ABSTRACT
With the exception of Bloom, who died in 1992, all of the Straussians discussed here intervened in and around the political establishment following the 9/11 attacks in ways that explicitly promoted the policy aim of invading Iraq. While the activities of many members of the broader neoconservative movement who occupied positions at the heart of the foreign policy establishment have been well documented (Woodward 2002; Mann 2004; Solomon 2007), the interventions of these Straussians in the realms of intelligence production, think tanks and the media have been less thoroughly explored in International Relations (IR) or related disciplines. It will be argued here that the systematic generation and dissemination of particular ideas and opinions occupies a central place in the Straussian interventions in these spheres, and that this corresponds closely to Strauss’s political thought. The Straussians’ interventions can be read as corresponding to the imperative to offset the supposedly pernicious, relativising consequences of the abyss by constructing totalising narratives which provide points of reference from which a raison d’être might be inferred for society and its citizens. The friend/enemy binary and the notion of the tyrannous regime can be seen to be central to the Straussian interventions in these three policy-oriented spheres, and the logic of the dominance of the reason of the strongest is borne out in their successful domination of foreign policy debates across these three realms. It will be shown in this chapter that these Straussians enacted a consistent and mutually reinforcing series of interventions such that their preconceived policy aim of the invasion of Iraq might be realised. It does not, of course, claim that these Straussians were the only individuals intent on this course of action, but rather that their interventions reflect a distinctively Straussian range of terminologies, preoccupations and methodological presuppositions, which amount to an important layer of analysis in understanding how the invasion of Iraq became possible.
