So what was the war in Iraq about, then? (James Atlas, NY Times)

So what was the war about? (The NeoCons-Leo Strauss connection)

New York Times

May 4, 2003

A Classicist's Legacy: New Empire Builders

By JAMES ATLAS

All right, so weapons of mass destruction haven't yet been found in Iraq. And no firm link has been established between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. So what was the war in Iraq about, then? According to one school of thought, our most recent military adventure turns out to have been nothing less than a defense of Western civilization — as interpreted by the late classicist and political philosopher Leo Strauss.

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If this chain of events seems implausible, consider the tribute President Bush paid in February to the cohort of journalists, political philosophers and policy wonks known — primarily to themselves — as Straussians. "You are some of the best brains in our country," Mr. Bush declared in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, "and my government employs about 20 of you."

"Employs" is too weak a verb. To intellectual-conspiracy theorists, the Bush administration's foreign policy is entirely a Straussian creation. Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, has been identified as a disciple of Strauss; William Kristol, founding editor of The Weekly Standard, a must-read in the White House, considers himself a Straussian; Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for the New American Century, an influential foreign policy group started by Mr. Kristol, is firming in the Strauss camp. One is reminded of Asa Leventhal, the hero of Saul Bellow's novel "The Victim," who asks his oppressor, a mysterious figure named Kirby Allbee, "Wait a minute, what's your idea of who runs things?" For those who believe in the power of ideas, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to answer: the intellectual heirs of Leo Strauss.

So how did it come to pass that a European-born émigré identified by the Harvard professor of government Harvey Mansfield (also a Straussian) as "an obscure professor of political philosophy at the University of Chicago who died in 1973" now occupies a position of such disproportionate influence?

The answer starts with Strauss's long and influential tenure at Chicago in the mid-20th century and his teachings, mostly from the classics, about the immutability of moral and social values. His lessons were spurned in the 1960's and 70's, in favor of the moral relativism that his disciples believed was polluting foreign policy, from the post-Vietnam imperial malaise to détente with the Soviet Union. During the Reagan administration, some of Strauss's admirers, like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, emerged as house intellectuals — favored dinner guests who gave the intellectual justification for policies usually drawn up by more practical political types.

Today's dinner guests are the dominant master strategists in their own right, and the transformation brings us face to face with just how much their intellectual roots influence their exercise of power. It is also reasonable to ask: just what would Leo Strauss think of the policies being carried out in his name?

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