The Mystery of Neocon Influence

September 18, 2012

The neocons – despite the disastrous Iraq War and other harm they have caused – remain influential in Official Washington, given time on talk shows and space on op-ed pages to expound on their latest dreams of American intervention in the Middle East. But ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar asks, why are they still listened to?

By Paul R. Pillar

Recent attempts by adversaries of President Barack Obama to blame him for yet another undesirable circumstance — in this case, popular outrage in the Middle East over an anti-Islam video — remind us of one of the oddest aspects of discourse in the United States about foreign and security policy: that the same people who not too many years ago inflicted on us the Iraq War are still part of that discourse.

They get air time and column space, and evidently at least somebody seems to be listening to them.