*Ø* Leo Strauss, the neo-cons, and Iraq


In case you missed it:

Noble lies and perpetual war:
Leo Strauss, the neo-cons, and Iraq
By Danny Postel
OpenDemocracy.net
10/16/03

Are the ideas of the conservative political philosopher
Leo Strauss a shaping influence on the Bush administration’s
world outlook? Danny Postel interviews Shadia Drury – a
leading scholarly critic of Strauss – and asks her about the
connection between Plato’s dialogues, secrets and lies, and
the United States-led war in Iraq.



What was initially an anti-war argument is now a matter of public record. It is widely recognised that the Bush administration was not honest about the reasons it gave for invading Iraq.

Paul Wolfowitz, the influential United States deputy secretary of defense, has acknowledged that the evidence used to justify the war was “murky” and now says that weapons of mass destruction weren’t the crucial issue anyway (see the book by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Weapons of Mass Deception: the uses of propaganda in Bush’s war on Iraq (2003.)

By contrast, Shadia Drury, professor of political theory at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, argues that the use of deception and manipulation in current US policy flow directly from the doctrines of the political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973). His disciples include Paul Wolfowitz and other neo-conservatives who have driven much of the political agenda of the Bush administration.

If Shadia Drury is right, then American policy-makers exercise deception with greater coherence than their British allies in Tony Blair’s 10 Downing Street. In the UK, a public inquiry is currently underway into the death of the biological weapons expert David Kelly. A central theme is also whether the government deceived the public, as a BBC reporter suggested. [Emphasis added. -v]

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