Namely Oil

Now that we know George Bush and Karl Rove recently spent 45 minutes listening to Norman Podhoretz's views on Iran (kill! kill! kill!), it's worthwhile to remember this May 21, 2004 statement by Podhoretz's wife, author Midge Decter:

We're not in the middle east to bring sweetness and light to the whole world. That's nonsense. We're in the middle east because we and our European friends and our European non-friends depend on something that comes from the middle east, namely oil.

(You can listen to it yourself here at 35:55. Decter was appearing on KCRW's show To the Point.)

Bush gave Podhoretz the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2004. And he hired Elliot Abrams, Iran-contra criminal and Podhoretz and Decter's son-in-law, for his National Security Council staff. (Delightfully, Abrams' title is "Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy." I understand the position was originally called Deputy National Security Adviser for Sweetness and Light.)

So Bush really digs this family. How strange that he loves hanging around with a clan whose matriarch he disagrees with so fundamentally.

BONUS: Just before her oil comment, Midge Decter said this about another guest who referred to neoconservatives as "Jacobins":

I'm with Bill Kristol here. You can put a name on it and make it a very unpleasant name. That's not the way to conduct an argument.

Yes, there's nothing neoconservatives hate more than the use of name-calling in political arguments. It's their absolute refusal to engage in it themselves that gives them their well-deserved reputation for intellectual integrity.