One of the original neoconservatives, Ronald Reagan's UN Ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick is dead at age 80.
A lifelong Democrat, she was one of many former-Dems to shift hard right to the neocon side. Kirkpatrick believed that old-school dictators were better than revolutionary autocrats.
Her deputy at the UN was noneother than Ken Adelman, the neocon stalwart who's now busy blaming anybody and everybody for the disaster in Iraq that his group so fervently promoted. Adelman recently claimed the British had to take responsibility for not reining in George Bush.
During her tenure, Kirkpatrick regularly clashed with White House Chief of Staff, former general Al Haig. I can only recall one instance when Haig prevailed over Kirkpatrick - the Falkland Islands war.
Kirkpatrick sided with the Argentinean Junta and wanted America to stay out of it. Haig eventually persuaded Reagan that America's allegiance should lie with Margaret Thatcher. That led Reagan to furnish weaponry and intelligence of great help to the British task force that eventually defeated the Argentinians and recovered the Falklands.
1 comment:
Just a couple of things... I'd dispute whether the neo-Cons shifted at all. Most had their roots in permanent revolution through Troskyism. They merely left the Democrats because they didn't like hippies coming to their party meetings when Johnson stepped down. In fact, it was more the party that left them.
Thatcher's memoirs state that Haig was useless - it was the late Weinberger who advised Reagan to give tacit support to the British.
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