Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Quote of the day: Did ‘ahistorical Grecophilia’ persuade us to invade Iraq?

It’s kind of like hearing the neighbors arguing late at night — you can hear the shouts, but can’t quite make out the meaning. That is, I don’t quite understand the inside baseball here, but The American Conservative sets out to demolish neoconservative icon Leo Strauss: Strauss was at best a mediocre scholar whose thought ...

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
Wikimedia
Wikimedia
Wikimedia

It's kind of like hearing the neighbors arguing late at night -- you can hear the shouts, but can't quite make out the meaning. That is, I don't quite understand the inside baseball here, but The American Conservative sets out to demolish neoconservative icon Leo Strauss:

It’s kind of like hearing the neighbors arguing late at night — you can hear the shouts, but can’t quite make out the meaning. That is, I don’t quite understand the inside baseball here, but The American Conservative sets out to demolish neoconservative icon Leo Strauss:

Strauss was at best a mediocre scholar whose thought expressed a confused bipolarity between a very German and ahistorical Grecophilia on the one hand and a scattered, dogmatic, and unsophisticated apology for an American version of liberal universalism on the other. 

This is the equivalent of one soldier calling another "a lardass REMF fobbit liberal." Why do I mention this obscure intellectual squabble in this blog? Because there are those who contend that followers of Strauss at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the Bush administration were instrumental in getting the United States to invade Iraq.

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

More from Foreign Policy

Children are hooked up to IV drips on the stairs at a children's hospital in Beijing.
Children are hooked up to IV drips on the stairs at a children's hospital in Beijing.

Chinese Hospitals Are Housing Another Deadly Outbreak

Authorities are covering up the spread of antibiotic-resistant pneumonia.

Henry Kissinger during an interview in Washington in August 1980.
Henry Kissinger during an interview in Washington in August 1980.

Henry Kissinger, Colossus on the World Stage

The late statesman was a master of realpolitik—whom some regarded as a war criminal.

A Ukrainian soldier in helmet and fatigues holds a cell phone and looks up at the night sky as an explosion lights up the horizon behind him.
A Ukrainian soldier in helmet and fatigues holds a cell phone and looks up at the night sky as an explosion lights up the horizon behind him.

The West’s False Choice in Ukraine

The crossroads is not between war and compromise, but between victory and defeat.

Illustrated portraits of Reps. MIke Gallagher, right, and Raja Krishnamoorthi
Illustrated portraits of Reps. MIke Gallagher, right, and Raja Krishnamoorthi

The Masterminds

Washington wants to get tough on China, and the leaders of the House China Committee are in the driver’s seat.