Listening to chatter around the office and hearing “Neocon” repeated more than 20 times in a five minute span does more than annoy me, it proves to me that people take what they hear on the news and repeat it like parrots.
Me, being a straight shooting moderate conservative (who doesn’t necessarily share the same views of the entire party), has a responsibility to point a few things out.
- Neoconservatism has nothing to do with military aggression – This misconception leads people to believe that the first Bush’s pulling out of Iraq during the Gulf War was a bad idea. That is completely false. Bush’s policy of not pursuing the war and driving into Baghdad had more to do with trying to keep the stable nature in a trying climate. There was, in my mind, a moral obligation to stay as we had promised the Kurds protection and in the end they were rounded up and killed because of our reneging.
- Being conservative does not equate to neoconservatism – People can be conservative without being neoconservative, they are not the same. Please stop grouping them together.
Sorry for the rant, I just hear these things at work and my eyes roll back in my head because my brain cannot take it.