumper stickers seen near college dorms.  There are no "Free Taiwan" stickers because the PRC doesn't control Taiwan.  Letting people vent their spleen at leftists is generally off-topic for this article, anyway. JamesMLane 07:47, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Taiwan

message: Are these the same institutions? I found some hints but im not quite sure. Could be important because there is not much to find about an "Jamestown Institute"
:This is incorrect.  Jamestown is not a neoconservative organization, and is run by well-established critics of the Bush administration's policies, especially vis-a-vis Putin and Chechnya. —thames 19:16, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I noticed a heavy anti-russian stance and support of ideas which are more in line with the opinion of hardcore neoconservatives than the realpolitik approach of the bush-administration.--80.137.115.232 21:00, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't understand your position, and I think you've got things backwards.  The Bush administration is most certainly not realist (prominent realists on the right and left, such as Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, routinely criticize Bush administration policy).  The Bush administration is neoconservative.  Jamestown is a big critic of Bush/neoconservative policy as well, and is more in line with realist/liberal international relations POV.  The neoconservatives have accommodated Russia as a great power which can aide in the War on Terror--Jamestown, realists and liberals criticize this position. —thames 21:02, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Jamestown Institute - Jamestown Foundation