Josh Hammer’s Neocon Lite Playbook

During the recent Iran war frenzy, Josh Hammer, a self-styled conservative commentator and Newsweek senior editor-at-large, attempted to smear The American Conservative via X, which opened a window to his own agenda. His June 12, 2025, post sneers,  “It is one of the great ironies of our contemporary media landscape that the outlet calling itself the ‘American Conservative’ is more pro-Iran and pro-Muslim Brotherhood than any Arab country not named Qatar.”

It’s clear the neoconservative movement, reeling from embarrassing defeats in public opinion, has been pivoting towards a rebrand. Seeking to salvage relevance, they’ve enlisted compliant voices like Hammer to seduce America First conservatives to their pro-war project. They talk about the failure of past adventures abroad as the honey for young Americans looking homeward, with the goal of keeping them tethered to Israel’s misadventures in the Middle East. The American Conservative, also known as TAC to its friends and associates, has had a consistent record of warning against the forever wars of the 21st century and calling out senseless bloodshed. TAC was founded in 2002 with the intention of providing a voice for those against the upcoming Iraq catastrophe. The inaugural editorial promoted realism and restraint. Subsequent articles decried the arguments for the 2003 Iraq war. TAC also spoke against the continuation of the Afghanistan War, the Syrian Civil War, American participation in the bombing of Yemen which commenced in 2015, and the destruction of Libya.

Hammer’s youth affords him some distance from previous boomer-supported neoconservative failures and allows him, with little cost, occasionally to criticize the Iraq and Afghanistan disasters in order to claim the wars du jour, such as Israel’s escalating clash with Iran, are different and somehow in America’s interest. This whole effort is designed to capture younger thinkers to the Israel-First fold.

The boomers, who have been brainwashed for decades, are left with commentators such as Mark Levin who use traditional neocon rhetoric to keep them anchored to Israel-First foreign policies. 

Hammer’s name-calling targets TAC’s skepticism toward Israel’s recent strike on Iran, followed by Trump’s military escalation. While the TAC family has diverse opinions, a number of the writers have advocated restraint and a peaceful modus vivendi with Iran—stabilizing the region and benefiting American safety and markets—over costly entanglement. Hammer, though, wants America to hold Israel’s hand as it attacks the only large country standing in the way of Israel becoming the uncontested regional hegemon. This chaos could become extremely dangerous to U.S. interests and to what is left of its prestige. If a wider war broke out in the Middle East tinderbox, in addition to the horrific death and destruction, the result could have quick and terrible negative impacts on the U.S. and the rest of the world. Especially Israel. Imagine $10 or more per gallon gasoline and how that would play havoc with the West and United States’ economies? Not to mention the risks to the tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel scattered about the region as sitting duck trip wires for drawing the U.S. into a catastrophic war.

If a regional war broke out, anger stoked by decades of interventions, proxy wars, and coups could also cause unforeseen disastrous instability for some governments which are “our friends” in the region. What if some of the Gulf monarchies suffered the same fate as Syria or Libya? How would that serve the U.S. or world’s interests?

Hammer’s “pro-Iran and pro-Muslim Brotherhood” charge collapses under scrutiny. TAC does not cheer on Tehran or the Brotherhood; we’re opposing starvation, genocide, assassination, terrorism, and unnecessary wars, a stance rooted in “Thou shalt not kill.”

Hammer’s tough-on-Hamas rhetoric conveniently skips Israel’s role in nurturing the group. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, said to Israeli media in 2015 that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is a “liability” and Hamas an “asset” due to its terrorist status limiting Palestinian legitimacy. Per Haaretz, Netanyahu in a 2019 Likud meeting suggested supporting Hamas in Gaza prevents a unified Palestinian state—a policy documented by the Times of Israel in 2023 as dating to the 1980s, when Israel cultivated Hamas from a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot. Most Gazans, born after the 2006 election, have known only Hamas rule, sustained by U.S. and Israeli backing. Without this, attacks like October 7, 2023, might not have occurred. The Palestinian Authority, with relative moderates, secularists, and Christians, was a less useful foil—more Mr. Rogers than a “rabid dog”—yet Israel saw it as a liability in public opinion. Why? A controlled vicious enemy like Hamas justifies perpetual action. How convenient.

Hammer’s failed smear comes from the tired and shabby warmonger playbook: oppose Vietnam, you’re a Viet Cong commie; resist Iraq, an Al Qaeda enabler; decry Syria’s slaughter by U.S.- and Israel-backed terror groups—where leaders like former al Qaeda chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham hail from—you’re an Assad stooge. Seek peace with nuclear-armed Russia? You’re a Putin stooge. It is a vapid attempt to silence dissent, and his “irony” claim about Qatar falls flat. Qatar is in bed with Israel as the latter uses the former to fund Hamas. 

TAC’s position here isn’t pro-anyone—it’s anti-war. TAC has a track record of calling out bloodshed and destruction. TAC is pro-innocent life and does not advocate for killing, starving, and displacing people. We do not believe that some lives have a superior claim to exist than others. 

In contrast, the track record at Newsweek, where Hammer holds court, is a catalog of catastrophe. In 2003, it hyped Iraq’s alleged WMDs, a claim that led to a destabilized region and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. Its 2011 cheer for Libya’s NATO intervention helped create the post-Gaddafi failed state, now a UN metric. Starting 2011 the U.S. supported the Syrian insurgency, which led to the rise of ISIS and caused more than 500,000 deaths. The Arab Spring was framed as a flowering of democracy, yet birthed civil wars and coups. The 20-year catastrophic intervention in Afghanistan, backed by Newsweek even into 2023, collapsed in 11 days with a $2 trillion tab and many thousands killed. TAC was against the wars while Newsweek supported the disasters.

Hammer’s push for U.S. involvement in Israel’s Iran misadventure, despite peaceful accommodation as a saner path, serves a deep state thriving on Middle East chaos—coups like 1953 in Iran, proxy wars and regime change got America into our inflationary, exhausted, and cynical quagmire. Meanwhile, support for Israel’s Gazan atrocities and Iran interventions will not result in Israel’s regional dominance but will endanger its innocents amid the fire of suffering around it. TAC will continue to decry this war fever with steady and clear-headed analysis.

“Thou shalt not kill” will outlast the warmongers’ faith in death, destruction, and name-calling.

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