THE HANDSTAND

THE HANDSTAND

JULY 2004

Professor Francis Boyle Responds to the june issue of The Handstand:

Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies, and
Con-Artists.
by Francis A. Boyle

It is now a matter of public record that immediately after the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli "Neoconservative" Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulating the tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext for doing so.(1)Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September 11th or supporting Al-Qaeda . But that made no difference to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, their Undersecretary of War Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-Cons inhabiting the Bush Jr. administration.

These pro-Israeli Neo-Cons had been schooled in the Machiavellian/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in its Department of Political Science. The best exposé of Strauss's pernicious theories on law, politics, government, for elitism, and against democracy can be found in two scholarly books by the Canadian Professor of Political Philosophy Shadia B. Drury.(2) I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protégé, co-author, and later literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago's Political Science Department (A.B., 1971, in Political Science), I concur completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process that has been inflicted by Chicago's Straussian Neo-Con
cabal.(3)

The University of Chicago routinely trained me and innumerable other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is precisely why so many neophyte Neo-Con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago or towards Chicago Alumni at other universities. Years later, the University of Chicago became the "brains" behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the University of Chicago in 1967. Many of his lawyers at the Bush Jr. Department of Injustice are members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, and totalitarian Federalist Society (aka "Feddies"),(4) which originated in part at the University of Chicago. Feddies wrote the USA Patriot Act (USAPA) I and the draft for USAPA II, which constitute the blueprint for establishing an American Police State.(5) Meanwhile, the Department of Injustice's own F.B.I. is still covering up the U.S. governmental origins of the post 11 September 2001 anthrax attack on Washington D.C. that enabled Ashcroft and his Feddies to stampede the U.S. Congress into passing USAPA I into law.(6)

Integrally related to and overlapping with the Feddies are members of the University of Chicago "School" of Law-and-Kick-Them-in-the-Groin-Economics, which in turn was founded upon the Market Fundamentalism of Milton Friedman, now retired but long-time Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" have raped, robbed, looted, plundered, and pillaged economies and their respective peoples all over the developing world.(7) This Chicago gang of academic con-artists and charlatans are proponents of the Nazi Doctrine of "useless eaters." Pursuant to Friedman's philosophy of Market Fundamentalism, the "privatization" of Iraq and its Oil Industry are already underway for the primary benefit of the U.S. energy companies (e.g., Halliburton, formerly under Vice President Dick Cheney) that had already interpenetrated the Bush Jr. administration as well as the Bush Family itself. Enron.

Although miseducated(8) at Yale and Harvard Business School, the "Ivies" proved to be too liberal for Bush Jr. and his fundamentalist Christian supporters, whose pointman and spearcarrier in the Bush Jr. administration was Ashcroft, a Fundie himself. The Neo-Cons and the Fundies contracted an "unholy alliance" in support of Bush Jr. For their own different reasons, both gangs also worked hand-in-hand to support Israel's genocidal Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an internationally acknowledged war criminal.(9)

According to his own public estimate and boast before the American Enterprise Institute, President Bush Jr. hired about 20 Straussians to occupy key positions in his administration, intentionally taking offices where they could push American foreign policy in favor of Israel and against its chosen enemies such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians.(10) Most of the Straussian Neo-Cons in the Bush Jr. administration and elsewhere are Israel-firsters: What is "good" for Israel is by definition "good" for the United States. Dual loyalties indeed.(11)

In addition, it was the Chicago Straussian cabal of pro-Israeli Neo-Cons who set up a special "intelligence" unit within the Pentagon that was responsible for manufacturing many of the bald-faced lies, deceptions, half-truths, and sheer propaganda that the Bush Jr. administration then disseminated to the lap-dog U.S. news media(12) in order to generate public support for a war of aggression against Iraq for the benefit of Israel and in order to steal Iraq's oil.(13) To paraphrase advice Machiavelli once rendered to his Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book: Those who want to deceive will always find those willing to be deceived.(14) As I can attest from my personal experience as an alumnus of the University of Chicago Department of Political Science, the Bible of Chicago's Neo-Con Straussian cabal is Machiavelli's The Prince. We students had to know our Machiavelli by heart and rote at the University of Chicago.

As for the University of Chicago overall, its biblical Gospel is Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987).(15) Of course Bloom was another protégé of Strauss, as well as a mentor to Wolfowitz. In his Bloom-biographical novel Ravelstein (2000) Saul Bellow, formerly on the University of Chicago Faculty, outed his self-styled friend Bloom as a
hedonist, pederast, and most promiscuous homosexual who died of AIDS. All this was common knowledge at the University of Chicago, where Bloom is still worshiped and his elitist screed against American higher-education still revered on a pedestal.

In Ravelstein Wolfowitz appeared as Bloom's protégé Philip Gorman, leaking national security secrets to his mentor during the Bush Sr. war against Iraq. Strauss hovered around the novel as Bloom's mentor and guru Professor Davarr. Strauss/Davarr is really the éminence grise of Ravelstein. With friends like Bellow, Bloom did not need enemies. On the basis of Ravelstein alone, Wolfowitz warrants investigation by the F.B.I.

Just recently the University of Chicago officially celebrated its Bush Jr. Straussian Neo-Con cabal, highlighting Wolfowitz Ph.D. '72, Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69 (the CIA's Iraqi puppet), Abram Shulsky, A.M. '68, Ph.D. '72 (head of the Pentagon's special "intelligence" unit), Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79 (Bush Jr's roving pro-consul for Afghanistan and then Iraq), as well as faculty members Bellow, X '39, and Bloom, A.B. '49, A.M. '53, Ph.D. '55, together with Strauss. According to the University of Chicago Magazine, Bloom's rant "helped popularize Straussian ideals of democracy."(16) It is correct to assert that Bloom's book helped to popularize Straussian "ideas," but they were blatantly anti-democratic, Machiavellian, Nietzschean, and elitist to begin with. Only the University of Chicago would have the unmitigated Orwellian gall to publicly assert that Strauss and Bloom cared one whit about democracy, let alone comprehended the "ideals of democracy."

Does anyone seriously believe that a pro-Israeli Chicago/Strauss/Bloom product such as Wolfowitz could care less about democracy in Iraq? Or for that matter anyone in the Bush Jr. administration? After they stole the 2000 presidential election from the American People in Florida and before the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, some of whom were Feddies?(17) Justice Clarence Thomas is a Straussian to boot.(18)

At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in 1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the "first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding" to Robert "Mad Bomber" McNamara.(19) In other words, the University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era.(20) Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to
become warmongers like Wolfowitz or totalitarians like Ashcroft! The University of Chicago is an intellectual and moral cesspool.

Endnotes

1.    See, e.g., Rahul Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance 108 (2003).
2.    Shadia B. Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988); Leo
Strauss and the American Right (1999). See also Alain Frachon & Daniel
Vernet, The Strategist and the Philosopher: Leo Strauss and Albert
Wohlstetter, Le Monde, April 16, 2003, translated into English by Norman
Madarasz on Counterpunch.org., June 2, 2003.
3.    See also David Brock, Blinded by the Right (2002)
4.    George E. Curry & Trevor W. Coleman, Hijacking Justice, Emerge,
October 1999, at 42; Jerry M. Landay, The Conservative Cabal That's
Transforming American Law, Washington Monthly, March 2000, at 19; People for
the American Way, The Federalist Society (August 2001); Institute for
Democracy Studies, The Federalist Society and the Challenge to a Democratic
Jurisprudence (January 2001).
5.    Francis A. Boyle, Bush's Banana Republic, Counterpunch.org, Oct. 11,
2002.
6.    Francis A. Boyle, Biowarfare, Terror Weapons and the U.S.: Home Brew?,
Counterpunch.org, April 25, 2002.
7.    See Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2003), at 5 et seq.
8.    See Chomsky on Miseducation (Donald Macedo ed. 2000).
9.    Francis A. Boyle, Take Sharon to The Hague, Counterpunch.org, June 6,
2002.
10.    White House Press Release, President Discusses the Future of Iraq,
Washington Hilton Hotel, Feb. 26, 2003.
11.    Nasser H. Aruri, Dishonest Broker, 193-216 (2003). See also Tanya
Reinhart, Israel/Palestine (2002); Cheryl A. Rubenberg, The Palestinians
(2003).
12.    Norman Solomon, The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media (1999); Noam
Chomsky, Media Control (1997).
13.    Seymour M. Hersh, Selective Intelligence, New Yorker, May 8, 2003; Michael Lind, The Weird Men Behind George W. Bush's War, New Statesman - London, April 7, 2003; Julian Borger, The Spies Who Pushed for War, The Guardian, July 17, 2003.
14.    Machiavelli, The Prince 147 (M. Musa trans. & ed. 1964): ". . . and men are so simple-minded and so dominated by their present needs that one who deceives will always find one who will allow himself to be deceived." This Bilingual Edition of The Prince by Mark Musa was the one preferred by Joseph Cropsey to teach us students.
15.    But see Lawrence W. Levine, The Opening of the American Mind (1996).
16.    Between the Lines, University of Chicago Magazine, June 2003, at 54
17.    Vincent Bugliosi, The Betrayal of America (2001); Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy 11-81 (2003).
18.    Gerhard Sporl, The Leo-Conservatives, Der Spiegel, Aug. 4, 2003.
19.    McNamara Receives Pick Award Amid Protests, University of Chicago Magazine, Summer 1979, at 4.
20.    Noam Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot (1993); Robert S. McNamara, In
Retrospect (1995).

Home Front: The Government's War on Soldiers,
By Rick Anderson. (Clarity Press: 2004)

I was first approached by Clarity Press, Inc. to write a Foreword to Rick Anderson's remarkable book on the dismal treatment of American GIs by their own government,because of my expertise related to American research and development of biochemical weapons of mass destruction; and the shipment of same by the U.S. to the regi me of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s-the very weapons which ostensibly occasioned the Bush administration's war on Iraq in 2003.( As recounted in my lecture on "BioWarfare, Terror Weapons and the U.S.: Home Brew?", published by Counterpunch.org on 25 April 2002. ) Previously, I had drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act of 1989, the U.S. domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, that was passed unanimously by both Houses of the United States Congress and signed into law by President Bush Sr. In the Fall of 1990 I served as Counsel for the successful defense of U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jeff Paterson, the first military resister as a matter of principle and conscience to Bush Sr.'s Gulf War I. Then I represented U.S. M.C. Lance Corporal David Mihaila in a successful effort to obtain his discharge from the Marine Corps during Bush Sr.'s Gulf War I as a Conscientious Objector. Corporal Mihaila was the Clerk of the Court for the Paterson court-martial proceeding and was motivated to apply for CO status as a result of my oral argument for Corporal Paterson.

Then at the start of 1991, I served as Counsel for the defense of Captain Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, who was court-martialed by the U.S. Army in part because of her refusal to administer experimental vaccines to soldiers destined to fight in the Bush Sr. Gulf War I. Later on, I served as Counsel for the defense of U.S. Army Captain Lawrence Rockwood, who was court-martialed for his heroic efforts to stop torture in Haiti after the United States government had invaded that country in 1994. So I felt I had the practical experience and professional expertise required to comment upon the significance of what Rick Anderson had to say.

But as I read Home Front: The Government's War on Soldiers, I was deeply moved instead to approach the subject in a more personal manner relating to my own experience as the son of an American Marine who fought valiantly against the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War, because my father's life influenced not only my appreciation of the heroism and sacrifices of U.S. Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen and now airwomen, but also my understanding and apprehension of its dreadful realities, and the after effects upon those who must bear its brunt, and carry its memories throughout the rest of their lives.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, my father Francis Anthony Boyle, after whom I am named (being the oldest of my parents' eight children) applied for admission to Officer Candidate School for the United States Marine Corps. After an extended period of investigation, he was eventually rejected-telling me it was the most disappointing day of his entire life. He was not given the reason for this rejection. But as a child he had rheumatic fever, meningitis, and polio. As a boy he had to walk around with crutches and only gradually managed to wean himself from them. The rejection by the Marine Corps Officer Candidate School undoubtedly saved my father's life and thus made mine possible. The chances of survival for a young Marine Corps Officer in the Pacific Campaign were infinitesimal. They were expected to lead their troops into battle from in front of their men.

Despite his deep disappointment and his physical limitations, my father then enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps on 14 July 1943 at the age of 22 and agreed to serve for the "Duration" of the war. By contrast, I entered the Harvard Law School on about 7 September 1971 at the age of 21. I thought of my father a lot during that first year of law school. At about my age, he was fighting for his life in the jungles of the Pacific. But my father would have wanted it that way for me.

According to his Honorable Discharge papers (A108534, Series A, NAVMC70-PD) and war stories, my father invaded Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa. According to my father, after the battle for Okinawa, all but two Marines from his original Company were either killed or seriously wounded. The Marine Corps then ordered my father and his friend to begin training for the invasion of mainland Japan where they were scheduled to be among the first Marines ashore because of their combat experience. My father told me that at the time he believed it was a miracle that he was still alive. He knew that he would never survive the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland, but had proceeded to train for this invasion anyway because he had enlisted for the "Duration" of the war. Semper Fidelis My father was a very aggressive, relentless, fearless, and ferocious warrior.

After his Honorable Discharge from the Marine Corps on 16 January 1946 as a Corporal with his "Character of service" rated as "excellent," my father attended Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois and graduated from their Law School in the Class of 1950, shortly after I was born. He went to work as a plaintiff's litigator for a law firm in downtown Chicago where, his hiring partner told me, he was very aggressive in court and otherwise. Eventually, my father opened his own law firm as a plaintiff's litigator in downtown Chicago in 1959. On the night he transferred his files from the old office to his new firm, my father put me into our 1955 Chevy, the first car he ever bought, and brought me along for the ride and the opening of his new law firm. Soon thereafter, he designated me as the Clerk for his law firm, and promptly put me to work at the age of nine running messages, filing documents in court, taking money to and from the LaSalle National Bank, etc. all over downtown Chicago on school holidays and during summer vacations. At the end of a hard day's work around 5:30 p.m., I would walk over to the corner of State and Madison in order to take the bus home by myself while my father continued to work away at his law practice late into the night. Now if I did that to my nine year old son today the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services would step in and take him away from me-the "home alone" phenomenon. But that was a different era, and my father was of the old school: spare the rod, and spoil the child. It was not easy being the oldest child and namesake of a World War II U.S. Marine Corps combat veteran of invading Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa.

I continued to serve as his Clerk until he died of a heart attack on 10 January 1968 at the age of 46. Because I worked for him at his law firm for all those years, I was fortunate to have spent an enormous amount of time with my father. I learned a lot about life from my father. Two of his favorites were: "Son, there is nothing fair about life." And: "Just remember, son, no one owes you anything." Of course he proved right on both counts-and many others as well.

But in particular, since I was his oldest child and namesake, at a very young age he began to tell me these astounding, chilling, hair-raising stories about what hand-to-hand combat in the Pacific was really like that literally left an otherwise talkative boy dumbfounded. My father supplemented these stories by taking me to see almost every war film ever made about combat in the Pacific, where he punctuated these war movies in medias res by telling me whether or not the incidents portrayed therein were authentic, and then comparing them with his own war experiences afterwards on the way home. It dawned upon me at a very young age that it was literally a miracle that my father had survived the war.

My father was very proud of his combat service in the Marine Corps and for the rest of his life continued to consider himself to be a Marine. He never bragged about his combat experiences in the war to me or to anyone else that I was aware of. His record in combat spoke for itself. Indeed, when I was a young boy, his fellow warriors elected him to be the Commander of the local American Legion Chapter, a distinct honor as he saw it. He brought my mother, my next younger sister, and me along for the installation ceremony and dinner that night.

My father had nothing good and nothing bad to say about the Japanese Imperial Army and its soldiers. But it was obvious from his tone of voice that he considered them to be dangerous warriors who were prepared to fight to the death, as large numbers of them did at his hands. My father and mother never raised any of their eight children to be biased or prejudiced against the Japanese or any other people for that matter.

According to my father, immediately prior to the invasions of Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa, his Captain issued direct orders to his Company not to take Japanese prisoners of war on the grounds of reciprocity: "The Japs don't take prisoners of our men, so I don't want to see any Nip soldiers cluttering up our rear lines!" Notwithstanding, my father took surrendering Japanese soldiers as prisoners of war, escorted them to the rear of the line, and then returned to battle. When the odds are overwhelming that you will meet your Maker in any instant, you want to do so with a clear conscience. I tell this story to my law students when they object that it is unrealistic to expect soldiers to obey the laws of war during the heat of combat. But that is the difference between a warrior and a war criminal.

At first glance it appeared that my father had survived the war relatively unscathed. He had picked up a fungus on his leg that stayed with him for the rest of his life, which he called his "jungle rot." Also, his hearing had been impaired by the big naval guns bombarding the coasts while he and his comrades waited on ship to board the landing transports in order to storm the beaches, as well as by artillery, grenades, bombs, machine guns, flame throwers, and other ordnance that he endured, advancing under withering enemy fire during the day, repulsing bonzai charges at night, repeatedly volunteering for what looked like suicide missions behind enemy lines, etc. It was Hell on Earth.

Only years later, long after he had died, and as a result of medical research on veterans of the Vietnam War, did I realize that my father came back with a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS), something that was undiagnosed at the time. Combat veterans of World War II were simply expected to go home and resume their civilian lives without further adieu. As my father's Marine Corps Honorable Discharge papers state: "Requires neither treatment nor hospitalization." In retrospect, my father should have had medical treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome if it had been available then.

Despite his untreated PTSS, my father built a very successful law practice as a plaintiff's litigator. Shortly before he died, my father told me that he had almost become economically secure enough from his law practice in order to run for a Judgeship in Cook County, which he intended to do. Given that he was born Irish on the Southside of Chicago and his Marine Corps combat record, he would have had no problem being nominated, run and elected by the storied Dick Daley Machine - he grew up with them all. But my father's further ascent in the legal profession was cut short by the physical condition of his heart. Nevertheless, my father always demonstrated heartfelt compassion to those less fortunate than he and taught all of his children to do the same. My mother still does the same as he today.

While it was likely not my father's intention, his stories told over many years about the terrors and horrors of combat in the Pacific turned me against war and violence as a solution to human problems. I had the same reaction while reading through Home Front, Rick Anderson's powerful new book which indicates not only those ills which arrogant and rapacious government officials can perpetrate on those who are expected to sacrifice their very lives, but also the terrible tragedy that is so characteristic of war itself. War is always the ultimate defeat for the human spirit. War is an abomination on the face of God's Creation. There has to be a better way. Law is that better way.

We Americans cannot keep sending our young men and now women off to fight and to die, or to survive with terrible physical and mental injuries, scarred for the rest of their lives by the horrors of warfare as my father was. Every American who has a child contemplating joining the military for any reason should buy him or her a copy of this book to read. I have three sons, and I will be sure to give a copy of this book to each of them.

America's endemic cycle of warfare, bloodshed, and violence, both internationally and domestically, must stop with us. We must teach our children that there is a better way. Given the pervasive American culture of glorifying and worshiping violence, warfare, death, and destruction, this important book will enable American parents to better educate our children about the absolute necessity for peace, justice, human rights, and the Rule of Law, both internationally and domestically. This book provides an extremely moving, compelling and irrefutable account of what happens to the young men and women of America when they go into the military, and also when they come home--if they do.

Home Front should be required reading in every American high school in order to counteract the outright pro-war propaganda, militarization, and military solicitation currently being inflicted upon our children by the Pentagon and the news media. It should also be required reading for beginning college courses in political science, history, and the other social sciences, which have an inherent bias in favor of power, domination, violence, and warfare. Finally, Home Front is a very powerful tool for those of us in the American Peace Movement to use in order to stop the Bush Jr. Administration's attempt to create an American hydrocarbon empire abroad in Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Colombia, West Africa, the Horn, and elsewhere by means of exploiting, manipulating, abusing and deceiving the members of U.S. armed forces to serve as pawns in their geopolitical pursuit of oil, natural gas, and corporate profits, while amassing personal family fortunes in the process. We need as many loyal, patriotic, humanitarian, and principled American citizens as possible to read this book, contemplate its lessons, and then act upon them: Stop these wars!

Professor Francis Anthony Boyle, Jr.

Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (voice) 217-244-1478 (fax) fboyle@law.uiuc.edu (personal comments only)