[Peace-discuss] Project for the New American Century (fwd)

[patton paul]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri,  9 May 2003 06:18:59 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Eli Pariser, MoveOn.Org" <moveon-help at list.moveon.org>
To: Paul Patton <ppatton at uiuc.edu>
Subject: Project for the New American Century

Dear MoveOn member,

Each week, we'll be alternating bulletins on international and
domestic issues.  Our domestic bulletins, like the one last week
on media deregulation, are produced in partnership with
Alternet.org.  This week, we introduce the international side
with a great bulletin edited by Noah Winer on the Project for
the New American Century -- the think tank that in many ways is
responsible for the war on Iraq. Enjoy.

--Eli

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MoveOn Bulletin
Friday, May 9, 2003
Noah T. Winer, Editor
noah.winer at moveon.org

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SPECIAL FEATURE: INTERVIEW SENATOR BYRD
This week, we kick off a feature of the new MoveOn Bulletin: the
Grassroots Interview. In each issue, we'll provide an opportunity for
MoveOn members to ask five questions of a prominent political figure.
Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) has graciously agreed to be the first
subject. Senator Byrd has been in the news recently for his
comments on the President's "victory" speech.

What are your questions for Senator Byrd? We'll ask MoveOn users'
five favorite questions on Wednesday, and report the Senator's answers
in the next issue. Post your questions and review others' at:
http://www.actionforum.com/forum/index.html?forum_id=255

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CONTENTS
1. Introduction: American Leadership, American Empire
2. One Link
3. Forming the Bush Doctrine
4. Pax Americana
5. September 11, 2001
6. Who's Steering This Ship?
7. Who Pays the Bills?
8. Pax Israelica?
9. Post-War Iraq
10. Neo-conservatism
11. What Next -- Syria? Iran?
12. Challenging the Project
13. Conclusion
14. About the Bulletin

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INTRODUCTION: AMERICAN LEADERSHIP, AMERICAN EMPIRE
Many of us first heard about the Bush administration's plan to invade
Iraq last August. However, a small group of political elites planned
the takeover of Iraq years ago. With that goal achieved, now is the
time to look at who these people are, how they created a war on
Iraq, and most importantly their plans for the future.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is a Washington-based
neo-conservative think-tank founded in 1997 to "rally support for
American global leadership." PNAC's agenda runs far deeper than regime
change in Iraq. Its statement of principles begins with the assertion
that "American foreign and defense policy is adrift" and calls for "a
Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity."

While their tone is high-minded, their proposal is unilateral military
intervention to protect against threats to America's status as the
lone global superpower. The statement is signed by such influential
figures as Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dan Quayle,
Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

PNAC is not alone, nor did it arise from new wells of power. Most of
the founding members of PNAC held posts in the Reagan or elder Bush
administration and other neo-conservative think-tanks, publications,
and advocacy groups.

The effect of PNAC's ideology is great on Bush -- the
presidential candidate who promised a "humble," isolationist foreign
policy. The events of September 11, 2001 provided a window of
opportunity for furthering PNAC's agenda of American empire.
Understanding that agenda can help us anticipate the Bush
administration's next steps and organize accordingly.

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ONE LINK
If you only read one article in this bulletin, it should be this one.
This article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel superbly covers the
influence of PNAC in Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq. As the
author writes, the goal is to transform the Middle East through a show
of U.S. military might and "the obvious place to start is with Iraq,
which was already in trouble with the United Nations, had little
international standing and was reviled even by some Arab nations."
http://www.jsonline.com/news/gen/apr03/131523.asp

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FORMING THE BUSH DOCTRINE
The motivating event for the neo-conservatives who founded PNAC was
the end of the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq. With Saddam's power weakened,
the neo-conservatives believed he should be eliminated permanently.
Instead, the elder President Bush encouraged the Iraqi opposition to
rise up against the Ba'ath government. As their rebellion was put down
by Iraqi troops, Bush ordered the U.S. military not to intervene,
choosing instead a strategy of containment for Saddam.

In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz, then-Under Secretary of Defense for Policy,
authored an internal policy brief on America's military posture in the
post-Cold War era: to prevent the emergence of a new rival power
through preemption rather than containment and acting unilaterally if
necessary to protect U.S. interests. When a draft was leaked to the
press, controversy erupted and the report had to be softened.

The web accompaniment to the PBS Frontline special "The War Behind
Closed Doors" features an excellent chronology showing how Wolfowitz's
draft would become the basis of the Bush Doctrine.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/cron.html

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PAX AMERICANA
An important step in PNAC's chronology is its major publication,
"Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a
New Century" (RAD), released in September, 2000. The report takes
Wolfowitz's draft as a starting point, hailing it as "a blueprint for
maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power
rival, and shaping the international security order in line with
American principles and interests."

RAD rejects cuts in defense spending, insisting that "Preserving the
desirable strategic situation in which the United States now finds
itself requires a globally preeminent military capability both today
and in the future." Core missions for the U.S. military include the
ability to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major
theater wars" and to reposition permanent forces in Southeast Europe
and Southeast Asia.

Other samples from RAD:

"The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent
role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with
Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial
American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime
of Saddam Hussein."

"At present the United States faces no global rival. America's grand
strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position
as far into the future as possible."

"[N]ew methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal,' biological --
will be more widely available ... 'combat' likely will take place in
new dimensions: in space, 'cyber-space,' and perhaps the world of
microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target'
specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of
terror to a politically useful tool."

In this Atlanta Journal-Constitution opinion piece, Jay Bookman
compares "Rebuilding America's Defenses" with the current Bush defense
policy.
http://www.rainbowbody.org/politics/PNACgoal.htm

You can read the entire document on PNAC's website.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm

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SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
In discussing changes to America's military strategy, the RAD report
regretfully admits, "the process of transformation, even if it brings
revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

Shortly after September 11, PNAC sent a letter to President Bush
welcoming his call for "a broad and sustained campaign" and
encouraging the removal of Saddam even if Iraq could not be directly
linked to the attacks.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm

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WHO'S STEERING THIS SHIP?
"Most neo-conservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the
left, not the right." Michael Lind argues in the New Statesman and
Salon magazines that many were anti-Stalinist Trotskyists who became
anti-communist liberals, then shifted to a "militaristic and imperial
right with no precedents in American culture or political history."
http://dupagepeace.home.att.net/bush7.html

PAUL WOLFOWITZ is Deputy Defense Secretary, second-in-command at the
Pentagon. Wolfowitz was promoting regime change in Iraq and a strategy
of preemptive attack in 1992, but the elder Bush rejected his views as
too radical. This is an excellent brief from the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace.
http://www.moveon.org/r?436

RICHARD PERLE was Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan
administration and a foreign policy adviser in George W. Bush's
presidential campaign. He accepted Rumsfeld's offer to chair the
Defense Policy Board, transforming it from obscurity to influence. In
March, Perle resigned as chairman after a controversial lobbying
scandal, but remains on the Board as a member.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030317fa_fact

WILLIAM KRISTOL is editor of The Weekly Standard, a conservative
political magazine with a small but elite readership, funded by Rupert
Murdoch. The son of neo-conservative founding father Irving Kristol,
he is the president of PNAC.
http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/bill_kristol.htm

Other important participants are Vice-President Dick Cheney; Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; Iran-contra scandal convict Elliott Abrams,
now Director of Middle East Affairs for the National Security Council;
Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan; and special presidential envoy
to Afghanistan and Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad.

A fairly complete list of PNAC participants can be found here:
http://www.opednews.com/new%20american%20century.htm

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WHO PAYS THE BILLS?
The Bradley Foundation, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is the primary funder
of PNAC through PNAC's parent New Citizenship Project, Inc. With the
largest assets of any right-wing foundation, Bradley has focused its
efforts on ending affirmative action, reforming welfare, and
privatizing schools. This article describes Bradley's funding of
neo-conservative think-tanks, magazines, and books like "The Bell
Curve."
http://www.mediatransparency.org/funders/bradley_foundation.htm

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PAX ISRAELICA?
Nearly all PNAC participants, whether Jewish or Christian, are
right-wing Zionists who support Ariel Sharon's Likud Party. In 1996,
Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and others drafted a paper for incoming
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging him to make "a clean break"
from the Oslo peace process preferring "peace through strength,"
including the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm

This essay describes many of the familiar neo-conservatives as having
"dual loyalties," making policy decisions in the interests of the
State of Israel as much as the United States.
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison1213.html

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POST-WAR IRAQ
PNAC participants are backing Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National
Congress in his bid to run the interim government in Iraq. From The
American Prospect, who is Chalabi and why is he so popular with the
neo-conservatives?
http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/21/dreyfuss-r.html

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NEO-CONSERVATISM
PNAC is in the same Washington, D.C. office building as the American
Enterprise Institute (AEI), another major neo-conservative think-tank.
They share far more than an address: PNAC participants like Richard
Perle, Thomas Donnelly, Jeane Kirkpatrick, William Schneider, Lynne
Cheney (Dick Cheney's wife), and Irving Kristol (William Kristol's
father) are all AEI scholars and fellows.

Similar overlap is found among all the neo-conservative think-tanks --
Hudson Institute, Center for Security Policy, Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, and Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs -- giving the agenda of a few political elites the
appearance of widespread agreement.

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WHAT NEXT -- SYRIA?
This piece from Foreign Policy in Focus discusses a 2000 Middle East
Forum study calling for military force against Syria. The report,
"Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role," was signed by
numerous PNAC participants.
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0304uscfl.html

IRAN?
>From the Washington Monthly, a smart article that compares the
neo-conservative plan for the Middle East to "giving a few good whacks
to a hornets' nest because you want to get them out in the open and
have it out with them once and for all."
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html

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CHALLENGING THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY
The Peace Education Fund and California Peace Action have launched a
national advertising campaign that features the infamous photo of
Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. The ads ask the
question: "Who Are We Arming Now?" The ad is part of Peace Action's
Campaign for a New American Foreign Policy which is building political
pressure for an alternative to the bleak vision of the Project for the
New American Century.
http://www.californiapeaceaction.org/campaigns/rumsfeld/campaign.htm

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CONCLUSION
Beyond all the specifics presented in this bulletin and the linked
resources, it's essential to remember how interlocked the
neo-conservative organizations are. They represent the views and
interests of only a tiny elite, not the popular sentiment in the
United States. Most Americans would be horrified to learn how PNAC and
others are shaping the Bush Doctrine -- both because of the ideology
they describe and because they use money and media to gain
disproportionate political influence.

Money makes it easy to organize networks and gain political influence;
control of the media limits our ability to consider the various
options America has for handling crises in the international community.
The work we are doing as MoveOn members is organizing without massive
wealth and educating without owning the media. Our work is to vocalize
the love of democratic decision-making shared by all people, clearly
and with the most complete information. Please let us know what
information you need to do this work, and we will do our best to make
it available through the bulletin.

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CREDITS
Research team:
Leah Appet, Joanne Comito, Lita Epstein, Anna Gavula, Terry Hackett,
Zaid Khalil, Kate Kressmann-Kehoe, Cameron McLaughlin , Janelle Miau,
Sarah Parady, Kim Plofker, and Ora Szekely.

Editing team:
David Taub Bancroft, Melinda Coyle, Nancy Evans, Eileen Gillan, and
Rita Weinstein.

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