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Chapter 10. Platonism in High Places: Leo Strauss, George W. Bush and the Response to 9/11
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153 Platonism in High Places Various articles in a number of reputable newspapers, magazines and journals—including the The New York Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, and Harpers—have made the surprising claim that the response of the Bush White House to the events of 9/11 is deeply connected to the thought of Leo Strauss.1 On the face of it, Leo Strauss would seem to be an unlikely figure to be linked with the policies and practices of the Bush White House. Born in 1899 into a fairly observant Jewish family in Germany , Strauss studied philosophy at the University of Marburg and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg. He became a researcher at the Academy for Jewish Research in Berlin, and at the time the Nazis came to power, he was in France on a research fellowship. The following year, he moved to England. In 1937, he came to the United States, eventually securing a tenured position at the New School for Social Research in New York City. In 1949, Strauss began two decades of teaching in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He retired as an emeritus professor in 1968 but continued teaching and giving guest lectures at several universities until his death in 1973.2 Strauss spent his career writing very difficult, nuanced interpretations of works from the history of political thought, and he is noted for sNeil G. Robertson Leo Strauss, George W. Bush and the Response to 9/11 Chapter 10 Meckler.ClassicalAntiquity 5/25/06 12:07 PM Page 153 154 Platonism in High Places demanding a return to the ancients and, especially, to the thought of Plato. That George W. Bush would consult the writings of Strauss or Plato—neither of whom said a great deal about international affairs or anything about Islamic terrorism—in order to sort out how to respond to the events of September 11, 2001, seems to require a suspension of disbelief usually called upon only by the annals of pulp fiction. Yet many important and established organs of the media have drawn a very strong connection between Leo Strauss and the Bush White House. The explanation for this unlikely claim lies in the mediating role of what has been called neo-conservatism. The neo-conservatives are a loosely connected movement—or, as the “godfather” of neo-conservatism , Irving Kristol (born 1920), prefers, “persuasion”—that has been seen as very influential in formulating the White House’s response to 9/11. In turn, the argument suggests, the neo-conservatives have been influenced by the thought of Leo Strauss; indeed, a number are former students of Strauss, or students of students of Strauss, and so are often described as Straussians. Both terms, neo-conservative and Straussian, are contentious and used very loosely, often as terms of abuse. However, while there are dangers in using these labels, often resisted by those to whom they are applied, they can be useful as ways of characterizing the “persuasion,” and identifying a fairly limited, and certainly not homogeneous , group of intellectuals and government officials who have various overlapping intellectual and personal ties to one another. Among the most prominent and influential of those identified as “neoconservative ” during George W. Bush’s first term and who became involved in the response to 9/11, were Paul Wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense at the time); Lewis Libby (vice president’s chief of staff); Abram Shulsky (pentagon’s office of special plans); Richard Perle (pentagon policy board); Douglas Feith (undersecretary of defense for policy); Stephen Cambone (undersecretary of defense for intelligence); John Bolton (state department); David Wurmser (state department); Eliot Cohen (defense policy board); and Elliot Abrams (national security council). The claim of those who see a Straussian conspiracy or a neo-con “cabal” at work in the formulation of the response to 9/11 in general and in the decision to go to war in Iraq, in particular, is that these individuals, operating in the context of support from friendly think tanks and institutes on the one hand, and the right wing media, especially that owned by Rupert Murdoch, on the other, were able to “hijack” the Bush White House foreign policy to fulfill their own ideological (Strauss-inspired) objectives.3 Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke make this claim: The situation of unending war in which we find ourselves results in large part from the fact that the policies adopted after 9/11, the iniMeckler .ClassicalAntiquity 5...