Glenn Greenwald points out that an inordinate number of neocons didn’t earn their warmongering positions of power.  Rather, they were put their by their parents: 

It really is endlessly striking — and revealing — just how nepotistic the neoconservative tough-guy faction is…

[O]ur neoconservative tough guys [are] the very opposite of those virtues they claim to embody. Their whole movement is based on endless sermons about warrior virtues, self-reliance, toughness, courage and the like — and yet a huge bulk of them, and virtually all of the most influential ones, never leave the safe and protective sides of their moms and dads.

They faithfully follow in their footprints without wavering — not only having their careers built for them by their parents and their parents’ friends but also never deviating even slightly from the extremist political views that their parents raised them to spout. They are coddled, protected, sheltered recipients of endless nepotistic, parental largesse who never tire of sermonizing to the world about the necessities of self-sufficiency and meritocracies and whose entire world-view is driven by the insatiable quest to send other people off to one war after the next — all while they insist to the world how their war advocacy shows how tough, resolute, and willful they are, self-glorifying announcements they make from positions arranged for them by their moms and dads.