Just who is William Kristol? He’s a Neocon, Chicken Hawk, TV Talking Head, Israeli Firster and unrepentant warmonger. I saw him speak at a pro-Iraq War rally, held on the nation’s Mall, in Washington, DC, on April 12, 2003, just weeks after the Bush-Cheney Gang unleashed the dogs of war in Iraq.

I was standing in front of a woman at that event and overheard her say of Kristol, “Oh, look how small he is!” The rally was headlined by the convicted felon, G. Gordon Liddy. It was kind of a surreal gig, since the comedian Ben Stein also surfaced on a huge movie screen. Stein wasn’t funny at all that day. He was out in LA, urging the flag-waving DC-based crowd, as did Kristol, to support the Iraq War. Kristol, however, didn’t want the U.S. invasion to stop at Iraq. He insisted in his inflammatory remarks that there were other Muslim countries that George W. Bush should also target for mayhem.

On another scary level- -and I know this sounds impossible- -it seems that Kristol’s mug is embedded in my TV set! He is ubiquitous! When he is on TV or cable, I quickly reach for my remote, but mostly to no avail. It’s like he has this uncanny ability to appear at once on all of the news/talk programs, particularly on Rupert Murdock’s “Foxy News” network. However, this isn’t all bad. If Kristol is hogging up the tube, it does mean that the Mother of all the Neocons, Richard Perle, is being denied air time.

Maybe, because of Kristol’s harsh rhetoric, you might suspect that he is going to be bigger in person, like say a Rush Limbaugh. Instead, Kristol fits more into the bantamweight mold of actor Mickey Rooney. (Oh, by the way, Limbaugh was supposed to also speak at the rally. Sadly, he was a no show. He probably couldn’t get the “medicine” he needed to get himself “up” to travel to DC from that luxurious, $24 million, oceanside Florida mansion of his. Too bad, his “Ditto Heads” were visibly disappointed.)

Nevertheless, the truly amazing thing about Kristol from my perspective is this: He never seems to demonstrate any real feelings or visible compassion for his subject matter. None! I have never seen him show any genuine human emotion. I suspect that if there were a machine that could accurately record the true feelings of a speaker, Kristol’s political rants would score zero, or even, possibly, in the minus-zero category.

America’s soldiers, who are serving and dying in Iraq appear to mean little or nothing to Kristol. They are just a “commodity” to be used by him, like our Republic is, to push forward his more wars in the Middle East agenda. It seems he doesn’t see the Iraqi people as human beings either, and forget about the Palestinians. The late, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir hatefully barked that the Palestinians “never existed.” Kristol acts the same way towards them. The next time he appears on TV, watch him very closely. He reminds me of “HAL,” the computer from the space film “2001,” with no soul, heart or feelings.

Then, there is this issue of a lack of media accountability. Kristol has been one of the most rabid cheerleaders for the U.S.-led war against Iraq. He wrongly claimed, like so many of his Neocon cronies, that Iraq had WMD, ties to al Qaeda, and that “exporting democracy” to it would be a walk in the park. Yet, he has never been called to account for his asinine opinions, that have put so many brave Americans and our fading national treasury at risk. It’s like all his idiocies go down a convenient Memory Hole. Kristol can say anything he wants. If he wrong, it’s forgotten! Sooner or later, he has to be right about something. It’s the law of averages. Then, when he is, I suppose he will be acclaimed as a prophet, and awarded a dubious journalism prize, (probably named after that Arab-bashing hack, A.M. Rosenthal). It is all just so painful and insidious.

The other day, Kristol had another predictable spiel in Murdock’s rag, the “NY Post,” (12/10/03). It was entitled, “How Dean Could Win.” Of course, Kristol doesn’t want Howard Dean, a Democrat, to win. He favors the reelection of Bush. His point was that unless the president is really “committed to victory” in Iraq, he could lose the next election to Dean.

Kristol was all in a tizzy about what he labeled, a secretary of state (read Colin Powell) that is looking for “diplomatic compromise,” and a secretary of defense (try Donald Rumsfeld), that is fixated “to an odd kind of muscle-flexing disengagement.” It also bothered the armchair warrior, that Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card, had made a recent statement about the Iraq War that indicated he, too, wasn’t quite bloodthirsty enough about pursuing the immoral conflict. Poor, frustrated zealot, Kristol!

In one of the ancient Greek colonies, if a lawmaker proposed a new law, a noose was tied around his neck. If the bill didn’t carry, the lawmaker was hanged (Will Durant’s “The LIfe of Greece.”) Regretfully, we don’t have a legal device such as that, which would apply to agitators, like Kristol. He schemed to get the U.S. into the Iraq War that wasn’t ever in our national interest. Iraq has already cost the taxpayers $89.7 billion (costofwar.com) and the lives of 453 of our finest troops (lunaville.org).

The Neocon Kristol seeks only endless wars for the U.S. It is long past the time for the people to tell him: Hit the road, warmonger!

© William Hughes 2003

William Hughes is the author of “Saying ‘No’ to the War Party” (Iuniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at: liamhughes-AT-mindspring.com.