"They're dominating the thinking of this administration, no question
about it," foreign policy analyst John C. Hulsman of the Heritage
Foundation said of the neocons.
While Bush has presented the looming Iraq war as a response to 9/11,
Grow said that to Wolfowitz, it isn't fundamentally about terrorism or
weapons of mass destruction or U.N. resolutions.
To Wolfowitz and the neocons, Iraq represents the weak spot in the
chain of nations to which they plan to bring American notions of
democracy and capitalism, Grow said.
In their vision, war with Iraq is followed by democratization of Iraq,
then democratization -- by military means or otherwise -- of other
Arab states, then a rolling of the momentum into Asia, with special
emphasis on North Korea and China, Grow said.
Hulsman of the Heritage Foundation likened the group to a "drunken
gambler, who keeps doubling down, betting his entire bankroll on every
roll of the dice. The trouble is, they have to win every bet or they
are wiped out."
Who are these guys?
A coterie of Republican foreign policy heavyweights, including Vice
President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have
signed on to some of the neocon views.
Weber said the key players have been William Kristol, editor of the
Weekly Standard; Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board,
and Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense.
Weber said Kristol is the group's political strategist, Perle is the
chief geostrategic thinker and Wolfowitz is the group's key member
within the administration.
Wolfowitz is widely credited with putting the overthrow of Saddam
Hussein onto the front burner of administration goals.
They are no secret cabal.
Through an organization called the Project for a New American Century
(PNAC), and through the pages of the Weekly Standard, they publish
their views, sometimes in the form of open letters to the president.
Most of the neocons served under Reagan and the first President Bush.
In 1992, Wolfowitz wrote a draft of a U.S. defense policy statement
that said the U.S. goal in the post-Cold War world should be to
perpetuate U.S. global predominance, to preclude the rise of any power
that could challenge it and to prevent untrustworthy states from
acquiring weapons of mass destruction -- by preemptive military action
if necessary.
The draft was never adopted.
The neocons spent the Clinton years out of government. Kristol, who
had been Vice President Dan Quayle's chief of staff, started the
Weekly Standard.
Wolfowitz became dean of the School of Advanced International Studies
at Johns Hopkins University.
In 1997 they and many like-minded neocons formed PNAC.
The group's founding principles called President Bill Clinton's
foreign policy "incoherent" and "adrift" and unlikely to "advance
American interests in the new century."
Among their top priorities:
"increase defense spending significantly," "challenge regimes hostile
to our interests and values," "promote the cause of political and
economic freedom abroad" and "accept responsibility for America's
unique role in preserving and extending an international order
friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles."
The 25 signers included Wolfowitz, Weber, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Quayle,
Lewis Libby, who is now Cheney's chief of staff, Zalmay Khalilzad, who
is now Bush's special envoy to the Iraqi opposition, and Jeb Bush, now
governor of Florida.
In 1998, PNAC publicly urged Clinton to finish off Saddam.
That letter concluded that "American policy cannot continue to be
crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the U.N. Security
Council."
In "Present Dangers," a 2000 anthology of essays by PNAC members,
"regime change" was identified as an appropriate goal for Iraq, Iran,
North Korea and China.
Wolfowitz was among the group that advised George W. Bush on foreign
policy during the 2000 campaign.
Within days of the 9/11 attack, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld advocated
overthrowing Saddam as part of the U.S. response, despite a lack of
evidence connecting the dictator to the hijackings.
Powell argued against the idea, and Bush deferred the question.
By his January 2002 State of the Union address, when he identified the
"axis of evil," Bush seemed to be moving toward a neocon world view,
some experts said.
The decision to attack Iraq, to do so even without U.N. backing, and
the argument that Saddam's demise could start a wave of regional
democratization were consistent with the neocons' thinking.
When the 9/11 attacks occurred, the neocons "moved into the breach and
exploited it brilliantly for their purposes," according to Ronald
Steel of the University of South California.
Steel believes that Bush, whose foreign policy ideas were largely
unformed before 9/11, was drawn to a formula that combined action to
make Americans safer with the long-standing U.S. impulse to spread
democracy. "Americans like to feel that their foreign policy is
moral," Steel said.
While Bush has presented the looming Iraq war as a response to 9/11,
Grow said that to Wolfowitz, it isn't fundamentally about terrorism or
weapons of mass destruction or U.N. resolutions.
To Wolfowitz and the neocons, Iraq represents the weak spot in the
chain of nations to which they plan to bring American notions of
democracy and capitalism, Grow said.
In their vision, war with Iraq is followed by democratization of Iraq,
then democratization -- by military means or otherwise -- of other
Arab states, then a rolling of the momentum into Asia, with special
emphasis on North Korea and China, Grow said.
Hulsman of the Heritage Foundation likened the group to a "drunken
gambler, who keeps doubling down, betting his entire bankroll on every
roll of the dice. The trouble is, they have to win every bet or they
are wiped out."
>From The Star Tribune, 3/16/03:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1762/3758290.html
A world safe for democracy, or perpetual war?
Eric Black, Star Tribune
An influential group of foreign policy thinkers sees the possibly
imminent overthrow of Saddam Hussein as just one early step in an
ambitious blueprint to spread democracy throughout the world and
eliminate threats to the United States.
Although they developed their thinking long before the Sept. 11
attacks, the strategists, often called neoconservatives or neocons,
have increased their influence over the Bush administration since
Sept. 11, many foreign policy analysts say.
Critics argue that the neocon ideas, including "regime change," are a
recipe for perpetual war, because they would steer the United States
into many confrontations.
There would be a long list of regimes to be changed.
But the neocons themselves and their supporters say that the United
States has an unprecedented historical opportunity to reshape the
world in ways that will make our country safer and the rest of the
world freer.
The neocons, who sometimes call themselves neo-Reaganites, say the key
concept is not perpetual war but "moral clarity backed by military
strength."
Former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber, now a Washington insider, has
signed some of the neocons' public declarations.
He describes their goal as using U.S. power to do good.
"I think we have done some good in Afghanistan," Weber said.
"I believe we will do good in Iraq, and there are other opportunities
to do good as well."
Over the past decade, the neocons have argued that the United States
should challenge evil regimes in the Mideast and Asia, spread freedom,
democracy and capitalism, jettison Cold War thinking based on
deterrence and containment, and de-emphasize old treaties and
alliances that get in the way.
Instead of seeking to manage or contain problems and threats, the
neocons want to seize this moment of U.S. predominance to eradicate
them.
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