Cadre of Iraq War propagandists/architects renames itself.Project for a New American Century = The Foreign Policy Initiative

I pass this along because it's essential to know who's who. Knowing who's behind the thinking (and the fundraising) of an ostensibly "brand new" Washington DC think tank is even more useful than knowing which evil international corporations with major image problems have changed names. In the case of the latter, a somewhat recent example that comes to mind is that of Clear Channel, which spawned Live Nation, which is attempting to conduct a merger with Ticketmaster.

Now the cadre of cynical propagandists who posed as "experts" recommending the invasion of Iraq, a group that once went under the name of Project for a New American Century, has reconstituted itself as The Foreign Policy Initiative. According to an item in The Huffington Post, which was posted on March 31, 2009:

Today in Washington D.C., neoconservatives William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Dan Senor will officially launch their new war incubator -- The Foreign Policy Initiative -- with a half-day conference on "the path to success in Afghanistan" (never mind the fact that Kagan and Kristol declared that "the endgame seems to be in sight in Afghanistan" almost seven years ago). Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and Kagan, Carnegie Endowment fellow and Washington Post columnist, have long histories of advocating policies that rely heavily on the United States exerting its influence throughout the world by using military force.

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'PNAC=MISSION ACCOMPLISHED': Kristol and Kagan -- with support from Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld -- co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in the late 1990s with the mission "to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire." Military force was always an option, and often the preferred one. Indeed, the group led the charge to get President Clinton to sign the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, and it served as a key lobby for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But with neoconservatism now all but dead and its principles soundly rejected in the 2006 and 2008 elections, the face of PNAC 2.0 -- The Foreign Policy Initiative -- is less bellicose. Indeed, as Duss recently noted, "this new very innocuous sounding Foreign Policy Institute" indicates that neoconservatives "understand that they have something of an image problem," adding that it is "encouraging" that they "have some relation to reality." Yet there is no reason to believe there will be much of an ideological shift from its its predecessor, as its main founders -- especially Kristol -- are still deeply wedded to neoconservatism. Indeed, Michael Goldfarb, PNAC alum and editor of The Weekly Standard, wrote on Twitter yesterday: "PNAC=Mission Accomplished; New mission begins tomorrow morning with the launch of FPI."

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Despite the failures of neoconservatism, FPI's mission statement contains the neo-neocon buzz words: military engagement in the world, "rogue regimes," "rogue states," "spread...freedom," "strong military" (with a "defense budget" to back it up), "fascism," "communism," and "pre-9/11 tactics." Discussing FPI with Duss last week, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow asked, "Why is it that people who are catastrophically wrong about big important things like foreign policy and war never, like, flunk out of that as a subject? "There seems to be this special dispensation in American foreign policy that, as long as you are wrong on the side of more military force, then all is forgiven," Duss replied. He added that "the way it works in Washington, if you're arguing for more military intervention which necessitates more military expenditures, you're always going to find someone to fund your think-tank."

O.K., now, the thing is, I'm not really interested in things that Rachel Maddow has to say, and I have no idea who Matt Duss is. But the basic reporting here is sound, and as such, I pass it along to the reader. What with the creeping demise of actual journalism of any kind, one has to take bits of information as one finds them and simply resist the temptation to accept half-baked interpretations of it. Fewer actual reporters and dwindling budgets for overseas bureaus mean that formerly reputable news-reporting organizations are becoming, to an increasing extent, news-interpreting organizations, the task of thinking critically and reflectively becomes maybe more difficult. I don't know... Maybe it doesn't!

And also: I don't think it's bad for people -- even trigger-happy would-be Cold Warriors -- to formulate and express their ideas. I don't even think it's bad for them to, uh, strategize. I do think, however, that it's important to bear in mind the hypocrisy of Kristol in particular, who has been among the lunatics who have deployed the opportunistic and deeply ludicrous slogan Defund The Left! as a way of inveighing against ideas too bothersome to argue on their merits. The phrase attempted to popularize the specious notion that, for example, 'the media' and 'the academy' are spheres of American life that, perniciously, are pervaded by left-wingers, atheists, Marxists (strange, considering that Kristol's dad was, after all, a Trotskyist) and terrorist-coddlers.

I call this hypocrisy, because...well, in effect, Kristol is inviting his political opponents to have a gander at just which -- ahem -- 'disinterested' entities are footing the bill for his and Bob Kagan's singular brand of 'scholarship' and emm, 'journalism'. Or is 'advocacy' maybe a better word?

In the wake of the Iranian elections, it should be unsurprising that this exact same group of people -- whom we might call The "Bomb Iran" contingent -- has expressed a newfound concern for The Iranian People. An empathic bunch.

John McCain is a neocon. And he's advised by the neocons. To vote for John McCain is to beg for 12 continuous years of neoconservatism.

That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen. You know, at first, when John McCain said that he was the candidate of "CHANGE," I thought: That's great!! That way, no matter who wins the election in November, we'll have "CHANGE!" And isn't the need for "CHANGE" something we can all agree on?

Remember Bill Kristol? Yeah, that Bill Kristol; the guy whose tactics for pushing the United States into Iraq included intellectual dishonesty, the adopting of his trademarked self-righteous facial expression of moral superiority, the relentless running of misleading, highly speculative and tendentious and sometimes downright mendacious articles in his ultra-neocon publication The Weekly Standard in order to advance the perception in Washington that war with Iraq was inevitable? The hypocrite who will open his big, smug, wealthy-donor teat-suckling mouth and rattle off a series of just-received GOP talking points in a manner that masquerades as well-informed, individual expertise? The guy who's now, with other neocons, marching us toward a military confrontation with Iran?

The Bill Kristol who accepted millions of dollars in funding from shady ultraconservative organizations like the Bradley Foundation and the Olin Corporation in order to form think tanks like the Project for a New American Century (a.k.a. "PNAC," which also included Paul Wolfowitz, Randy Scheunemann, Robert Kagan, Richard Pearle, William Bennett, Gary Schmitt, Thomas Donnelly, and most of the other celebrity neocons you can think of), in which policy positions and propaganda points on how to push our country into war with Iraq and then Iran were laid out in detail?

You know, the guy featured herein:



(By the way, this must be among Stephen Colbert's greatest-ever moments.)

A vote for John McCain is a vote for Bill "Lies with a Straight Face" Kristol. That Bill Kristol. The William Kristol of The Weekly Standard who now has his own column in the formerly respectable New York Times. (Hope it doesn't seem like I'm worked up about this...)

That must be the "CHANGE" that McCain/Bush is talking about. McCain/Bush. Bush/McCain. La la dee da. McCain/Bush/Bush/Bush/McCain/Mcain. Neoconservatives, the ones who have fashioned our foreign policy for the past eight years, the ones who figured out how to trick us into invading Iraq -- even though most of us weren't tricked because. after all, we saw right through what they were doing. But of course, the thing is, well....we didn't have...uh...any power to stop them.

Nor would we, as it happens, have any power to stop the neocons like Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan and Randy Scheunemann (of whom, more in a moment) under a President McCain. Robert Kagan, by the way, is one of McCain's official foreign policy advisers, a man who would be certain to hold some kind of important position in a McCain administration [which would be indistinguishable, after all, from the Bush administration]. McCain, acting upon the advice of Kagan, will be sure to send us to Iran as quickly as you can say "Gone are our civil liberties, which will continue to be gone forever if you vote for John McCain."

Don't believe me about Kagan? Robert Kagan -- unlike Bill Kristol, toward whom any ad hominem is fair game as far as I'm concerned -- is an amiable enough bloke, but unfortunately, he's eager for us to go to war with Iran and...apparently...Russia. Here's just an introduction to the man and his plan. Remember, he's one among many of John Neocon McCain's neoconservative foreign policy advisers:



Like I said, not as unctuous or viscerally offensive as Kristol. But he's got war on his mind. He can taste it on his tongue. He can feel it in the ripples of fat that cascade up and down his chiny-chin-chin.

So, wait. George W. Bush's 'foreign policy', so to speak, was/is conducted by neocons, in whose number we must include, of course, Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, Randy Scheunemann, Richard Pearle, et al. And don't forget Condi. But anyway, so...the "CHANGE" we'd experience under Neocon John McCain...This must be a species of "CHANGE" with which I'm as of yet unacquainted. Its exact nature is kind of elusive, isn't it? I mean, as "CHANGE" goes, McCain's version is kind of...um...static, isn't it?

Presumably, the "CHANGE" that McCain is talking about is......Is he just talking about the fact that, under a McCain administration, we'd live each and every day of our lives quaking with the fear that that cloying, screechy-voiced, sociopathic, book-burning bitch could become our president? That would, of course, represent a "CHANGE." I continue, as before, to find it difficult to believe that the GOP faithful really want that person to win.

Anyway. My vote goes, as before, to Barack Obama.

For more discussion of McCain's neoconservatism, and his ties with assorted neoconservatives, particularly Robert Kagan and Randy Scheunemann, see:

• The Atlantic Monthly's Andrew Sullivan on McCain's preexisting shady intelligence-gathering and fiscal dealings with hard-core neocon Randy Scheunemann--who is now McCain's Senior Foreign Policy Adviser--and McCain's and Scheunemann's longstanding desire to ignite a conflict between Georgia and Russia, with the United States intervening militarily on Georgia's behalf.
• A piece, featured on therealnews.com, on Randy Scheunemann, "John McCain’s Senior Foreign Policy Adviser, Lobbyist, and a former director of the neo conservative Project for a New American Century." Journalist Chip Berlet reports:

...Scheunemann would play a very major role in shaping McCain's foreign policy... We have in the past had Henry Kissinger and all kinds of other high-profile people, like Zbigniew Brzezinski [inaudible]. It's hard to predict if Scheunemann would play that role, but he wouldn't play that role in as pragmatic a way as Kissinger or Brzezinski played. I mean, we're talking about a very aggressive, pro-militarist, pro-interventionist neoconservative ideologue here who made Kissinger and Brzezinski seem almost like Buddhists in comparison.

...[Under Scheunemann, we can expect] an aggressive kind of foreign policy for the United States which claims the right to intervene diplomatically, and then militarily, in any struggle around the world by constructing that struggle as having an important national security issue involved, so that no matter where there is some kind of trouble, through this McCain foreign policy, controlled by Scheunemann one presumes, we're going to claim the right to intervene instantly, first with sanctions and then with tanks and jets and bombs, to suggest that people need to sort of get in line with our needs. And this is a very, obviously, arrogant foreign policy, and what it's going to do is to continue to separate the United States from the world diplomatic community, which has already grown quite unhappy with the kind of bullying that the United States feels comfortable with. And it'll only get worse in that sense, in terms of an aggressive militarism rooted in this neocon idea of exporting "global democracy," quote-unquote. (Check out the rest of the report.)

• Michael I. Nimon on McCain and his Neocon approach to Georgia in Artvoice (Buffalo, NY)
• Philip Giraldi, "John McCain and the Neocon resurgence"
• Jacob Heilburn on the Neocon canonization of John McCain in The Huffington Post
• Alec Baldwin (yeah, that one) describes the neoconservatism of Sarah Palin in The Huffington Post