In 2003, President George W Bush invaded Iraq. His reason was that Iraq possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ which made it a threat to America and American interests. The occupation of Iraq still continues in 2008, more than 3900 America soldiers have been killed so far in that war along with innumerable Iraqi civilians. The World Health Organization claims that almost 150,000 Iraqis civilians were killed from 2002 to 2006 (World Health Organization). In 2006, a survey was conducted by Iraqi physicians under the direction of epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, published in the British medical journal, the Lancet, found the US invasion and occupation were responsible for 655,000 Iraqi deaths during the same time (Spencer, 2008).
Critics have claimed that the invasion of Iraq was done under false pretenses, since no weapons of mass destruction were found (Centre for Public Integrity, 2008).The invasion of Iraq has been defended in terms of the ‘spreading of democracy’ globally. In his inaugural address after his swearing-in ceremony, Bush said,”It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world,” (CNN.com, January, 20, 2005). It is appropriate to ask, however, whether democracy can be established through the barrel of a gun.
It has been also linked to the ‘war against terror’. However, many insist that Al Qaeda had no real links to Saddam Hussein and that the invasion of Iraq diverted from the real war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan (Centre for Public Integrity, 2008; Hersh, 2003). There has been a great deal of concern about the Bush administration’s doctrine of ‘spreading democracy’ and America’s willingness to act unilaterally without the approval of the United Nations. Critics have asked if this doctrine does not give to America justification for arbitrary intervention in any part of the world where the American President considers that there is dissatisfaction with the regime that is in power.David Gergen, a former adviser to previous Presidents Reagan and Clinton, said of Bush’s address, “[It’s] historically significant because I think he’s revealed to us today his strategy to win the war on terrorism is far more ambitious than we ever imagined, …It’s not simply going after Iraq and getting rid of Saddam [Hussein], nor is it simply going after al Qaeda. It is rather to expand and extend liberty across much of the world…No other American president has ever committed himself in an inaugural as fully as this to that kind of aggressive, foreign policy.” (CNN.com, January 20, 2005) The Bush administration has been linked to neoconservative ideology and some theorists have claimed that the aggressive foreign policy pursued by that administration stems from that neoconservative ideology.
Certainly, the rest of the world, particularly developing countries, needs to understand clearly what this ‘aggressive foreign policy’ implies. They may be the targets of this policy. This ‘aggressive foreign policy’ has been a hallmark of neo-conservatism and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). According to Mel Gurtov, “The group [PNAC] was formed in 1997 to advance the neo-cons’ cause, which they defined as ‘hard-headed internationalism’. The group’s choice of name could hardly have been accidental, for its arguments echoed those of Henry Luce’s ‘American Century’ speech over fifty years earlier: US power and ideals needed to assume centre stage in world affairs. Ronald Reagan was its hero…” (Gurtov, 2006, 28).
Ronald Reagan, it is said, transformed American politics and brought conservatism to prominence in the 1980’s. John Ehrman in The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan, says, “By 1989, conservatives not only had shown that they could govern successfully but also had established their movement as the dominant force in American politics.” (Ehrman, 2005, 2). The dissolution of the ‘liberal consensus’ in the 1970’s provided the opportunity for the conservatives. Neo-conservatism seemed to be the most aggressive part of the conservative movement, particularly in terms of the foreign policy agenda. The rise of neo-conservativism during the 1980’s has been linked to the ascension of President Reagan in the United States (Gurtov, 2006, 28-36).
Certainly, in America a number of intellectuals, most noticeably William Buckley, Frank Meyer, James Burnham, Alan Bloom, and Irving Kristol had been articulating the conservative position. Economists such as Milton Friedman and Freidrich Hayek had been promoting a neo-classical economic model. However, behind all of this, the philosophy of Leo Strauss lurks in the background. Strauss has been claimed as the mastermind behind neo-conservatism and the Iraq war. In The Truth about Leo Strauss, Catherine and Michael Zuckert write, “A spectre is haunting America, and that specter is, strange to say, Leo Strauss” (Zuckert and Zuckert, 2006, 1). Thomas Pangle writes, “As the years pass that slowly distance us from the lifetime of Leo Strauss (1899-1973), his thought grows into the future with a reach and significance rivaled by very few of his twentieth-century contemporaries” (Pangle, 2006, 1), and further, Pangle claims that “Strauss’s iconoclastic writings have long exercised a profound subterranean cultural influence, which is now emerging more and more into broad daylight, especially among the rising younger generation” (Pangle, 2006, 1).
Considered by many as the ‘godfather’ of the Republicans 1994 contract with America, Leo Strauss has had what historian Gordon Wood described as the “largest academic movement in the twentieth century”(Drury, 1997, 2). Shadia Drury writes, “What seems more surprising than his influence inside the academy is the influence that Strauss has exerted on American politics. Strauss students and their students have occupied important positions in the Reagan and Bush administrations and continue to play a significant role within the Republican Party”(Drury, 1997, 3). Others have written of the importance of Strauss’s influence on the neo-conservative movement(Devigne, 1994; Wood, 1988; Drury, 1997; LaRouche). Strauss has been considered by some, therefore, as one of the leading influences on the conservative movement and indeed also on neo-conservatism. A fractious controversy about Strauss has been stirred up. Is Strauss the eminence grise of the neoconservative movement, the Iraq war and the aggressive American foreign policy? And is he a follower of Nietzsche?
The philosophy of Darryl Naranjit 