Jim Lobe, "Neoconservatives," and War on Iran

Jim Lobe has probably devoted most of his time for the past decade “exposing” what he takes to be the enormous and malevolent influence of “neoconservatives” on American foreign policy.  And yet he doesn’t have the time to listen to what some of us say.  Thus, in his latest sortie, warning that the “neocons” are beating the drums for war with Iran, he writes:

Since the Jun. 12, 2009 disputed elections and the emergence of the opposition Green Movement in Iran, a few neo- conservatives, notably Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Michael Ledeen of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), have argued that a military attack could prove counter-productive by rallying an otherwise discontented – and possibly rebellious – population behind the regime.

I don’t believe that, and I don’t believe I ever wrote or said it.  I really can’t imagine that those Iranians who are risking their careers, their limited freedoms and all too often their lives, will rally round the hated regime when somebody else attacks that very regime.

My opposition to a military attack on Iran is quite different.  I oppose it because I think it is the wrong way to destroy the regime.  I favor supporting the democratic revolutionaries, which no Western country has done, and which reactionaries like Jim Lobe either oppose or ignore.  I support the Iranian people against the regime, and I want my government to do the same.  I said that throughout the Bush years–not, as Mr. Lobe would have it, only since the fraudulent Iranian “elections” last June–and I am still saying it in the Obama years.

The Lobes of this world pretend they are “progressives,” but they are the opposite.   It’s intuitively obvious–isn’t it?–that such folks are simply defending a tyrannical status quo, and are therefore reactionary and counterrevolutionary.  True progressives support freedom.

Since he’s so taken with the subject, here’s a question for Jim Lobe:  How did it happen that advocates of democratic revolution are called “conservatives,”  while defenders of the oppressive status quo call themselves “progressives?”  Isn’t it backwards?