[+] Exposing the 'Project for the New American Century'
by John Tierney, New York Times
[This site, which chronicles the amazing story of
the so-called "Project for the New American Century"
may be accessed at http://www.pnac.info/ . Our thanks
to Jim Sorrells for forwarding. If you haven't already
been aware of the PNAC, this may well be an astonishing
revelation. It's incredible how much "we the people"
have never been told about what the politicians and
think-tank gurus are planning for us... -- Revrickm]
PNAC.INFO - EXPOSING THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN
CENTURY
(An effort to investigate, analyze, and expose the
Project for the New American Century, and its plan for
a "unipolar" world. I guess that's a new think-tamk
"buzzword" -- aren't you impressed?)
May 18, 2004
The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts
[Comments by Jim Sorrells: The following article is
more broadly about how initial supporters of the war
in Iraq are having second thoughts, or doubts about
how it has been conducted. It's relevant to this site
for two reasons:
1) it mentions a number of neoconservatives (Max Boot,
Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, and more) amongst
the ranks of the disappointed, and 2) it speaks of how
traditional conservatives (like CNN pundit Tucker
Carlson, for example) are waking up to the fact that
they allowed themselves to be spun into supporting a
war which is not reflective of a conservative view of
government's role.
That sentiment is summed up best in this sentence:
"How, they wonder, did so many conservatives, who
normally don't trust their government to run a public
school down the street, come to believe that federal
bureaucrats could transform an entire nation in the
alien culture of the Middle East?"
Good question.
The article is worth reading just for the quote near
the end from Edmund Burke about empire. I'm archiving
the entire article here-- you can access the original
at the link above.]
"The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts"
The New York Times > Week in Review
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: May 16, 2004
WASHINGTON - Not long ago, the word "triumphalist" was
being applied to the neoconservatives and other
intellectuals who championed the war in Iraq. Now the
buzzwords are "depressed," "angst-ridden" and "going
wobbly."
After the setbacks in Falluja and Najaf, followed by
the prisoner abuse scandal, hawks are glumly trying to
reconcile the reality in Iraq with the predictions
they made before the war. A few have already given up
on the idea of a stable democracy in Iraq, and many
are predicting failure unless there's a dramatic
change in policy - a new date for elections, a new
secretary of defense, a new exit strategy.
Most blame the administration for botching the
mission, and some are also questioning their own
judgment. How, they wonder, did so many conservatives,
who normally don't trust their government to run a
public school down the street, come to believe that
federal bureaucrats could transform an entire nation
in the alien culture of the Middle East? To these
self-doubting hawks, the conservatives now blaming
American officials for Iraq's problems are reminiscent
of the leftists who kept blaming incompetents in the
Kremlin for the failure of Communism.
Some hawks are staying the course. Donald H. Rumsfeld,
the defense secretary, is still defended by The Wall
Street Journal editorial page and columnists like
Charles Krauthammer, of The Washington Post, and
William Safire, of The New York Times, who has
dismissed the idea of speeding the transition as "cut
and walk fast." Rush Limbaugh has accused liberal
journalists of overreacting to the prison scandal.
When asked on Friday about the criticism from his
fellow neoconservatives, Deputy Secretary of Defense
Paul D. Wolfowitz acknowledged difficulties but seemed
unfazed. "Saddam's murderers and torturers who abused
the Iraqi people for 35 years have proven to be a
tough as well as ruthless enemy," he said. "But no one
should have expected a cakewalk and that's no reason
to go wobbly now. I spend most of my time with
officers and soldiers, and they're not defeatists -
not even the ones who suffered terrible wounds in
Iraq."
But many hawks across the political spectrum are
having public second thoughts. The National Review has
dismissed the Wilsonian ideal of implanting democracy
in Iraq, and has recommended settling for an orderly
society with a non-dictatorial government. David
Brooks, a New York Times columnist, wrote that America
entered Iraq with a "childish fantasy" and is now "a
shellshocked hegemon." Journalists like Robert Novak,
Max Boot and Thomas Friedman have encouraged Mr.
Rumsfeld to resign.
Robert Kagan and William Kristol, two influential
hawks at the neoconservative Weekly Standard, warned
in last week's issue of the widespread bipartisan view
that the war "is already lost or on the verge of being
lost." They called for moving up the election in Iraq
to Sept. 30 to hasten the transition and distract
attention from American mistakes.
"There's a fair amount of conservative despair, which
I respect," Mr. Kristol, the magazine's editor, said
in an interview. "My sentiments are closer to anger
than to angst. My anger is at the administration for
having made many more mistakes than it needed to have
made. But we still have to win and we still can win."
Andrew Sullivan, the conservative blogger, has
questioned whether it was foolish to trust the Bush
administration to wage the war competently. After the
Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Mr. Sullivan posted such
pained thoughts questioning the moral justification
for the war that he was inundated with e-mail messages
telling him to buck up.
"Now I'm being bashed for going wobbly," Mr. Sullivan
said. "I'm still in favor of this war and still
desperately want it to succeed, but when the case we
made for war is undermined by events, we have to
acknowledge that and explain why the case for war
still stands. Sometimes politicians have to stick to
scripts regardless of the facts, but a writer has an
obligation to be more honest."
These second thoughts seem a bit late to some
non-conservative hawks like Kenneth M. Pollack and
Fareed Zakaria. Although Mr. Pollack, a senior fellow
at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution,
wrote an influential book urging war against Iraq, he
called the administration's plan ill-conceived before
the war began. Mr. Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek
International, turned on the administration shortly
after the occupation began.
"All the big mistakes were made in the first three or
four months, when the administration didn't send in
enough troops and spurned international cooperation,"
Mr. Zakaria said. "But the neoconservatives were
cheering them on. Now that it's going south, they're
simply blowing with the wind. In retrospect, the
critics I have a lot of respect for are the realist
conservatives who said long before the war that you're
opening up a hornet's nest and the costs will outweigh
the benefits."
The columnist George Will suggested the administration
get a dose of conservatism without the "neo" prefix,
and Tucker Carlson, of CNN's "Crossfire," said he,
too, had gained respect for old-fashioned
conservatism.
"I supported the war and now I feel foolish," Mr.
Carlson said. "I'm just struck by how many people like
me who were instinctively distrustful of government
forgot to be humble in our expectations. The idea that
the federal government can quickly transform the
Middle East seems odd to me for a conservative. A
basic tenet of conservatism is that it's much easier
to destroy things than to create them - much easier,
and more fun, too."
Mr. Wolfowitz disputed the notion that American
officials had unrealistic expectations. "The purpose
of this war wasn't to remake Iraq any more than the
purpose of World War II was to remake Germany and
Japan," he said. " But having removed Saddam Hussein,
we have to put something better in his place. Do they
think it would have been realistic to continue with
another 12 years of containment after Sept. 11?"
Samuel P. Huntington, the Harvard professor who
famously predicted that the cold war's end would be
followed not by the global spread of Western
capitalism and democracy but by a "clash of
civilizations," said he agreed with the need to combat
foreign enemies with pre-emptive action in some cases.
But he did not consider Iraq one of those imminent
threats and opposed the invasion.
"We just didn't realize how totally different the
culture is in Middle Eastern countries," he said.
"Before the Iraq war, I predicted that we would
quickly defeat Saddam Hussein and then find ourselves
in a second war against the Iraqi people that we could
never win." A similar prediction was issued last fall
by Owen Harries, the former editor of The National
Interest. In an essay in "The American Conservative,"
Mr. Harries quoted Edmund Burke's classic essays on
the dangers of remaking society at home or abroad.
"We may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing
and hitherto unheard of power," Burke wrote of the
British empire in the 1770's. "But every other nation
will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but
that, sooner or later, this state of things must
produce a combination against us which may end in our
ruin."
It would be hyperbolic to say that Burke's heirs quite
share his sense of doom. But they're not sounding much
cheerier these days.
[Thanks to Lance Brown for posting this article on
another website. For additional information on the
Project for the New American century, go to http://www.newamericancentury.org/ .]
[This site, which chronicles the amazing story of
the so-called "Project for the New American Century"
may be accessed at http://www.pnac.info/ . Our thanks
to Jim Sorrells for forwarding. If you haven't already
been aware of the PNAC, this may well be an astonishing
revelation. It's incredible how much "we the people"
have never been told about what the politicians and
think-tank gurus are planning for us... -- Revrickm]
PNAC.INFO - EXPOSING THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN
CENTURY
(An effort to investigate, analyze, and expose the
Project for the New American Century, and its plan for
a "unipolar" world. I guess that's a new think-tamk
"buzzword" -- aren't you impressed?)
May 18, 2004
The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts
[Comments by Jim Sorrells: The following article is
more broadly about how initial supporters of the war
in Iraq are having second thoughts, or doubts about
how it has been conducted. It's relevant to this site
for two reasons:
1) it mentions a number of neoconservatives (Max Boot,
Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, and more) amongst
the ranks of the disappointed, and 2) it speaks of how
traditional conservatives (like CNN pundit Tucker
Carlson, for example) are waking up to the fact that
they allowed themselves to be spun into supporting a
war which is not reflective of a conservative view of
government's role.
That sentiment is summed up best in this sentence:
"How, they wonder, did so many conservatives, who
normally don't trust their government to run a public
school down the street, come to believe that federal
bureaucrats could transform an entire nation in the
alien culture of the Middle East?"
Good question.
The article is worth reading just for the quote near
the end from Edmund Burke about empire. I'm archiving
the entire article here-- you can access the original
at the link above.]
"The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts"
The New York Times > Week in Review
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: May 16, 2004
WASHINGTON - Not long ago, the word "triumphalist" was
being applied to the neoconservatives and other
intellectuals who championed the war in Iraq. Now the
buzzwords are "depressed," "angst-ridden" and "going
wobbly."
After the setbacks in Falluja and Najaf, followed by
the prisoner abuse scandal, hawks are glumly trying to
reconcile the reality in Iraq with the predictions
they made before the war. A few have already given up
on the idea of a stable democracy in Iraq, and many
are predicting failure unless there's a dramatic
change in policy - a new date for elections, a new
secretary of defense, a new exit strategy.
Most blame the administration for botching the
mission, and some are also questioning their own
judgment. How, they wonder, did so many conservatives,
who normally don't trust their government to run a
public school down the street, come to believe that
federal bureaucrats could transform an entire nation
in the alien culture of the Middle East? To these
self-doubting hawks, the conservatives now blaming
American officials for Iraq's problems are reminiscent
of the leftists who kept blaming incompetents in the
Kremlin for the failure of Communism.
Some hawks are staying the course. Donald H. Rumsfeld,
the defense secretary, is still defended by The Wall
Street Journal editorial page and columnists like
Charles Krauthammer, of The Washington Post, and
William Safire, of The New York Times, who has
dismissed the idea of speeding the transition as "cut
and walk fast." Rush Limbaugh has accused liberal
journalists of overreacting to the prison scandal.
When asked on Friday about the criticism from his
fellow neoconservatives, Deputy Secretary of Defense
Paul D. Wolfowitz acknowledged difficulties but seemed
unfazed. "Saddam's murderers and torturers who abused
the Iraqi people for 35 years have proven to be a
tough as well as ruthless enemy," he said. "But no one
should have expected a cakewalk and that's no reason
to go wobbly now. I spend most of my time with
officers and soldiers, and they're not defeatists -
not even the ones who suffered terrible wounds in
Iraq."
But many hawks across the political spectrum are
having public second thoughts. The National Review has
dismissed the Wilsonian ideal of implanting democracy
in Iraq, and has recommended settling for an orderly
society with a non-dictatorial government. David
Brooks, a New York Times columnist, wrote that America
entered Iraq with a "childish fantasy" and is now "a
shellshocked hegemon." Journalists like Robert Novak,
Max Boot and Thomas Friedman have encouraged Mr.
Rumsfeld to resign.
Robert Kagan and William Kristol, two influential
hawks at the neoconservative Weekly Standard, warned
in last week's issue of the widespread bipartisan view
that the war "is already lost or on the verge of being
lost." They called for moving up the election in Iraq
to Sept. 30 to hasten the transition and distract
attention from American mistakes.
"There's a fair amount of conservative despair, which
I respect," Mr. Kristol, the magazine's editor, said
in an interview. "My sentiments are closer to anger
than to angst. My anger is at the administration for
having made many more mistakes than it needed to have
made. But we still have to win and we still can win."
Andrew Sullivan, the conservative blogger, has
questioned whether it was foolish to trust the Bush
administration to wage the war competently. After the
Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Mr. Sullivan posted such
pained thoughts questioning the moral justification
for the war that he was inundated with e-mail messages
telling him to buck up.
"Now I'm being bashed for going wobbly," Mr. Sullivan
said. "I'm still in favor of this war and still
desperately want it to succeed, but when the case we
made for war is undermined by events, we have to
acknowledge that and explain why the case for war
still stands. Sometimes politicians have to stick to
scripts regardless of the facts, but a writer has an
obligation to be more honest."
These second thoughts seem a bit late to some
non-conservative hawks like Kenneth M. Pollack and
Fareed Zakaria. Although Mr. Pollack, a senior fellow
at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution,
wrote an influential book urging war against Iraq, he
called the administration's plan ill-conceived before
the war began. Mr. Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek
International, turned on the administration shortly
after the occupation began.
"All the big mistakes were made in the first three or
four months, when the administration didn't send in
enough troops and spurned international cooperation,"
Mr. Zakaria said. "But the neoconservatives were
cheering them on. Now that it's going south, they're
simply blowing with the wind. In retrospect, the
critics I have a lot of respect for are the realist
conservatives who said long before the war that you're
opening up a hornet's nest and the costs will outweigh
the benefits."
The columnist George Will suggested the administration
get a dose of conservatism without the "neo" prefix,
and Tucker Carlson, of CNN's "Crossfire," said he,
too, had gained respect for old-fashioned
conservatism.
"I supported the war and now I feel foolish," Mr.
Carlson said. "I'm just struck by how many people like
me who were instinctively distrustful of government
forgot to be humble in our expectations. The idea that
the federal government can quickly transform the
Middle East seems odd to me for a conservative. A
basic tenet of conservatism is that it's much easier
to destroy things than to create them - much easier,
and more fun, too."
Mr. Wolfowitz disputed the notion that American
officials had unrealistic expectations. "The purpose
of this war wasn't to remake Iraq any more than the
purpose of World War II was to remake Germany and
Japan," he said. " But having removed Saddam Hussein,
we have to put something better in his place. Do they
think it would have been realistic to continue with
another 12 years of containment after Sept. 11?"
Samuel P. Huntington, the Harvard professor who
famously predicted that the cold war's end would be
followed not by the global spread of Western
capitalism and democracy but by a "clash of
civilizations," said he agreed with the need to combat
foreign enemies with pre-emptive action in some cases.
But he did not consider Iraq one of those imminent
threats and opposed the invasion.
"We just didn't realize how totally different the
culture is in Middle Eastern countries," he said.
"Before the Iraq war, I predicted that we would
quickly defeat Saddam Hussein and then find ourselves
in a second war against the Iraqi people that we could
never win." A similar prediction was issued last fall
by Owen Harries, the former editor of The National
Interest. In an essay in "The American Conservative,"
Mr. Harries quoted Edmund Burke's classic essays on
the dangers of remaking society at home or abroad.
"We may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing
and hitherto unheard of power," Burke wrote of the
British empire in the 1770's. "But every other nation
will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but
that, sooner or later, this state of things must
produce a combination against us which may end in our
ruin."
It would be hyperbolic to say that Burke's heirs quite
share his sense of doom. But they're not sounding much
cheerier these days.
[Thanks to Lance Brown for posting this article on
another website. For additional information on the
Project for the New American century, go to http://www.newamericancentury.org/ .]
posted by Rev. Rick Mitchell, PhD at 11:20 PM
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