To better understand why the events of September 11, 2001 took place... to better understand the pseudo-war on terror... to better understand the dangerous nature of Neoconservatism... to better understand the reasons behind the numerous destructive wars the American empire has been fighting since the disappearance of the Soviet Union... to better understand why the United States maintains about one thousand military bases around the world... to better understand the pathology behind the US war machine... to better understand why Washington spends trillions of dollars on wars, weapons procurement and subversive activities around the world while one in six Americans live in poverty and the nation's 1960s era infrastructure falls apart... to better understand the evil character of policymakers in highest offices of the US government - we must better understand the Project For The New American Century!
Conceived by a cabal of influential individuals throughout the United States, the Project For The New American Century, or PNAC, has been the geostrategic compass guiding America's foreign policies in the post-Soviet years. PNAC, incidentally, is the brainchild of the very influential and prestigious neoconservative think thank known as the Heritage Foundation. In the opinion of many observers, this bloodthirsty gang of corrupt criminals hellbent on securing global primacy for the United States are somehow connected to the terrible events of September 11, 2001.
Political turmoils we are currently seeing take place around the world can be better understood by understanding the neoconservative movement in the United States as well as its affiliates worldwide. The so-called "war on terrorism" is perhaps one of the biggest and most elaborate deceptions ever devised by a government. The wars and the destruction we see taking place around the world today have nothing to do with fighting terrorism, protecting America, delivering freedom or promoting democracy. The illegal aggression against Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and the on-going aggression against Russia, Syria and Iran were planned many years ago.
With the Soviet Union relegated to the pages of history, strategic planners in Washington came to the sudden realization that they were now in fact a global hyperpower. No power in world history had every possessed the amount of power the American empire has had in our times. Washington's military might, its financial might, its economic might, its political reach and, more importantly, its cultural influence on the world is truly unprecedented. With the world quite literally in their hands, various circles within Washington began to plan; and the plan was about preservation of its hegemonic status - as well as the preservation of the Zionist state - in the new century. The following is essentially what they have been hoping to accomplish before another superpower emerges to challenge them:
Please watch the provided documentaries titled The New American Century (2009) and the BBC produced The Power of Nightmares (2004) in their entirety because they are perhaps the best researched works on PNAC and Neoconservatism to date. Both films, however, have a couple of (albeit major) flaws. For one, they seem to make the naive (perhaps calculated) assumption that Neconservatives and the Republican party in America have been the primary warmongers in Washington aggressively pursuing a global empire. In fact, there are competing imperial interests in Washington; some are subtle and diplomatically nuanced and some are just aggressive. These interests, nevertheless, formulate the political policies that both parties in Washington are expected to pursue on the global stage. Moreover, both films avid addressing very prominent Jewish factor in its presentations of the neoconservative movement in America.
The supposition that with Bush's neoconservatives gone their globalist ambitions are gone as well is simply put, false. When it c0mes to political policy, especially foreign policy, there are no major differences between the two political parties in the United States. This is simply because the well-dressed idiots we regularly see on television vying for public votes do not make political policy in Washington. The Council on Foreign Relations, the Department of Defense, the Heritage Foundation, the Trilateral Commission, the NSA, the CIA, AIPAC, Federal Reserve, military industrial complex, these are just some of the immensely powerful special interest groups that are the imperial driving force in Washington today - regardless of which political party has been given the luxury of siting in the White House.
The dreaded Iron Curtain was not yet fully down when the American empire kicked into high gear in the Middle East in 1990. This is also about the time when the empire started its campaign to isolate and weaken the newly forming Russian Federation by expanding NATO into eastern Europe and by fueling the Islamic insurgency in the north Caucasus. With Democrats in office between 1992-2000 the same campaign (perhaps less intense) was pursued in Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. Today, with the brown skinned "peace" president in office, we see the American empire's global campaigns continuing in full force.
Washington has been responsible for untold misery around the world for nearly a century, especially in the time period since the defeat of National Socialism in Europe and the onset of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. In fact, as brutal as the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was during the 1980s, it was mere child's play compared to what Washington and friends have done in places like Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya during the past twenty years. With nations like Russia and China still not fully capable of standing up to the Western alliance's bloody global rampage, unfortunately we will see the victimization of more nations around the world before this is all over. When the final chapter about the American empire and the Western alliance is written one day (hopefully this will happen within our lifetimes), the world will finally wake-up and begin lamenting the three major catastrophes of the twentieth century that got the global community to where it is today - destruction of the Russian empire in 1918, the defeat of National Socialism in 1945 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Arevordi
September, 2011
Conceived by a cabal of influential individuals throughout the United States, the Project For The New American Century, or PNAC, has been the geostrategic compass guiding America's foreign policies in the post-Soviet years. PNAC, incidentally, is the brainchild of the very influential and prestigious neoconservative think thank known as the Heritage Foundation. In the opinion of many observers, this bloodthirsty gang of corrupt criminals hellbent on securing global primacy for the United States are somehow connected to the terrible events of September 11, 2001.
Political turmoils we are currently seeing take place around the world can be better understood by understanding the neoconservative movement in the United States as well as its affiliates worldwide. The so-called "war on terrorism" is perhaps one of the biggest and most elaborate deceptions ever devised by a government. The wars and the destruction we see taking place around the world today have nothing to do with fighting terrorism, protecting America, delivering freedom or promoting democracy. The illegal aggression against Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and the on-going aggression against Russia, Syria and Iran were planned many years ago.
With the Soviet Union relegated to the pages of history, strategic planners in Washington came to the sudden realization that they were now in fact a global hyperpower. No power in world history had every possessed the amount of power the American empire has had in our times. Washington's military might, its financial might, its economic might, its political reach and, more importantly, its cultural influence on the world is truly unprecedented. With the world quite literally in their hands, various circles within Washington began to plan; and the plan was about preservation of its hegemonic status - as well as the preservation of the Zionist state - in the new century. The following is essentially what they have been hoping to accomplish before another superpower emerges to challenge them:
- Secure the exploitation of Central Asian, Middle Eastern and African energy resources at a time when similar assets under direct Western control is depleting
- Secure the primacy of the US Dollar in global trade through military interventions
- Stop the potential rise of Iran as a regional power challenging Western and Israeli aspirations
- Surround and contain Russia
- Secure China's energy dependency
- Protect the Zionist State from regional enemies
- Provided government connected corporations, oil companies, military contractors, affiliated construction firms with multi-billion dollar contracts
- Protect the Middle Eastern region's CIA-backed Sunni Arab dictatorships/kingdoms from their constituency
- Maintain American empire's as well as its parasites Britain's and Israel's dominance within the 21st century
Please watch the provided documentaries titled The New American Century (2009) and the BBC produced The Power of Nightmares (2004) in their entirety because they are perhaps the best researched works on PNAC and Neoconservatism to date. Both films, however, have a couple of (albeit major) flaws. For one, they seem to make the naive (perhaps calculated) assumption that Neconservatives and the Republican party in America have been the primary warmongers in Washington aggressively pursuing a global empire. In fact, there are competing imperial interests in Washington; some are subtle and diplomatically nuanced and some are just aggressive. These interests, nevertheless, formulate the political policies that both parties in Washington are expected to pursue on the global stage. Moreover, both films avid addressing very prominent Jewish factor in its presentations of the neoconservative movement in America.
The supposition that with Bush's neoconservatives gone their globalist ambitions are gone as well is simply put, false. When it c0mes to political policy, especially foreign policy, there are no major differences between the two political parties in the United States. This is simply because the well-dressed idiots we regularly see on television vying for public votes do not make political policy in Washington. The Council on Foreign Relations, the Department of Defense, the Heritage Foundation, the Trilateral Commission, the NSA, the CIA, AIPAC, Federal Reserve, military industrial complex, these are just some of the immensely powerful special interest groups that are the imperial driving force in Washington today - regardless of which political party has been given the luxury of siting in the White House.
The dreaded Iron Curtain was not yet fully down when the American empire kicked into high gear in the Middle East in 1990. This is also about the time when the empire started its campaign to isolate and weaken the newly forming Russian Federation by expanding NATO into eastern Europe and by fueling the Islamic insurgency in the north Caucasus. With Democrats in office between 1992-2000 the same campaign (perhaps less intense) was pursued in Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. Today, with the brown skinned "peace" president in office, we see the American empire's global campaigns continuing in full force.
Washington has been responsible for untold misery around the world for nearly a century, especially in the time period since the defeat of National Socialism in Europe and the onset of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. In fact, as brutal as the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was during the 1980s, it was mere child's play compared to what Washington and friends have done in places like Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya during the past twenty years. With nations like Russia and China still not fully capable of standing up to the Western alliance's bloody global rampage, unfortunately we will see the victimization of more nations around the world before this is all over. When the final chapter about the American empire and the Western alliance is written one day (hopefully this will happen within our lifetimes), the world will finally wake-up and begin lamenting the three major catastrophes of the twentieth century that got the global community to where it is today - destruction of the Russian empire in 1918, the defeat of National Socialism in 1945 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Arevordi
September, 2011
***
The New American Century: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fk6qkHs0oM
The Power of Nightmares (part 1): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGo1DqmfHjY
The Power of Nightmares (part 2): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0kNNqZk3mg&feature=relmfu
The Power of Nightmares (part 3): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qATc5jRbVOA&feature=relmfu
PNAC Official Website: http://www.newamericancentury.org/
The Heritage Foundation: http://www.heritage.org/
***
Partial list of people associated with the Project For The New American Century
People are identified as being connected to the PNAC because either they are listed on the organisation’s web site, or their names appear as authors/contributors on official PNAC documents. Information current to Dec. 2004.
Abramowitz, Morton - Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation.
Abrams, Elliot - National Security Council – top advisor on the Middle East. Alumnus of the Heritage Foundation. History: As Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs under Reagan, was responsible for covering up war crimes committed by the U.S. backed Contras. Was charged in connection with the Iran-Contra affair, and pled to lesser charges. Was later pardoned by Bush Sr. The British media reported Elliot was behind the attempted Chavez coup in Venezuela.
Allen, Richard V. - member: National Security Advisory Board, and the Defense Policy Board. President of the Richard V. Allen Company (consulting firm). Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute. History: founding chairman for the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. Founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger. Former board member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Assistant to the President for National Security affairs during the Reagan administration, but forced from office over suspected financial misconduct.
Anderson, Mark A. - unable to verify biographical information from multiple sources (other than PNAC involvement).
Armitage, Richard - Deputy Secretary of State. History: Former board member of CACI, the private military contractor whose employees were responsible for torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration. Named by the government as one of the people guilty of supplying weapons in the Iran Contra Affair, but never charged.
Au, Andrew Y. - unable to verify biographical information from multiple sources (other than PNAC involvement).
Bang-Jensen, Nina - executive director of the Coalition for International Justice.
Bao-Lord, Bette - member of the Council on Foreign Relations (director until 2003). Chairman of Freedom House. Wife of ex-ambassador to China Winston Lord, who is Co-chairman of the International Rescue Committee.
Barnett, Roger - professor at the Naval War College (a government facility). History: Vice President of the National Institute for Public Policy. Professor at Georgetown University.
Bauer, Gary – founder of the Campaign for Working Families, president of American Values. History: past president of the Family Research Council. Under Secretary of Education in the Reagan administration.
Bennet, William J. – co-director of Empower America, co-director of Partnership for a Drug-Free America, Distinguished Fellow of the Heritage Foundation. Writer.
History: Secretary of Education under Reagan.
History: Secretary of Education under Reagan.
Bergner, Jeffrey - study group member of the Commission on National Security 21st Century. Member of the board of trustees for the Hudson Institute, and the Asia Foundation. His lobbying company represents a number of weapons contractors, among other major corporations. History: Staff Director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Reagan administration.
Bernstein, Alvin - unable to verify biographical information from multiple sources (other than PNAC involvement).
Bernstein, Robert L. - Professor at the National Defense University (a government facility). History: worked at the Naval War College (government facility), and in the Defense Department.
Biddle, George - member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Senior Vice President of the International Rescue Committee (allegedly a relief organisation).
Bolton, John R. - Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. History: Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute. Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs for the Department of State under Bush Sr. Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice under Reagan.
Boot, Max - Senior Fellow of the National Security Studies. Contributing Editor for the Weekly Standard. History: editor of the Wall Street Journal, writer and editor for the Christian Science Monitor.
Bork, Ellen – Deputy Director of the PNAC. History: Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund.
Boschwitz, Rudy - Presidential appointee to the Holocaust Memorial Council. One of the top fund-raisers for Bush Jr. in 2000. Founder of Home Valu Inc. Minnesota Senator (1978-1991).
Buckley, William F. Jr. - owner of National Review magazine. History: CIA agent in the Fifties. Hosted the television show Firing Line.
Bush, Jeb – Governor of Florida. History: Banned convicted felons from voting in the 2000 presidential election, using an extremely inaccurate system to remove voting rights; allowed ineligible absentee ballots to be counted.
Cambone, Stephen A. - Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Special Assistant to the Secretary and Director for Program Analysis and Evaluation – Department of Defense. History: Special Assistant to Donald Rumsfeld just prior to current appointments. Director in the Defense Department during the Bush Sr. administration. Past deputy director in SRS Technologies (Defense contractor).
Carlucci, Frank - Chairman Emeritus of the Carlyle Group, and Nortel Networks. Member of the board of United Defense Inc. Considered a protégé of D. Rumsfeld. History: Chairman of the Carlyle Group (1993-2000). Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration. Deputy Director in the CIA. CIA agent. Accused of being behind the assassination of Congo Prime Minister Lumumba during the Sixties, but never charged.
Cheney, Dick – Vice President. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Employee(?) of Halliburton – draws a one million dollar per year salary. History: worked for D. Rumsfeld in 1969. Presidential assistant to Gerald Ford. Secretary of Defense for Bush Sr. Halliburton CEO 1995 to 2000; gains the company 3.8 billion dollars in federal contracts and guaranteed loans. Upon becoming Vice President, Halliburton receives billions of dollars in Iraq contracts not tendered to other companies. Behind installing Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, and Elliot Abrams into their current positions in government. Wife Lynne is a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. Daughter Elizabeth is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs.
Clemons, Steven C. - Executive Vice President of the New America Foundation.
Cohen, Eliot A. - professor at Johns Hopkins University. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. History: professor at the Naval War College. Previously worked for D. Rumsfeld.
Cropsey, Seth - Director of the International Broadcasting Bureau. History: Director in the Heritage Foundation. Visiting Fellow in the American Enterprise Institute. Assistant Editor of the Public Interest (1976-77). Hudson Institute researcher. Deputy Under Secretary in the Department of the Navy during the Reagan administration.
DeConcini, Dennis Webster - Chairman of the Board of Directors for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. History: eighteen years as Senator from Arizona. Member of the Balkan Action Committee.
Dale, Helle - Director in the Heritage Foundation.
Decter, Midge – Writer. Heritage Foundation director. Wife of Norman Podhoretz. Claims to worship Donald Rumsfeld, and has written a book for Rumsfeld admirers.
Dobriansky, Paula - Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs. History: Senior Vice President (Washington office) of the Council on Foreign Relations prior to appointment. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs for the Department of State in the Reagan administration.
Donnelly, Thomas – Deputy Executive Director of the PNAC. History: Director of Strategic Communication and Initiatives for Lockheed Martin Corp. (weapons contractor).
Eberstadt, Nicholas - consultant for the State Department, consultant for the Bureau of the Census. Member of the American Enterprise Institute.
Edgar, Robert (Rev. Dr.) - General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ. Ordained as an United Methodist. Former Congressman.
Epstein, David - employee at the Office of Secretary of Defense – Net Assessment.
Etzioni, Amitai - founder of the Communitarian Network, and editor of their magazine. Was Senior Advisor to the White House on Domestic Affairs during the Carter administration.
Fautua, David - unable to verify biographical information from multiple sources (other than PNAC involvement).
Feulner, Edwin J. Jr. - Heritage Foundation. History: advisor to President Reagan.
Forbes, Steve – President, CEO, and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine. History: campaigned twice for the Republican nomination for president. Directed the dissemination of propaganda on Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty during both the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations.
Fradkin, Hillel - member of the Advisory Committee on International Education – Department of Education. Part of Benador Associates, a publicity firm handling clients such as PNAC members R. Perle, J. Woolsey, F. Gaffney, C. Krauthammer, and M. Boot. History: Fellow in the American Enterprise Institute prior to government appointment.
Friedberg, Aaron - Vice President’s Deputy National Security Advisor. History: Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. Consultant for the CIA.
Fukuyama, Francis - President’s Council on Bioethics. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Gaffney, Frank – President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, Washington Times columnist, brother of Devon Gaffney-Cross. History: worked for Richard Perle during the Reagan administration.
Gaffney-Cross, Devon - member of the Defense Policy Board (Pentagon). Member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Sister of Frank Gaffney.
Gejdenson, Sam - owns Sam Gejdenson International. Congressman (D) 1981 - 2000.
Gerecht, Reuel Marc – Senior Fellow of the PNAC, Resident Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.
History: former CIA agent (1985 – 1994). CBS News consultant on Afghanistan.
History: former CIA agent (1985 – 1994). CBS News consultant on Afghanistan.
Goldman, Merle - Adjunct Professor for the Foreign Service Institute of the State Department.
Goure, Daniel - consultant for the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy. Vice President of the Lexington Institute. Was a Study Team Leader for the Institute of Peace (1990-91).
Halperin, Morton H. - director for the Council on Foreign Relations, and for the Open Society Institute.
Hefferman, John - unable to verify biographical information from multiple sources (other than PNAC involvement).
Hooper, James R. - Executive Director of the Balkan Action Council.
Ikle, Fred C. – Distinguished Scholar for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. History: Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Reagan administration.
Jackson, Bruce – President of the Project on Transitional Democracies. President of the Committee on NATO. Member: Council on Foreign Relations, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Board of Advisors for the Center for Security Policy. History: Director of Strategic Planning for Lockheed Martin Corp. (weapons contractor). Worked for Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Dick Cheney during the eighties.
Joyce, Michael S. - founder of Americans for Community and Faith-Centered Enterprise, an organisation created to help push through Bush Jr.’s “Faith-Based Initiative”. Member of the Research Council of America. Was part of the Presidential Transition Team for Reagan.
Kagan, Donald – Hillhouse Professor of History and Classics at Yale University. Writer. Father of Frederick and Robert Kagan.
Kagan, Frederick - Professor of military history at West Point. History: co-wrote, with his father Donald and other PNAC contributors, “While America Sleeps”.
Kagan, Robert - co-founder of the PNAC. Contributing Editor for the Weekly Standard and the New Republic; columnist for the Washington Post. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Husband of Victoria Nuland, Deputy National Security Advisor to the Vice President. History: Deputy in the Department of State under Elliot Abrams during the Reagan administration.
Kampelman, Max M. - Lawyer. Member of the Board of Trustees for Freedom House. Member of the Board of Advisors for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
Karatnycky, Adrian - member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Freedom House. History: worked for the New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Times.
Kemble, Penn - Department of State – Head, Eminent Persons Group, Sudan Slavery Commission. Senior Fellow in Freedom House.
Kennedy, Craig - President of the German Marshall Fund.
Khalilzad, Zalmay - Ambassador to Afghanistan, Special Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan, and Special Presidential Envoy to the Free Iraqis. History: Senior Director of the National Security Council (2001 – 2003). Accused by candidates in the Afghan elections of arranging President Hamid Karzai’s victory. Worked for Paul Wolfowitz at the State Department in 1984 – 1985. Advisor to Unocal for their proposed gas pipeline project through Afghanistan (1997).
Killebrew, Robert B. - Colonel (retired) History: Security Strategies study member for PNAC. Consultant to a variety of army and private institute military projects.
Kirkpatrick, Jeane - on the executive committee of Freedom House, and the board of advisors of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Committee on the Present Danger. Former U.S. Ambassador. Member of the National Security Council under Reagan.
Koh, Harold Hongju - Dean of Yale. History: Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the Clinton administration.
Kovler, Peter - Nixon Center Advisory Council. Balkans Action Committee.
Krauthammer, Charles - Presidential appointee to the President’s Council On Bioethics. Columnist for the Washington Post. Contributing Editor for the New Republic, and the Weekly Standard. Member of the Editorial Board for the National Interest, and the Public Interest.
Kristol, William - co-founder of the PNAC. Columnist for (and co-founder of) the Weekly Standard. History: Chief of Staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, Secretary of Education Chief of Staff under William Bennett during the Reagan administration.
Lagon, Mark P. - Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. History: fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. Deputy Director of the House Republican Committee. Senior advisor to Jeane Kirkpatrick - American Enterprise Institute.
Lasswell, James - Employee of GAMA Corporation (war games, military training via software).
Lehrman, Lewis E. - on the Board of Trustees for the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute. President and co-founder of the Citizens for America.
Libby, I. Lewis - Assistant to the President, and Chief of Staff to the Vice President. History: after graduating law school, went to work for Paul Wolfowitz (1981 - 1985) at the State Department. Hired again by Wolfowitz in 1989, this time at the Pentagon.
Lindberg, Tod - Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute. Editor of Policy Review journal.
Mack, Connie III - Congressman for Florida. Previously served in the Florida House of Representatives (2000 - 2003).
Maletz, Christopher – Assistant Director of the PNAC.
Markey, Mary Beth - Executive Director for the International Campaign for Tibet. Worked in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee prior to 1996.
Martinage, Robert - consultant for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
McKivergan, Daniel – Deputy Director of the PNAC. History: research director for The Weekly Standard (1995 – 1997). Legislative director for Senator John McCain (2000), and for Congressman Dan Miller (1997).
Meese, Edwin III - Heritage Foundation. History: Attorney General during the Reagan administration. Investigated for his involvement in the Iraq Bechtel pipeline deal (which also involved D. Rumsfeld) - not prosecuted, but resigned.
Meilinger, Phil – U.S. Naval War College.
Muravchik, Joshua - Resident Scholar for the American Enterprise Institute. Member of the Board of Advisors for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
Owens, Mackubin - professor at the Naval War College (a government facility).
Owens, Wayne - Deceased (December 18, 2002). History: eight years as Congressman (D) for Utah.
Peretz, Martin - owner and Editor-in-Chief of the New Republic magazine.
Perle, Richard N. - Pentagon Policy Advisor (resigned February 2004), member – Defense Policy Board.
Member: Balkan Action Committee, Committee on the Present Danger, American Enterprise Institute associate. On advisory board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. History: Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan. FBI suspected Perle of spying for Israel in 1970 - not prosecuted.
Member: Balkan Action Committee, Committee on the Present Danger, American Enterprise Institute associate. On advisory board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. History: Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan. FBI suspected Perle of spying for Israel in 1970 - not prosecuted.
Pletka, Danielle - Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy for the American Enterprise Institute.
History: senior staff member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (1992-2002).
History: senior staff member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (1992-2002).
Podhoretz, Norman - member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Husband of Midge Decter, father-in-law of Elliot Abrams.
Porter, John Edward - member of the RAND board of Trustees. History: Congressman until 2000.
Quayle, J. Danforth - was Vice President under Bush Sr.
Rodman, Peter W. - Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. History: Staff Director of State Department Policy Planning under Reagan.
Rosen, Stephen P. - Harvard professor. History: professor at the Naval War College. Director in the National Security Council under Reagan.
Rowen, Henry S. - member of Department of Defense Policy Board. Presidential appointee to the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. History: Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs under Bush Sr. RAND Corporation president 1967–1972.
Rumsfeld, Donald - Secretary of Defense. Member: Hoover Institution board of trustees, RAND Corporation, Empower America board, Freedom House board, Balkan Action Committee, Committee on the Present Danger, Center for Security Policy. History: Congressman from 1962 to 1969. Member of Nixon’s cabinet. Member of Gerald Ford’s cabinet and Secretary of Defense. Chaired Ballistic Missile Threat (“Rumsfeld”) Commission in 1998.
Scheunemann, Randy – on PNAC Board of Directors, U.S. Committee on NATO Board of Directors. Treasurer for Project on Transitional Democracies. Lobbyist. History: Office of the Secretary of Defense - Consultant on Iraq Policy (2001).
Schmitt, Gary – Executive Director of the PNAC. Consultant to the Department of Defense.Member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Committee on NATO. Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institute. Adjunct Professor at John Hopkins University. History: Executive Director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Reagan.
Schneider, William Jr. - Chairman of the Defense Science Board for the Department of Defense. President of International Planning Services, works for the lobbying company Jefferson Consulting Group. Previously served on the “Rumsfeld Commission”.
Shaw, Sin-Ming - resident scholar at Oxford University’s Oriel College.
Shulsky, Abram N. - Director: Defence Department’s Office Of Special Plans, a division created by Paul Wolfowitz. History: Worked for the RAND corporation. Worked under Richard Perle in the Defense Department during the Reagan administration.
Shultz, Richard - Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School. Holds Chairs at the Naval War College and the U.S. Military Academy. Fellow at the Institute of Peace.
Simon, Paul - Deceased (Dec. 9/03). Former Democratic Senator.
Sokolski, Henry - Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Education Center. History: was Resident Fellow in the Heritage Foundation and the Hoover Institution. Was a Senior Legislative Aide for Senator Dan Quayle.
Solarz, Stephen J.- vice chairman of the International Crisis Group. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. History: Congressman for New York (1975-93)
Sonnenfeldt, Helmut - Brookings Institution. History: member of the National Security Council. Advisor to President Nixon.
Sussman, Leonard - executive director of Freedom House. Was a journalist in New York.
Sweeney, John J. - President of the American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Taft, William Howard IV - Chief Legal Advisor to the Department of State. History: assistant to Casper Weinberger in the Nixon administration.
Thornburgh, Dick - Lawyer. Past governor of Pennsylvania. Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations.
Tkacik, John - Heritage Foundation. President of China Business Intelligence. Worked in the State Department during the Reagan administration.
Turner, Ed - unable to verify biographical information from multiple sources (other than PNAC involvement).
Vickers, Michael - Director of Strategic Studies for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Creator of “Future Warfare 20XX” games. Former CIA agent.
Waldron, Arthur - board member of Freedom House, member of the Council on Foreign Relations. History: professor at the Naval War College (1991-97).
Wallop, Malcolm - Heritage Foundation. Founder and Chairman of the Frontiers of Freedom. History: part of the Rumsfeld Commission. Senator for Wyoming (1977 - 1995).
Watts, Barry D. - Director of Program Analysis and Evaluation – Office of The Secretary of Defense. History: before government appointment, was a director in Northrop Gruman (weapons contractor).
Webb, James - was Secretary of the Navy and Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration.
Weber, Vin - member of the National Commission on Public Service. Member of the German Marshall Fund – board of trustees. Co-founder of Empower America. Partner in Clark & Weinstock. History: Congressman for Minnesota 1980 – 1992.
Weigel, George – Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. History: co-founded National Endowment for Democracy.
Weinberger, Caspar W.– writer. History: past publisher and chairman of Forbes magazine. Secretary of Defense under Reagan. Indicted on felony charges for his participation in supplying missiles to Iran, but pardoned by President Bush Sr.
Weyrich, Paul M. – President of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation. National Chairman of Coalitions for America. History: co-founded Heritage Foundation. Co-founded the Moral Majority. Past treasurer of Council for National Policy.
Williams, Christopher A. - Department of Defense – Special Assistant to Donald Rumsfeld. Lobbyist for Boeing and Northrop Grumman Corporation (weapons contractors). History: member of Pentagon’s Deterrence Concepts Advisory Panel, and member of Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board during Bush Jr. administration.
Windsor, Jennifer L. - Executive Director of Freedom House. History: previously held various positions at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Wolfowitz, Paul - Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Assistant to the Vice President. History: Head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff under Reagan. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs under Carter.
Woolsey, R. James - member of the Defense Policy Board, member of the Deterrence Concepts Advisory Panel, and member of the National Commission on Energy Policy. Trustee for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Freedom House. Honorary Co-Chair of the National Security Advisory Council. History: Director of the CIA during Clinton administration.
Wortzel, Larry - Director in the Heritage Foundation.
Zakheim, Dov S. - Member of the advisory board for the American Jewish Committee, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Adjunct Scholar for the Heritage Foundation. Under Secretary and Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Defense (resigned April 15, 2004).
Zoellick, Robert B. - U.S. Trade Representative and member of President’s Cabinet. History: Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs, then White House Deputy Chief of Staff in the Bush Sr. administration.
Neo-Conservatism Explained
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Commentators across the spectrum have finally clued in to neo-conservatism as the intellectual framework of the Bush administration. We are suddenly faced with long think pieces on the role of political philosopher Leo Strauss in influencing the architects of the Iraq war and Bush's governance in general. We are also learning about the ideological path taken by former college Trotskyites into the Republican Party of the 1970s. It’s an instructive example of tenacity and dedication in translating ideas into practice.
Along with the political victory of the neocons (by victory I mean the reality that they now control many levers of power) has come shock and alarm of those who disagree with their policies. Their critics left and right regard their use of domestic police powers as contrary to constitutional guarantees, and their foreign policy as nothing but untrammeled aggression that violates human rights and makes us ever more vulnerable. Despite its political victory, the future of neo-conservatism rests with the war on Iraq and its aftermath. They brought about this war over the objections of most of the world, and relied heavily on the crudest form of chauvinistic sloganeering to sell it to the American people. Iraq has been destroyed, with most people living amidst appalling wreckage that neocons apparently failed to anticipate. Their raw military power unleashed utter chaos, barbarism, and fanaticism in what was once the most secular and liberal Arab state.
The neocons had a limitless faith in two tools: bombs for destruction and dollars for reconstruction. With their appalling ignorance of the complexity of society, they believed that these two tools were enough to reconstruct the region, and maybe the whole world. It was only a matter of political will, so they believed. The bombs caused the regime to flee, but the dollars have not been able to put it back together again. As only a slight symbol of the Pyrrhic victory, the Saddam dinar is now at its highest value relative to the dollar since 1996. No WMDs were ever found, and terrorism in the region is getting worse. Seeing this disaster, and sensing that they are losing the propaganda war, neocons are scrambling to control the spin. This has taken several forms: 1) defending neocon policies, 2) denying that such a thing as neo-conservatism exists, 3) admitting that neocons do exist but claiming that they represent nothing really new and thus pose no threat, and 4) accusing critics of neo-conservatism of bigotry.
That these claims cannot be reconciled is hardly surprising: the goal is to relieve the new pressure, not to sort out confusions. For years, they've labored in journals and journalism, and their sudden defensiveness is precisely what one would expect now that they have seized and exercised power with such awful results. Naturally, the critics go to great lengths to examine the ins and outs of the neocon philosophical orientation to discern what disaster we can expect next. However, very little commentary on neo-conservatism deals with the crucial question to ask of any non-libertarian ideology: to what extent does it seek to use the welfare-warfare state to achieve its end? The answer with regard to neo-conservatism is clear in the actions of the Bush administration:
* it has increased overall government spending by more than any administration since LBJ;
* it has unleashed government spies like never before;
* it has unleashed a series of wars against foreign countries that posed no threat whatever to the US, laying waste to their economies and cultures.
Now, this is remarkable given that the essence of conservatism in America is skepticism about political power, though it is true that all conservatives (a word that only became common parlance in American politics after the Second World War) have been excessively friendly to the state. Yet conservatism did mean a desire to jettison utopian schemes and to defer to the tacit wisdom associated with what is. Conservatism was an unstable ideology, and, in fact, not an ideology at all. It was a predilection to preserve rather than innovate in matters of public policy. Generally speaking, conservatism offered valuable critiques of the left, but had no positive program apart from its endorsement of Truman's Cold War. In order to ensure support for the Cold War, conservatives came to terms with Leviathan and systematically resisted the libertarian implications of their domestic program in foreign and military affairs.
It is often forgotten that it was not only American conservatives who backed anti-communism. Another group of anti-communists of the period was variously called Scoop Jackson Democrats, Cold War Liberals, Democratic Socialists or Social Democrats, or simply the anti-Stalinist Left. They favored big government at home and abroad, and had a particular distaste for the Reds in Russia because they saw them as having discredited the great dream of socialist planning (and killed Trotsky). They were passionately for the Cold War but saw it as less an ideological struggle than a political one. They favored New Deal-style planning but rejected the excesses of Soviet-style totalism.
Of them, Mises wrote: What these people who call themselves 'anticommunist liberals'…are aiming at is communism without those inherent and necessary features of communism which are still unpalatable to Americans. They make an illusory distinction between communism and socialism…. They think that they have proved their case by employing such aliases for socialism as planning or the welfare state…. What these self-styled 'anticommunist liberals' are fighting against is not communism as such, but a communist system in which they themselves are not at the helm. What they are aiming at is a socialist…system in which they themselves or their most intimate friends hold the reins of government. It would perhaps be too much to say that they are burning with a desire to liquidate other people. They simply do not wish to be liquidated. In a socialist commonwealth, only the supreme autocrat and his abettors have this assurance.
He continues: An 'anti-something' movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program that they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be. They must, without any reservations, endorse the program of the market economy. After Vietnam, the Democratic Party became home to an ever-more influential group of Cold War skeptics, so many leftist Cold Warriors gravitated to the Republican Party, where they sought to cement the GOP's attachment to welfare and especially warfare. As Max Boot admits: "It is not really domestic policy that defines neo-conservatism. This was a movement founded on foreign policy, and it is still here that neo-conservatism carries the greatest meaning, even if its original raison d'être – opposition to communism – has disappeared."
Now, it would be wrong to say that the neoconservatives had not undergone any kind of intellectual change. They became less enamored of formal socialism and more at home with mixed-economy capitalism. They grew to hate much of the egalitarian-left cultural agenda of Democratic Party special-interest groups. Many of them wrote treatises decrying the excesses of their ex-brethren. But the transformation was never complete, and the core of their ideology never changed: these people had then and have now a remarkable faith in the uses of state power, at home and abroad. Their intellectual formation in Straussianism convinced them of the centrality of the elite management of society by philosophers, and their background in Trotskyite organizing kept a ruthless political strategy as the operating mode.
As David Gordon sums up Rothbard's early analysis: "As Strauss sees matters, classical and Christian natural law did not impose strict and absolute limits on state power; instead, all is left to the prudential judgment of the wise statesman." The younger generation absorbed this tendency as much as the old. Thus with neoconservatism, we have the statist aspects of the old conservatism minus the libertarian aspects that led the old conservatives to favor decentralist political institutions and free enterprise. Add to that the natural tendency of anyone in power to use the tools they have at their disposal. What we end up with is a danger to liberty as fierce as any ever posed by the left.
But by the standard of loving Leviathan, today's neo-conservatism is worse than every brand of conservatism that preceded it. It is worse than Reaganism, which included some libertarian impulses, and worse than National-Review-style conservatism from the 1960s and 1950s. One expects pro-state affections from socialists, but the puzzle of neo-conservatism is how it could exist within a group of self-professed non-socialists who even claim to despise what the collectivist left has done to the world. Thus the great fallacy of neo-conservatism is the one that afflicts all non-libertarian ideologies: they believe that society can be managed by the state in both its political and economic life. They believe this to a lesser extent than some left socialists, but to a far greater extent than most thinkers on the right.
What they miss or do not want to face is precisely what the socialists never wanted to accept: that society is made up of acting, choosing human beings with their own values and ideas and plans, and it is they and not the state who do the hard work of creating civilization, a creation that is easy to destroy through statist means but impossible to rebuild through such means; that many social forces like culture and economics are beyond the final control of state power; and in the long run, it is people, and not philosopher kings whispering in the ears of gullible statesmen, who will determine the course of history.Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/...explained.html
NEOCONS IN DENIAL
It's a 'conspiracy theory' to blame neocons for the war – even though they spent the last decade agitating for it
One of the major accomplishments of this site, aside from keeping our readers up-to-the-minute on what's really happening in Iraq, has been to educate the public about who brought us this war, and why. We have held, from the beginning, that war on Iraq did not and does not serve American interests, and we have traced its origins back to a group of determined ideologues who see it as the first phase of a campaign to take America on the road to Empire. Ideas, not guns, rule the world, and the ideology espoused by the neoconservatives has been consistent, and relentlessly advanced since the first days of the post-cold war era. It boils down to this: war, war, and yet more war. Their goal – "benevolent global hegemony" exercised by the U.S.
These ex-leftists and former Scoop Jackson Democrats were agitating for war against Iraq – and most of the rest of the Middle East – well before 9/11. The debris from that horrific disaster hadn't even stopped smoldering when top neocons in this administration targeted Iraq – not Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda – as a target of opportunity they could not afford to miss. Now they stand on the verge of fulfilling their dream: a U.S.-imposed military occupation of Iraq to be followed by interventions in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and throughout the Middle East. It is the very scenario envisioned in "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," the infamous memo written for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser. In this seminal document, the invasion of Iraq is prefigured, along with a campaign to "roll back" Syria:
"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right – as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria's regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq."
This is precisely what is happening today. The only difference is that the agent of rollback is not the IDF, but the U.S. military. With U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld openly threatening Syria, the idea that the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad clearly has spread far beyond its progenitors. The war in Iraq, as Professor Paul W. Schroeder pointed out in The American Conservative, "Would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state."
That "small client state" is, of course, Israel, the Middle Eastern Sparta that enjoys the same kind of knee-jerk support among some sections of the American right that the former Soviet Union once commanded on the radical left. If the core principle of constant warfare is the essence of the neoconservative doctrine, then the object of their special adulation is the state of Israel, whose interests they have openly advanced over and above the best interests of the U.S. When Ariel Sharon compared George W. Bush to Neville Chamberlain, Bill Bennett, neoconservative scold and head of "Americans for Victory Over Terrorism" (AVOT), agreed with him. Since 9/11, the neocons have been pushing the line that the interests of the U.S. and Israel are identical – a logical impossibility, since the national interests of separate states are different by definition. Unleashed by 9/11, neoconservative publicists have been calling for "World War IV," a "clash of civilizations" pitting the U.S. and Israel against the Muslim world – and a good deal of the rest of the world.
All of this history of ceaseless warmongering on the part of the neocons is a matter of record: just follow the links in this column. Or, better yet, read up on the subject, starting with my (sadly out of print) book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, which tells the story of the neocons' ideological odyssey from left to faux-"right". The meme of neocon responsibility for this war and future wars is by now spread far and wide: just go to Google.com (news) and type in the word "neoconservatives" or "neocons," and you'll see what I mean. But now along comes the learned Robert J. Lieber, Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and a leading academic apologist for the Bush Doctrine of preemption and American primacy, to tell us that this is a "myth" promulgated by bigots. In the April 29 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (and reprinted by Frontpagemag.com), Lieber writes:
"The ruins of Saddam Hussein's shattered tyranny may provide additional evidence of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, but one poisonous by-product has already begun to seep from under the rubble. It is a conspiracy theory purporting to explain how the foreign policy of the world's greatest power, the United States, has been captured by a sinister and hitherto little-known cabal.
"A small band of neoconservative (read, Jewish) defense intellectuals, led by the 'mastermind,' Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (according to Michael Lind, writing in the New Statesman), has taken advantage of 9/11 to put their ideas over on an ignorant, inexperienced, and 'easily manipulated' president (Eric Alterman in The Nation), his 'elderly figurehead' Defense Secretary (as Lind put it), and the 'dutiful servant of power' who is our secretary of state (Edward Said, London Review of Books)."
But why must we "read Jewish" when the word is neoconservative? While it is true that many prominent neocons are Jewish, the same might be said of libertarians (Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand), or left-wing radicals (Noam Chomsky, Rabbi Michael Lerner,), or, for that matter, liberals. What of it? Undeterred by logic, however, Professor Lieber blithely continues along this same victimological path throughout his essay. This "conspiracy theory," he avers, is itself a conspiracy against … the Jews! Somebody please call the PC Thought Police! So where's the evidence of a neo-Nazi plot involving leading liberal and conservative writers and intellectuals? The Professor detects a pattern of anti-Semitic rhetoric between the lines of anti-interventionist polemics: "Thus empowered, this neoconservative conspiracy, 'a product of the influential Jewish-American faction of the Trotskyist movement of the '30s and '40s' (Lind), with its own 'fanatic' and 'totalitarian morality' (William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune) has fomented war with Iraq – not in the interest of the United States, but in the service of Israel's Likud government (Patrick J. Buchanan and Alterman)."
That Alterman is Jewish is apparently no obstacle to his membership in this anti-Semitic cabal. Aside from this odd anomaly, Lind's reference to the "Jewish-American faction of the Trotskyist movement of the '30s and '40s" is a redundancy: of the three founders of American Trotskyism, two were Jewish and the membership of their party reflected the leadership: their base was in the heavily Jewish sections of New York City, where more than half the members lived. This is not an admonishment on Lind's part, but only a descriptive passage. Lieber's brief, out-of-context quotes are typical of the modern "academic" method of footnoted character assassination, but if you examine what Lind actually wrote, it is clear that his purpose is not to target "the Jews" but to accurately describe the intellectual and political genesis of a war. This war, averred Lind, was the dream of neoconservative theoreticians, paid experts who advised the Israeli government while out of power during the Clinton years and evolved a plan to further their ambitions. But, he wrote,
"Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists."
The imputation of base motives to Lind is based on a very selective reading of his piece. Professor Lieber is clearly counting on his students not doing their homework. His are willful misrepresentations. Out of a dozen words cited in Lind's piece, Lieber focuses on the wrong one. It wasn't their Jewishness that impelled the neocons to develop an ideology – and implement a national security strategy – based on military domination of the globe. Their Trotskyist mindset, shorn of its Soviet roots, morphed easily into a "permanent revolution" on behalf of an American rather than a socialist world order. Trotsky believed that socialism in one country could not long survive, and the duty of every revolutionary was to spread Communism beyond the borders of the workers' fatherland, by military means if necessary, a task regularly shirked by the Stalinist sell-outs in the Kremlin.
Trotsky's American ex-followers, such as Max Shachtman, decided that the Stalinists were even worse than the capitalists, and that the Soviet Union, far from being the workers fatherland, represented the main danger to the working class – a position that eventually had him and his influential followers supporting the U.S. war against Vietnam. That this is the organizational and intellectual pre-history of the neoconservatives is beyond dispute. Neocon godfather Irving Kristol was a Trotskyist, eventually winding up as a member of the Shachtman group, as were several other prominent New York intellectuals who followed Shachtman on his rightward course – sometimes lagging behind, sometimes skipping ahead – and finally crossing over to the right, in the cold war era, to make up the intellectual core of the War Party. Neoconservatism in the realm of foreign policy is merely Trotskyism-turned-inside-out – a militant internationalism fueled by U.S. taxpayer dollars and backed up by the mightiest military the world has ever seen.
The neoconservative fealty to Israel surely has something to do with the ethnic and religious loyalties of some prominent neocons, whose faith in Marxism was replaced by their rediscovery of their religious and ethnic roots. But it has just as much to do with Israel's role as a modern Sparta, a militaristic state which the neocons view as inherently admirable. However, surely the most numerous and fervent fans of the state of Israel in the American body politic are the "mainstream" conservatives, who generally agree with what they read in, say, National Review. For them, Israel, our staunch ally during the cold war, is an outpost of Western civilization, and deserves support on that basis alone. A great many conservative Republican activists are Christian fundamentalists whose unconditional support for Ariel Sharon's draconian policies is based on their peculiar interpretation of Christianity, not Judaism.
Lieber goes on to make the most of his examination of anti-Semitic "tropes," reducing the analysis of well-known liberal analysts to "conspicuous manifestations of classic anti-Semitism." What are these ominous portents of a new pogrom? According to the Professor, they consist of: "Claims that a small, all-powerful but little-known group or 'cabal' of Jewish masterminds is secretly manipulating policy."
None of the individuals cited by Lieber, nor anyone else that I am aware of, is saying that the nation was "secretly" roped into war: it was all done quite openly, which, on account of its sheer brazenness, makes it all the more outrageous. The neocons wrote manifestos in their subsidized little journals, they signed open letters urging an invasion of this country or that, they wrote op ed pieces and their front groups lobbied Congress and the American public – which is why it has been possible for Lind, Alterman, Buchanan, myself, and others to write about it. Nor is anyone claiming that the "cabal," which I call the War Party, is "all-powerful." If that were true, then surely they would have achieved their objectives sooner, with less exposure and certainly with very little debate.
"That they have dual loyalty to a foreign power."
This is not a question of dual loyalty, but of the subordination of American interests to Israeli policy objectives – and to an inherently anti-American policy of naked imperialism that goes against the grain of our history and our political culture. Critics of U.S. policy in the Middle East, except for the Marxists and the inveterate anti-Americans, argue that allowing our military to be used as a cat's-paw for Israel is not in American interests. It is a policy that can only please the region's extremists: Ariel Sharon and Osama bin Laden. The neocons, on the other hand, fail to distinguish between Israeli and American interests, and one has to assume that this is a sincerely held belief.
The Professor continues his litany of "anti-Semitic" horrors: "That this cabal combines ideological opposites (right-wingers with a Trotskyist legacy, echoing classic anti-Semitic tropes linking Jews to both international capitalism and international communism)." Since most neocons and their supporters are not Jewish – as Lieber spends an inordinate number of words pointing out – his contention that the whole thing amounts to an orgy of Jew-bashing, an intellectual Kristallnacht, is self-refuting. Aside from that, however, does he really mean to imply thatJewish ex-Trotskyists are above criticism, all on account of some arcane "trope"?
"That our official leaders are too ignorant, weak, or naive to grasp what is happening." Yes, as we all know, our leaders are never ignorant, or weak, or naïve. They always grasp what is happening. "That the foreign policy upon which our country is now embarked runs counter to, or is even subversive of, American national interest."
These ex-leftists and former Scoop Jackson Democrats were agitating for war against Iraq – and most of the rest of the Middle East – well before 9/11. The debris from that horrific disaster hadn't even stopped smoldering when top neocons in this administration targeted Iraq – not Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda – as a target of opportunity they could not afford to miss. Now they stand on the verge of fulfilling their dream: a U.S.-imposed military occupation of Iraq to be followed by interventions in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and throughout the Middle East. It is the very scenario envisioned in "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," the infamous memo written for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser. In this seminal document, the invasion of Iraq is prefigured, along with a campaign to "roll back" Syria:
"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right – as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria's regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq."
This is precisely what is happening today. The only difference is that the agent of rollback is not the IDF, but the U.S. military. With U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld openly threatening Syria, the idea that the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad clearly has spread far beyond its progenitors. The war in Iraq, as Professor Paul W. Schroeder pointed out in The American Conservative, "Would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state."
That "small client state" is, of course, Israel, the Middle Eastern Sparta that enjoys the same kind of knee-jerk support among some sections of the American right that the former Soviet Union once commanded on the radical left. If the core principle of constant warfare is the essence of the neoconservative doctrine, then the object of their special adulation is the state of Israel, whose interests they have openly advanced over and above the best interests of the U.S. When Ariel Sharon compared George W. Bush to Neville Chamberlain, Bill Bennett, neoconservative scold and head of "Americans for Victory Over Terrorism" (AVOT), agreed with him. Since 9/11, the neocons have been pushing the line that the interests of the U.S. and Israel are identical – a logical impossibility, since the national interests of separate states are different by definition. Unleashed by 9/11, neoconservative publicists have been calling for "World War IV," a "clash of civilizations" pitting the U.S. and Israel against the Muslim world – and a good deal of the rest of the world.
All of this history of ceaseless warmongering on the part of the neocons is a matter of record: just follow the links in this column. Or, better yet, read up on the subject, starting with my (sadly out of print) book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, which tells the story of the neocons' ideological odyssey from left to faux-"right". The meme of neocon responsibility for this war and future wars is by now spread far and wide: just go to Google.com (news) and type in the word "neoconservatives" or "neocons," and you'll see what I mean. But now along comes the learned Robert J. Lieber, Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and a leading academic apologist for the Bush Doctrine of preemption and American primacy, to tell us that this is a "myth" promulgated by bigots. In the April 29 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (and reprinted by Frontpagemag.com), Lieber writes:
"The ruins of Saddam Hussein's shattered tyranny may provide additional evidence of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, but one poisonous by-product has already begun to seep from under the rubble. It is a conspiracy theory purporting to explain how the foreign policy of the world's greatest power, the United States, has been captured by a sinister and hitherto little-known cabal.
"A small band of neoconservative (read, Jewish) defense intellectuals, led by the 'mastermind,' Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (according to Michael Lind, writing in the New Statesman), has taken advantage of 9/11 to put their ideas over on an ignorant, inexperienced, and 'easily manipulated' president (Eric Alterman in The Nation), his 'elderly figurehead' Defense Secretary (as Lind put it), and the 'dutiful servant of power' who is our secretary of state (Edward Said, London Review of Books)."
But why must we "read Jewish" when the word is neoconservative? While it is true that many prominent neocons are Jewish, the same might be said of libertarians (Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand), or left-wing radicals (Noam Chomsky, Rabbi Michael Lerner,), or, for that matter, liberals. What of it? Undeterred by logic, however, Professor Lieber blithely continues along this same victimological path throughout his essay. This "conspiracy theory," he avers, is itself a conspiracy against … the Jews! Somebody please call the PC Thought Police! So where's the evidence of a neo-Nazi plot involving leading liberal and conservative writers and intellectuals? The Professor detects a pattern of anti-Semitic rhetoric between the lines of anti-interventionist polemics: "Thus empowered, this neoconservative conspiracy, 'a product of the influential Jewish-American faction of the Trotskyist movement of the '30s and '40s' (Lind), with its own 'fanatic' and 'totalitarian morality' (William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune) has fomented war with Iraq – not in the interest of the United States, but in the service of Israel's Likud government (Patrick J. Buchanan and Alterman)."
That Alterman is Jewish is apparently no obstacle to his membership in this anti-Semitic cabal. Aside from this odd anomaly, Lind's reference to the "Jewish-American faction of the Trotskyist movement of the '30s and '40s" is a redundancy: of the three founders of American Trotskyism, two were Jewish and the membership of their party reflected the leadership: their base was in the heavily Jewish sections of New York City, where more than half the members lived. This is not an admonishment on Lind's part, but only a descriptive passage. Lieber's brief, out-of-context quotes are typical of the modern "academic" method of footnoted character assassination, but if you examine what Lind actually wrote, it is clear that his purpose is not to target "the Jews" but to accurately describe the intellectual and political genesis of a war. This war, averred Lind, was the dream of neoconservative theoreticians, paid experts who advised the Israeli government while out of power during the Clinton years and evolved a plan to further their ambitions. But, he wrote,
"Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists."
The imputation of base motives to Lind is based on a very selective reading of his piece. Professor Lieber is clearly counting on his students not doing their homework. His are willful misrepresentations. Out of a dozen words cited in Lind's piece, Lieber focuses on the wrong one. It wasn't their Jewishness that impelled the neocons to develop an ideology – and implement a national security strategy – based on military domination of the globe. Their Trotskyist mindset, shorn of its Soviet roots, morphed easily into a "permanent revolution" on behalf of an American rather than a socialist world order. Trotsky believed that socialism in one country could not long survive, and the duty of every revolutionary was to spread Communism beyond the borders of the workers' fatherland, by military means if necessary, a task regularly shirked by the Stalinist sell-outs in the Kremlin.
Trotsky's American ex-followers, such as Max Shachtman, decided that the Stalinists were even worse than the capitalists, and that the Soviet Union, far from being the workers fatherland, represented the main danger to the working class – a position that eventually had him and his influential followers supporting the U.S. war against Vietnam. That this is the organizational and intellectual pre-history of the neoconservatives is beyond dispute. Neocon godfather Irving Kristol was a Trotskyist, eventually winding up as a member of the Shachtman group, as were several other prominent New York intellectuals who followed Shachtman on his rightward course – sometimes lagging behind, sometimes skipping ahead – and finally crossing over to the right, in the cold war era, to make up the intellectual core of the War Party. Neoconservatism in the realm of foreign policy is merely Trotskyism-turned-inside-out – a militant internationalism fueled by U.S. taxpayer dollars and backed up by the mightiest military the world has ever seen.
The neoconservative fealty to Israel surely has something to do with the ethnic and religious loyalties of some prominent neocons, whose faith in Marxism was replaced by their rediscovery of their religious and ethnic roots. But it has just as much to do with Israel's role as a modern Sparta, a militaristic state which the neocons view as inherently admirable. However, surely the most numerous and fervent fans of the state of Israel in the American body politic are the "mainstream" conservatives, who generally agree with what they read in, say, National Review. For them, Israel, our staunch ally during the cold war, is an outpost of Western civilization, and deserves support on that basis alone. A great many conservative Republican activists are Christian fundamentalists whose unconditional support for Ariel Sharon's draconian policies is based on their peculiar interpretation of Christianity, not Judaism.
Lieber goes on to make the most of his examination of anti-Semitic "tropes," reducing the analysis of well-known liberal analysts to "conspicuous manifestations of classic anti-Semitism." What are these ominous portents of a new pogrom? According to the Professor, they consist of: "Claims that a small, all-powerful but little-known group or 'cabal' of Jewish masterminds is secretly manipulating policy."
None of the individuals cited by Lieber, nor anyone else that I am aware of, is saying that the nation was "secretly" roped into war: it was all done quite openly, which, on account of its sheer brazenness, makes it all the more outrageous. The neocons wrote manifestos in their subsidized little journals, they signed open letters urging an invasion of this country or that, they wrote op ed pieces and their front groups lobbied Congress and the American public – which is why it has been possible for Lind, Alterman, Buchanan, myself, and others to write about it. Nor is anyone claiming that the "cabal," which I call the War Party, is "all-powerful." If that were true, then surely they would have achieved their objectives sooner, with less exposure and certainly with very little debate.
"That they have dual loyalty to a foreign power."
This is not a question of dual loyalty, but of the subordination of American interests to Israeli policy objectives – and to an inherently anti-American policy of naked imperialism that goes against the grain of our history and our political culture. Critics of U.S. policy in the Middle East, except for the Marxists and the inveterate anti-Americans, argue that allowing our military to be used as a cat's-paw for Israel is not in American interests. It is a policy that can only please the region's extremists: Ariel Sharon and Osama bin Laden. The neocons, on the other hand, fail to distinguish between Israeli and American interests, and one has to assume that this is a sincerely held belief.
The Professor continues his litany of "anti-Semitic" horrors: "That this cabal combines ideological opposites (right-wingers with a Trotskyist legacy, echoing classic anti-Semitic tropes linking Jews to both international capitalism and international communism)." Since most neocons and their supporters are not Jewish – as Lieber spends an inordinate number of words pointing out – his contention that the whole thing amounts to an orgy of Jew-bashing, an intellectual Kristallnacht, is self-refuting. Aside from that, however, does he really mean to imply thatJewish ex-Trotskyists are above criticism, all on account of some arcane "trope"?
"That our official leaders are too ignorant, weak, or naive to grasp what is happening." Yes, as we all know, our leaders are never ignorant, or weak, or naïve. They always grasp what is happening. "That the foreign policy upon which our country is now embarked runs counter to, or is even subversive of, American national interest."
[...]
Source: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j043003.html
Thank you!
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