Ascendancy of the Neocons

Re “The Evolution of the Neocons,” Commentary, April 17: Michael Kinsley gets part of it right, but misses the fact that the real father of the neocons was Herman Kahn (he died in 1983). Kahn was truly a brilliant guy whose political view was pretty much directly responsible for the Project for the New American Century, of which Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz et al are members.

Many consider Kahn to be the first futurist, but he lost me when I heard him say on national TV, “If there’s a nuclear war, and we kill 180 million Russians, and they only kill 110 million Americans ... we win.”

Richard Berger

Los Angeles

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The most dramatic occurrence Kinsley cites for the evolution of the neocons is the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although the magnitude of that event supersedes almost anything else, it was Sept. 11 that changed forever the paradigm for neocons and the majority of the American people. The sense that we had never been hit at home and the security of miles of ocean separating us from the rest of the world came to an instant end on Sept. 11. The worldview of Sept. 10 allowed for tolerance of perverse, pathological regimes. Now we know they are the breeding ground of exportable menace. And they are therefore no longer tolerable.

Edward Tully

Brooklyn, N.Y.

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Taking on the neocons with kid gloves -- as if they were the new American intelligentsia -- is a sad commentary on, well, the devolution of commentary in America. Conventional wisdom says the Bush administration and Republican Party have been hijacked by the “true believers” -- both the Christian evangelists and the chicken hawks. But an alternative view is that the neocons and religious zealots are “fellow travelers” to a cabal of corporocrats or, in the view of the rest of the world, imperial thugs. Americans are so confused (or in denial) that any excuse for a messianic mission is better than facing up to the truth. Deep in our soul we know that without control of Middle East oil, our way of life is extinct.

The neocons’ democracy crusade provides convenient cover for the weapons of mass destruction. Of course, one big lie leads to another. Given all the huge problems that we can’t or won’t solve right here at home (healthcare, Social Security, education, deficits, immigration), only a fool would seek salvation in “freeing” the world of tyranny by force.

Tom Tomeoni

Thousand Oaks