A very good summary of how hard-line neo-conservatives see the world â€” and especially Israelâ€™s place in it â€” can be found in an interview at the National Review Onlineâ€™s (NROâ€™s) website by Kathryn Jean Lopez of Caroline Glick, the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post who also serves as the Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at Frank Gaffneyâ€™s Center for Security Policy (CSP). What comes through the interview is how hard-liners like Glick see the relationship between the U.S. and Israel (â€the war against Israel and the war against the U.S. are one and the sameâ€); the Manichean nature of the world (â€freedomâ€ versus â€œthe forces of slavery and jihad,â€ â€œgoodâ€ versus â€œevilâ€); how they conflate different threats (â€al Qaeda and Iranâ€ as a single â€œenemyâ€ whose â€œultimate aim â€¦is global domination and the destruction of the U.S.â€); their contempt for Europe (its â€œrefusal to accept the true lessons of the Holocaustâ€); their Islamophobia (â€genocidal anti-Semitism â€¦has taken over the Islamic worldâ€); and their need for an â€œenemyâ€ to give order to their world (Obama â€œrefuses to acknowledge that there is such a thing as an â€˜enemyâ€™ in international affairs. And as a consequence, he is unable to understand what an ally is.â€) Glick is also furious with Condoleezza Rice and the State Department for their presumed influence over Bush and efforts to force Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. The title of the interview is â€œShackled Warrior: Israel in Bondage.â€

Itâ€™s worth repeating: Glick is the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at CSP, an organization whose board of advisers have included over the years, among many other senior Bush foreign-policy officials, the current deputy national security adviser charged with Middle East policy, Elliott Abrams. Now I donâ€™t think Abrams is quite as radical as Glick or Gaffney, but the association is not one heâ€™s ever renounced or distance himself from). Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy and protege of Richard Perle (another member of CSPâ€™s board of advisers), has rejoined the board, and John Lehman, an adviser to John McCain, has long served on it. (Gaffney, Abrams, Feith, Perle and Lehman all worked in the office of former Washington State Sen. Henry â€œScoopâ€ Jacksonâ€ at one time or another during the 1970s.)

There is one other document that I have cited before which I think summarizes the hard-line neo-con worldview particularly succinctly. Itâ€™s by Dennis Prager, a California talk-show host who has stood by John Hagee despite McCainâ€™s repudiation, and it can be found here.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.