Back in 1997 a group of prominent people interested in foreign policy formed an organization to advance their view of America's role in the world. You can still visit the website of the Project for a New American Century. There you can read the views of such people as William Kristol, Donald Kagan, Dick Cheney, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld on how the United States needed, in the new post-Soviet world, to increase its military might and use that might to cow the world into submission to American interests during a "New American Century." This new "neoconservative" world view led to the fiasco of the Iraq War, which has empowered Iran, isolated the United States in the region and all but shelved progress on the Israeli-Palestinian question for six years.
Undeterred by the ignominy of the horrendous results of all they advocated, the principals of this band of ideological bulls in the global china shop are at it again. Apparently at least aware that their previous vehicle has lost a bit of credibility thanks not only to its crackpot advocacy of American aggression but also to the pathetic incompetence of some of its central personages in carrying it out (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Senor, Libby, for instance) they have now set up a new think tank to advocate the same lunacy all over again. Like a bad 1950s Wolfman sequel, no matter how many times the monster is killed he always returns in the latest remake at the next full moon. It seems those who call for more defense spending and more war are never at a loss for funding.
The latest apparition is called The Foreign Policy Initiative, an innocuous-sounding name for the same old philosophy of trying to dominate the world through the threat and use of military force. Robert Kagan, William Kristol and Dan Senor are the leading lights, if such is a fair description of what it is they shed on the literate public. It is ironic commentary on society that there is seemingly still a market for ideas that have been so decisively refuted by their application while doing such grievous harm to their practitioners. If the American people ever again put anyone else in power who is in the least way associated with these gentlemen or their schemes they will unfortunately prove themselves richly deserving of all that will thenceforth ensue.
2 comments:
The way these guys seem to think, I'm actually amazed we haven't dropped a nuclear bomb on someone.
That's a bullet we thankfully dodged during the past eight years, though one wonders what contingency plans have been prepared for North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan. A radical threat to the Pakistani regime or the chance of its nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of Taliban or al-Qaeda elements would doubtlessly spark some form of pre-emptive strike.
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