Promoting Iraqi Occupation for "a Million Years"
McCain and the International Republican Institute
By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF
Though Arizona Senator John McCain seldom talks about it, he has gotten much of his foreign policy experience working with a cloak and dagger operation called the International Republican Institute (IRI). Since 1993, McCain has served as Chair of the outfit, which is funded by the U.S. government and private money. The group, which receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year, claims to promote democracy world-wide. On the surface at least, IRI seems to have a rather innocuous agenda including party building, media training, the organization of leadership trainings, dissemination of newsletters, and strengthening of civil society.
The hottest country in which IRI currently operates is Iraq. According to the IRI’s own web site, since the summer of 2003 the organization “has conducted a multi-faceted program aimed at promoting the development of democracy in Iraq. Toward this end, IRI works with political parties, indigenous civil society groups, and elected and other government officials. In support of these efforts, IRI also conducts numerous public opinion research projects and assists its Iraqi partners in the production of radio and television ads and programs.”
By law, IRI must operate independently of the Republican Party. However, a former institute grant recipient, Ghassan Atiyyah, the Director of the Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy, said he parted ways with the IRI over his criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the war. In 2004 Atiyyah, who pressed for a secular, liberal government in Iraq, received $116,448 from IRI. "Instead of promoting impartial, better understanding of certain ideas and concepts, they [the IRI] are actually trying to further the cause of the Republican administration," Atiyyah said. Though Atiyyah said IRI never asked him to censor his views, it became clear to the Iraqi that the two parties disagreed politically. When his funding ran out, neither pursued the relationship. "It is a civilized divorce," he said. (Atiyyah eventually fled Iraq for Britain after his life was threatened).
Who is Running IRI?
Such criticisms aside however, IRI’s overall mission statement on its Web site fundamentally strains credibility. How can the IRI, which is caught up in an incestuous political web with the power elite in Washington and U.S. corporations, claim to be an agent of positive change in Iraq? Although officially non-partisan, IRI is closely aligned with the Republican Party. Dick Cheney received the organization’s Freedom Award in late 2001. Other winners have included Condoleezza Rice, Ronald Reagan, Lynne Cheney, Colin Powell, and Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai.
IRI's leadership spans the spectrum of center right, far right, and neoconservative factions of the GOP. Most of the organization’s staff and board have links to right-wing think tanks, foundations, and policy institutes. Former Iraq proconsul Paul Bremer, the disastrous colonial administrator who used to wear a blue blazer and hiking boots, sits on IRI’s Board of Directors.
Also sitting on the board is Randy Scheuneman, a former member of the neo-conservative outfit Project for the New American Century. Scheuneman had long-standing ties to the Iraqi National Congress or INC, a loose coalition of Iraqi dissidents and opposition groups headed by the Iraqi flim-flammer , Ahmed Chalabi.
Shady Scheuneman’s ties to McCain go way back even before IRI. In 2000, he served on the Arizona Senator’s foreign policy team during McCain’s unsuccessful presidential bid. Like McCain, Scheuneman was also active in the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which helped push for official government as well as public support for the invasion of Iraq after the 9/11 terror attacks.
Meanwhile, a who’s who of corporate America chips in to IRI including Blackwater Training Center, part of Blackwater USA. In 2005-6 the company donated $30,000 to IRI. Though Blackwater has fallen under scrutiny as a result of the company’s shooting of 17 people including women and children, the State Department recently decided to renew the firm’s contract.
For Blackwater, the benefits of supporting McCain and IRI are clear: already the Arizona Senator has declared his intention to stay in Iraq “for a thousand years or a million years” if necessary. Behind the scenes, Blackwater is surely praying for a McCain victory in November: Charlie Black, McCain’s chief adviser and a successful Washington lobbyist, has represented the mercenary outfit as well as Chalabi. Black’s connection to Chalabi began in 1999 and continued up until the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
McCain, IRI and Chevron
Though George Bush has scoffed at suggestions that the invasion of Iraq had anything to do with oil, recent press reports give some credence to such claims. In April, Chevron announced that it was involved in discussions with the Iraqi Oil Ministry to increase production in an important oil field in southern Iraq. The discussions were aimed at finalizing a two-year deal, or technical support agreement, to boost production at the West Qurna Stage 1 oil field near Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.
It turns out that Chevron, like Blackwater, has donated to McCain’s IRI. What’s more, since McCain solidified his position as the GOP’s nominee, Chevron Chairman David O'Reilly gave $28,500 to the GOP. Meanwhile lobbyist Wayne Berman, McCain’s National Finance Co-Chairman, counts Chevron as one of his principal clients.
According to Progressive Media USA, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, the Arizona Senator has benefited handily from Big Oil. McCain has taken in at least $700,000 from the oil and gas industry since 1989. In Congress, the Arizona senator has worked tirelessly to advance the interests of the oil industry. For example, McCain’s tax plan gives the top five oil companies $3.8 billion a year in tax breaks. McCain meanwhile has voted against reducing dependence on foreign oil, has twice rejected windfall profits tax for Big Oil, and has voted against taxing oil companies to provide a $100 rebate to consumers.
McCain, IRI and Lockheed Martin
As if these corporate ties were not enough, IRI has also accepted money from Lockheed Martin, the world’s #1 military contractor. The firm has been a McCain donor, giving more than $13,000 through its PAC to the Arizona Senator in 2006. According to the Center for Public Integrity, lobbyist Vin Weber, one of McCain’s top political advisers, counted Lockheed Martin as one of his most important clients.
Early on, Lockheed saw that it could benefit from the war in Iraq. The company’s former vice president, Bruce Jackson, even chaired the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. There, he found common cause with Scheuneman, the group’s President, and McCain, the “honorary co-chair.” Jackson also worked with Scheuneman through The Project for the New American Century, a group that the Lockheed man directed personally.
Jackson goes way back in GOP circles. Between 1986 and 1990, when he was working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, he served under Dick Cheney. He also worked under prominent neo-conservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. In 2000, he chaired the Republican Party Platform's subcommittee for National Security and Foreign Policy when George W. Bush ran for president.
Jackson was also involved in corralling support for the Iraq war from Eastern European countries, and even went so far as to help to write their letter of endorsement for military intervention. Not surprisingly, Lockheed also had business relations with these countries. In 2003 Poland shelled out $3.5 billion for 48 F-16 fighter planes which it was able to purchase with a $3.8 billion loan from the U.S.
During the start of the Iraq invasion, Lockheed Martin’s F-117 stealth attack fighters were used to “shock and awe” the population. Jackson is now working on McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, serving on the Senator’s foreign policy advisory team.
The mainstream press has completely failed to analyze McCain’s long term involvement in the Iraq imbroglio. If they were to delve too deeply, the corporate pundits would have to confront the uncomfortable truth that the military-industrial complex and the oil industry have played an integral role in the invasion and occupation. Surrounding the whole affair are shady figures such as Black, Scheuneman and Jackson and unscrupulous companies like Chevron, Blackwater and Lockheed Martin. At the center of the vortex are none other than IRI and John McCain.
Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan)
http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff06092008.html
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2 comments:
Baseless Conspiracy Theories are Intentionally Misleading
Nickolas Kozloff’s piece is nothing more or less than an attempt to mislead readers about the mission of IRI. He has not contacted IRI to learn about our work, has not seen an IRI program, and undoubtedly has not talked to people who have benefited from IRI’s help. He portrays IRI’s work as an effort to interfere in foreign countries, conveniently omitting that IRI’s work, like that of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), has been funded by successive administrations, Democrat and Republican, since our founding almost 25 years ago.
He quotes Ghassan Atiyyah, a former institute grant recipient, as saying he parted ways with IRI over his criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of the war. If Kozloff had asked IRI he would have learned that IRI staff working with Mr. Atiyyah in Iraq were also critical of U.S. government efforts. He also fails to explain that after Mr. Atiyyah completed work for the grant, IRI recommended him to the National Endowment for Democracy for further funding.
If Kozloff had bothered to ask he would have learned that Chevron has also contributed money to NDI, as has Lockheed Martin. Contrary to Kozloff’s assertion, John McCain hardly needs IRI to extend his foreign policy knowledge. Finally, Kozloff’s claim that IRI and Senator McCain were at the center of the Iraq invasion is, like the rest of his screed, silly and baseless.
Thank you for your comment. I would suggest that you look at the signatories to PNAC and you will find John McCain intimately involved.
See:
http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/pnac_chart/pnac.html
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PNAC: Please Contact the Billing/Support Department
By Alexander Zaitchik
The website of the Project for the New American Century went offline last month, spurring conspiratorial rumors regarding the once-prominent neoconservative group, which had been a vocal proponent of regime change in Iraq before and after 9/11 and had displayed a knack for coalition-building across the political spectrum. Though its former executive director says the dead website is due to a forgetful accountant, PNAC’s loss of support reaches beyond the technical. Read full story.http://rightweb.irc-online.org/
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was established in 1997 by a number of leading neoconservative writers and pundits to advocate aggressive U.S. foreign policies and “rally support for American global leadership.” One of the group’s founding documents claimed, “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.”1
PNAC, which phased out most operations by 2006 and let its website expire (possibly temporarily) in May 2008,2 was perhaps best known for its ability to attract divergent political factions behind its foreign policy agenda, which the group repeatedly demonstrated with its numerous sign-on letters and public statements. PNAC forged an influential coalition of rightist political actors in support of its calls for an aggressive “war on terror” aimed largely at the Middle East, including the invasion of Iraq. Although some observers have exaggerated its impact—two scholars, for instance, argued in the Sociological Quarterly that PNAC almost single-handedly “developed, sold, enacted, and justified a war with Iraq” 3 —the group was arguably the most effective proponent of neoconservative ideas during the period between the beginning of President Bill Clinton's second term and President George W. Bush’s 2003 decision to invade Iraq.4
PNAC's 1997 "Statement of Principles" set forth an ambitious agenda for foreign and military policy that William Kristol and Robert Kagan, PNAC’s founders, described as "neo-Reaganite."5 Signatories of this charter document included many leading figures from the Christian Right and other conservative political factions. The statement argued, "We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the U.S. global responsibilities."6
Among PNAC's staff and directors were Kristol (chairman), Kagan, Bruce Jackson, Mark Gerson, Randy Scheunemann, Ellen Bork (deputy director), Gary Schmitt (senior fellow), Thomas Donnelly (senior fellow), Reuel Gerecht (director of the Middle East Initiative), Timothy Lehmann, (assistant director), and Michael Goldfarb (research associate).7 In addition, a host of mainly conservative figures supported PNAC’s various sign-on letters and policy statements. (See "A Complete List of PNAC Signatories and Contributing Writers," Right Web.)
Origins and Agenda
Before establishing PNAC, neoconservatives and their allies among hardline nationalists, including Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, began aggressively promoting ideas meant to replace the militant anticommunism that dominated U.S. policy during much of the Cold War. A key step in this process was the 1995 establishment of the Weekly Standard by two scions of the neoconservative movement—William Kristol (son of Irving) and John Podhoretz (son of Norman). Together with Fred Barnes, a former correspondent for The New Republic, they secured funding from media mogul Rupert Murdoch to support the magazine, which quickly replaced Commentary as the high-profile outlet of neoconservative ideas.
In 1996, Kristol and Kagan wrote an article for Foreign Affairs that become a sort of founding statement for the new neoconservative agenda. Entitled "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," the article established several pillars of a post-Cold War foreign policy agenda, including maintaining a benevolent hegemony based in part on a willingness to use force unilaterally and preemptively. Kristol and Kagan asked rhetorically: “What should the U.S. role be? Benevolent global hegemony. Having defeated the 'evil empire,' the United States enjoys strategic and ideological predominance. The first objective of U.S. foreign policy should be to preserve and enhance that predominance by strengthening America's security, supporting its friends, advancing its interests, and standing up for its principles around the world."8
The main enemy was internal; in Kagan and Kristol’s opinion, it was “time once again to challenge an indifferent America and a confused American conservatism." They added: "In a world in which peace and American security depend on American power and the will to use it, the main threat the United States faces now and in the future is its own weakness. American hegemony is the only reliable defense against a breakdown of peace and international order. The appropriate goal of American foreign policy, therefore, is to preserve that hegemony as far into the future as possible. To achieve this goal, the United States needs a neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military supremacy and moral confidence."9
PNAC served as an institutional vehicle for advocating the ideas laid out in this article. Housed in the same Washington, D.C. office building as the American Enterprise Institute, PNAC was staffed by a number of emerging neoconservatives who generated statements and open letters on various themes and marshaled the gathering of signatures of elite political actors. The founding of PNAC marked a "complete generational transition" in neoconservatism that occurred somewhere "between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Bosnian war," write conservative scholars Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke in their 2004 book America Alone. "By the later half of the 1990s, Kagan, William Kristol, [Joshua] Muravchik, [Richard] Perle, [and Paul] Wolfowitz ... had assumed the leadership roles that had long been held by Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Norman Podhoretz. The younger neoconservatives had filled a space left by the increasing inability of older neoconservative views to provide a sufficient interpretative framework for the changing realities of international events in the 1990s."10
PNAC's June 1997 statement of principles repeated many of the same goals laid out in Kristol and Kagan’s Foreign Affairs article, including the use of preemptive force. The statement argued that "the history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire." Responding to what they saw as the confusion of the Clinton administration, the statement called for a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" that would be based on several key pillars. "We need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future; we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values; we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad; we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."11
Establishing the format that would be used in later PNAC publications, the statement of principles was published letter-style and signed by an impressive list of supporters. Although many of the signatories to the statement of principles (and other PNAC documents) were neoconservatives, young and old—such as Elliott Abrams, Norman Podhoretz, George Wiegel, Midge Decter, Frank Gaffney, and I. Lewis Libby—there were also representatives from other political and social sectors, including Religious Right leaders like Gary Bauer; mainstream Republicans like Steve Forbes, social conservatives like William Bennett; hawkish nationalists like Peter Rodman, Rumsfeld, and Cheney; and prominent academic proponents of some neoconservative ideas like Francis Fukuyama and Eliot Cohen. This range of support demonstrated PNAC’s success as an instrument for building a broader coalition of influential militarists around the neoconservative ideas and objectives of its founders. Nearly a dozen of the original signatories would, some four years later, obtain posts in the George W. Bush administration, including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Paula Dobriansky, Zalmay Khalilzad, Abrams, and Libby.12
In the wake of 9/11, the agenda items outlined in PNAC’s founding statement reemerged in the form of Bush's 2002 National Security Strategy, the definitive statement of the so-called Bush Doctrine.13 As described by leading international relations scholar Robert Jervis, the Bush Doctrine is composed of "a strong belief in the importance of a state's domestic regime in determining its foreign policy and the related judgment that this is an opportune time to transform international politics; the perception of great threats that can be defeated only by new and vigorous policies, most notably preventive war; a willingness to act unilaterally when necessary; and, as both a cause and a summary of these beliefs, an overriding sense that peace and stability require the United States to assert its primacy in world politics."14
Open Letters and Other Publications
PNAC published more than a dozen open letters—usually sent to the president or other public officials—on issues ranging from the defense of Taiwan to the need to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic. Demonstrating PNAC's ability to pull together different elements of the political landscape, some letters were supported by traditionally liberal groups and individuals like the International Crisis Group, Morton Abramowitz, and Morton Halperin, as well as by evangelical Christians, social conservatives, liberal hawks in the Democratic Party, and elite proponents of “realism.”
Among its various concerns PNAC’s first order of business was Iraq, which as George Packer wrote in his 2005 book The Assassins' Gate, would serve "as the test case for [neoconservative] ideas about American power and world leadership."15 Upset over the failure of the first President Bush to oust Saddam Hussein, neoconservatives had long been agitating for more aggressive U.S. action, penning numerous articles on the subject, creating pressure groups like the revived Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (whose members included Abrams, Khalilzad, Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, and David Wurmser), and attracting other factions of the Republican establishment to the cause.16 In Iraq, PNAC and its allies apparently saw an opportunity to accomplish two separate but related goals: to show the world that the United States was the dominant global power by undertaking, in the words of Charles Krauthammer, “unapologetic demonstrations of will”17 ; and to begin a dramatic restructuring of the Middle East political landscape along lines consistent with the neoconservatives’ vision for Israeli security, which they had outlined in numerous documents since the mid-1990s.18
In January 1998, PNAC published an open letter to President Bill Clinton arguing that "containment" of Iraq "has been steadily eroding," jeopardizing the region and, potentially, beyond. "Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate."19 PNAC followed up a few months later with an open letter to Senate leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA), arguing that the "only way to protect the United States and its allies from the threat of weapons of mass destruction [is] to put in place policies that would lead to the removal of Saddam and his regime from power."20
Those who signed these letters included many signatories to PNAC’s statement of principles, as well as future realist-inclined Bush administration officials Richard Armitage and Robert Zoellick. PNAC set up a meeting in 1998 between Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Perle, and Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security advisor, to argue the case for intervention.21 In February 1998, Wolfowitz had testified before the House International Relations Committee that regime change in Iraq was the "only way to rescue the region and the world from the threat" posed by Hussein. Revealing another aspect of neoconservative alliance-building in the years leading up to George W. Bush’s presidency, Wolfowitz added that the United States should recognize "a provisional government of free Iraq," and that the best place to look for such a government was "with the current organization and principles of the Iraqi National Congress."22 Thus, write Halper and Clarke, "in only a few years since the Soviet collapse, neoconservatism had refocused itself as an interventionist lobby intent above all else on waging a second Gulf war.”23
During Clinton's second term, PNAC organized two open letters to the president (the first on Iraq; the second on Milosevic); one letter to congressional leaders (on Iraq); and one general statement (on the "Defense of Taiwan"). (See "A Complete List of PNAC Signatories and Contributing Writers," Right Web.) In 2000, PNAC published a book and a report, both of which were designed as blueprints for a new U.S. foreign and military policy. The book, Present Dangers, included work from many PNAC associates and other neoconservatives; the report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," written largely by PNAC's Donnelly, offered an agenda for military transformation that echoed many ideas that first gained prominence in the 1992 Draft Defense Policy Guidance.24
In 2001, several individuals associated with PNAC letter-writing campaigns entered the administration of George W. Bush (in particular in the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice President). (See “PNAC Contributors and Signatories from the George W. Bush Administration,” Right Web.) It was not, however, until after 9/11 that the PNAC agenda began to take hold.25
Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, on September 20, 2001, PNAC issued an open letter to Bush that commended his newly declared “war on terrorism” and urged him not only to target Osama bin Laden but also other supposed "perpetrators," including Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah. The most notorious of PNAC’s many publications, this letter made one of the first arguments for regime change in Iraq as part of the war on terror, arguing that this was necessary even if the Hussein regime was unconnected to the attacks. "It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism."26
The letter also pointed out that to undertake this new war, it would be necessary to inject more money into the U.S. defense budget: "A serious and victorious war on terrorism will require a large increase in defense spending. Fighting this war may well require the United States to engage a well-armed foe, and will also require that we remain capable of defending our interests elsewhere in the world. We urge that there be no hesitation in requesting whatever funds for defense are needed to allow us to win this war." 27
In April 2002, PNAC followed up its push toward war with a letter to Bush on "Israel, Arafat, and the War on Terrorism.” Calling for more assertive action in helping Israel fight terrorism, the letter stated, “Israel’s fight against terrorism is our fight.… For reasons both moral and strategic, we need to stand with Israel in its fight against terrorism.” It argued that “one spoke of the terrorist network consists of Yasser Arafat and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority.… Mr. Arafat has demonstrated time and again that he cannot be part of the peaceful solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The letter also reiterated the call for removing Saddam Hussein from power: “If we do not move against Saddam Hussein and his regime, the damage our Israeli friends and we have suffered until now may someday appear but a prelude to much greater horrors. Moreover, we believe that the surest path to peace in the Middle East lies not through appeasement of Saddam and other local tyrants, but through a renewed commitment on our part, as you suggested in your State of the Union address, to the birth of freedom and democratic government in the Islamic world.”28
Those who signed this letter included social conservatives and Religious Right figures like Gary Bauer as well as liberal hawks like Marshall Wittmann. Richard Perle, Jim Woolsey, Ken Adelman, and Eliot Cohen—neoconservative members of the Defense Policy Board—signed on, as did others from the neoconservative network including Robert and Donald Kagan, Daniel Pipes, Norman Podhoretz, Gary Schmitt, Joshua Muravchik, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Bruce Jackson, William Kristol, Frank Gaffney, and several others.
Two months later, Bush made a dramatic about-face in U.S. policy on Israel and Palestine. After months of tit-for-tat violence between the Israelis and Palestinian militants, which included several large-scale suicide bombings and the decision by the government of Arial Sharon to place Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah under siege, Bush announced at a Rose Garden press conference on June 24, 2003, that he would no longer negotiate with Arafat and urged Palestinians to elect new leaders who were “not compromised by terror.” Once a democratically elected government was in place, Bush said, the United States would support the creation of a Palestinian state.29 The announcement, which directly contradicted a proposal by Colin Powell to set up an international conference as part of an effort to revive negotiations toward Palestinian-Israeli peace, was “a milestone,” as writer James Mann put it. “For the first time the United States had explicitly abandoned Arafat, declaring that America would support a Palestinian state only if it was not under his leadership.”30
In March 2003, on the first day of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and again nine days later, PNAC issued statements on “post-war Iraq.”31 Notably, these statements included many liberal hawks as signatories and, in the second statement, the grudging acceptance that the United States must look to the international community for help with reconstruction and pacifying the country. One concern of the neoconservatives at the time was the mounting calls for an early exit from Iraq. Said the first statement, “Everyone—those who have joined the coalition, those who have stood aside, those who opposed military action, and, most of all, the Iraqi people and their neighbors—must understand that we are committed to the rebuilding of Iraq and will provide the necessary resources and will remain for as long as it takes.”32
Tom Barry of the International Relations Center wrote that, “Two PNAC letters in March 2003 played to those Democrats who believed that the invasion was justified at least as much by humanitarian concerns as it was by the purported presence of weapons of mass destruction.”33 Signatories to the statements included several Democrats.
On January 28, 2005, PNAC issued its final open letter. Addressed to congressional leaders, it requested that they "take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps." At least 25,000 troops a year would be needed to meet what Condoleezza Rice called the country's "generational commitment" to fighting terrorism in the greater Middle East. Turning on some of its erstwhile allies in the Bush administration, like Rumsfeld, the letter stated: "The administration has been reluctant to adapt to this new reality.… We understand the dangers of continued federal deficits and the fiscal difficulty of increasing the number of troops. But the defense of the United States is the first priority of the government."34 This letter was notable for the many liberal hawks and liberal internationalists—Peter Beinart, Paul Kennedy, Will Marshall, Michael O'Hanlon, and James Steinberg—who joined the neoconservatives in signing.
The most recent PNAC report, "Iraq: Setting the Record Straight," published in April 2005, is an apologia for the invasion and war. It concludes that Bush's decision to act "derived from a perception of Saddam's intentions and capabilities, both existing and potential, and was grounded in the reality of Saddam's prior behavior." The authors blame the reporting of the UN inspection teams and U.S. government statements, which they say "left wide gaps in the public understanding of what the president faced on March 18, 2003, and what we have learned since." The report also charged that administration critics "selectively used material in the historical record to reinforce their case against the president's policy."35
PNAC's activities dwindled after 2005, with its activity limited to publishing a few articles by staffers Ellen Bork and Gary Schmitt in the Weekly Standard. In May 2008, news that PNAC’s website closed down spread quickly in the blogosphere. Commenting on the group’s apparent final demise, Jim Lobe of the Inter Press Service wrote, “Visitors to the former web site are diverted to another one that says, ‘This Account Has Been Suspended. Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.’ A metaphor, perhaps, for the bankruptcy of the ideas that inspired the project and the strategic disaster that they produced for U.S. interests in Iraq, the greater Middle East, and the wider world?”36
PNAC’s Legacy
Several organizations and advocacy groups that shared PNAC's views about U.S. global dominance—and also had overlapping memberships—emerged in response to the Bush administration’s war on terror. Many of these entities—such as the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, the U.S. Committee on NATO, the Committee on the Present Danger, and the Coalition for Democracy in Iran—were formed as ad hoc pressure groups that were closely associated with PNAC and have now folded or become dormant. Other groups, notably Clifford May’s Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), have evolved as major institutions with large budgets and staffs.
Despite PNAC's efforts to forge a consensus around neoconservative ideas, many differences surfaced among the circle of hawks and social conservatives that PNAC brought together in 1997. Some, like Francis Fukuyama, have backed away from the imperialism of PNAC and the neoconservative camp. While generally supportive of the Bush administration's stance on the war on terror, many rightists became critical of the neoconservatives’ foreign, military, and domestic policies, creating divisions between PNAC associates in and outside government.37
In a widely noted January 2004 National Interest article titled “The Neoconservative Moment,” Fukuyama argued that the neoconservatives had failed to acknowledge “new facts” about the situation in Iraq and elsewhere. These new facts, he said, included "the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the virulent and steadily mounting anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East, the growing insurgency in Iraq, the fact that no strong democratic leadership had emerged there, the enormous financial and growing human cost of the war, the failure to leverage the war to make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and the fact that America's fellow democratic allies had by and large failed to fall in line and legitimate American actions ex post.”38
Although the neoconservative camp and its allies, including Cheney's foreign policy team, continued to push for military action against Iran during Bush’s last year in office, public differences began to emerge over issues such as which groups should receive U.S. assistance, whether there are non-violent means to effect change in Iran, and whether Tehran poses as grave a threat as once thought.39
Ultimately, however, as a mechanism through which the neoconservatives built a cohesive—if often turbulent—coalition of political elites in support of their agenda, PNAC demonstrated that through a propitious combination of astute political organizing and dramatic outside events (e.g., 9/11), even a small group of ideologues like the neoconservatives can help shape the preferences of key sectors of the political landscape. Repeating a pattern established by similar letterhead groups from the past, most notably the various incarnations of the Committee on the Present Danger in the 1950s and 1970s, PNAC demonstrated the vulnerability of national security to campaigns that use fear of impending doom at the hands of a mortal enemy to mobilize public and elite action.40
PNAC successfully harnessed another tactic used by it predecessors: the evocation of deeply engrained ideas in the United States about the country’s exceptionalism, moral superiority, and national greatness. An earlier example of this came soon after World War II, when George Kennan’s 1947 article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” outlined what would become U.S. deterrence policy. In an observation about the ability of Kennan’s formulation to win adherents, scholar Bruce Kuklick wrote: “It brought together strands of thought floating around Washington, blending a no-nonsense program for political action with moralistic denunciation of a dangerous but beatable enemy. Kennan took his place in a long tradition of American calls to arms, from John Winthrop to Manifest Destiny.”41 To that “long tradition” one might also add PNAC—with the caveat that while Kennan’s deterrence theory served as the dominant paradigm of U.S. foreign policy for more than four decades, PNAC’s call for a post-Cold War recipe of aggressive interventionism and unilateralism appeared to fall out of favor within the span of a single presidency.
Foundation Support
From 2000 to 2005, PNAC received $241,735 in grants from several conservative foundations, including the Earhart, Olin, and William H. Donner foundations.42 From 1994 to 2005, the New Citizenship Project, which sponsored PNAC and whose chairman was Kristol, received $3.5 million in grants, mostly from the largest right-wing foundations: Bradley, Olin, and Scaife. The Bradley Foundation was PNAC's largest source of foundation support, granting PNAC $800,000 from 1997 to 2005. In its first year of operations, PNAC received grants from Bradley, Sarah Scaife, and Olin foundations.43
Contact Information
Project for the New American Century
1150 17th Street NW, Suite 510
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202-293-4983
Website: URL (formerly newamericancentury.org)
PNAC Participants
* A Complete List of PNAC Signatories and Contributing Writers (1997-2005)
* PNAC Contributors and Signatories from the Reagan Administration
* PNAC Contributors and Signatories from the George H.W. Bush Administration
* PNAC Contributors and Signatories from in the Clinton Administration
* PNAC Contributors and Signatories from the George W. Bush Administration
NAC Letters and Statements
* Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces, January 28, 2005.
* Letter of 100 on Democracy in Russia, September 28, 2004.
* Statement in Support of the People of Hong Kong, Project for the New American Century and the U.S. Committee for Hong Kong, June 29, 2004.
* Second Statement on Post-War Iraq, March 28, 2003.
* Statement on Post-War Iraq, March 19, 2003.
* Letter to President Bush on the Defense Budget, January 23, 2003.
* Letter to President Bush on Hong Kong, Project for the New American Century and the U.S. Committee for Hong Kong, November 25, 2002.
* Letter to President Bush on Israel, Arafat and the War on Terrorism, April 3, 2002.
* Letter to President Bush on the War on Terrorism, September 20, 2001.
* Statement on the Defense of Taiwan, August 20, 1999.
* Letter to the President on Milosevic, September 20, 1998.
* Letter to Gingrich and Lott on Iraq, May 29, 1998.
* Letter to President Clinton on Iraq, January 26, 1998.
* Statement of Principles, June 3, 1997.
Sources
1. Project for the New American Century, “Statement of Principles,” June 3, 1997, http://web.archive.org/web/20070810113753/www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm.
2. Jim Lobe, “PNAC No More?” Inter Press Service, LobeLog.com, May 20, 2008, http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=145.
3. David Altheide and Jennifer Grimes, "War Programming: The Propaganda Project and the Iraq War," Sociological Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 4, 2005.
4. Jim Lobe and Michael Flynn, “The Rise and Decline of the Neoconservatives: A Right Web Special Report,” Right Web, November 17, 2006, http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/3713.html.
5. Robert Kagan and William Kristol, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, July/August 1996; Project for the New American Century, “Statement of Principles,” June 3, 1997, http://web.archive.org/web/20070810113753/www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm.
6. Project for the New American Century, “Statement of Principles,” June 3, 1997, http://web.archive.org/web/20070810113753/www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm.
7. Project for the New American Century, “About PNAC,” http://web.archive.org/web/20070811202256/www.newamericancentury.org/aboutpnac.htm.
8. Robert Kagan and William Kristol, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, July/August 1996.
9. Robert Kagan and William Kristol, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, July/August 1996.
10. Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 99.
11. Project for the New American Century, “Statement of Principles,” June 3, 1997, http://web.archive.org/web/20070810113753/www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm.
12. Project for the New American Century, “Statement of Principles,” June 3, 1997.
13. Jim Lobe and Michael Flynn, “The Rise and Decline of the Neoconservatives: A Right Web Special Report,” Right Web, November 17, 2006, http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/3713.html.
14. Cited in Chris Dolan and David Cohen, "The War about the War: Iraq and the Politics of National Security Advising in the G.W. Bush Administration's First Term," Politics & Policy, vol. 34, no. 1, March 2006.
15. George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), p. 36.
16. Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
17. Charles Krauthammer, “The Bush Doctrine,” Time magazine, February 26, 2001.
18. See, for instance, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” 1996, which argued that “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq [is] an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.”
19. Project for the New American Century, “Letter to President Clinton on Iraq,” January 26, 1998, http://web.archive.org/web/20070810113947/www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm.
20. Project for the New American Century, “Letter to Gingrich and Lott,” May 29, 1998, http://web.archive.org/web/20070814062038/www.newamericancentury.org/iraqletter1998.htm.
21. Chris Dolan and David Cohen, "The War about the War: Iraq and the Politics of National Security Advising in the G.W. Bush Administration's First Term," Politics & Policy, Vol. 34, No. 1, March 2006.
22. Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 101-102.
23. Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 102.
24. PNAC, “Letters/Statements,” http://web.archive.org/web/20070811201657/www.newamericancentury.org/lettersstatements.htm; PNAC, “Publications/Reports,” http://web.archive.org/web/20070810113423/www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm.
25. Jim Lobe and Michael Flynn, “The Rise and Decline of the Neoconservatives: A Right Web Special Report,” Right Web, November 17, 2006.
26. PNAC, “Letter to President Bush on the War on Terrorism,” September 20, 2001, http://web.archive.org/web/20070807153905/www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm.
27. PNAC, “Letter to President Bush on the War on Terrorism,” September 20, 2001, http://web.archive.org/web/20070807153905/www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm.
28. PNAC, “Letter to President Bush on Israel, Arafat, and the War on Terrorism,” April 3, 2002, http://web.archive.org/web/20070811110437/www.newamericancentury.org/Bushletter-040302.htm.
29. For an account of these events, see James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New York: Viking Penguin, 2004), pp. 324-327.
30. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New York: Viking Penguin, 2004), p. 326.
31. PNAC, “Statement on Post-War Iraq,” March 19, 2003, http://web.archive.org/web/20070812114013/www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20030328.htm; PNAC, “Second Statement on Post-War Iraq,” March 28, 2003, http://web.archive.org/web/20070812114013/www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20030328.htm.
32. PNAC, “Statement on Post-War Iraq,” March 19, 2003, http://web.archive.org/web/20070812114013/www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20030328.htm.
33. Tom Barry, “Liberals and Neocons: Together Again,” Antiwar.com, February 11, 2005, http://www.antiwar.com/barry/?articleid=4799.
34. PNAC, “Letter to Congress on Increasing Ground Forces,” January 28, 2005, http://web.archive.org/web/20070814010806/www.newamericancentury.org/defense-20050128.htm.
35. “Iraq: Setting the Record Straight,” Report of the Project for the New American Century, April 2005, http://web.archive.org/web/20070302124000/www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-042005.pdf.
36. Jim Lobe, “PNAC No More?” LobeLog.com, May 20, 2008, http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=145
37. Timothy Noah, “Neocon Crackup,” Slate.com, September 8, 2003, http://www.slate.com/id/2088060/
38. Francis Fukuyama, "The Neoconservative Moment," National Interest, January 6, 2004.
39. Tom Barry, “Iran Freedom and Regime Politics,” Right Web, May 19, 2006, http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/3277.html.
40. See Jerry Sanders’ history of the CPDs, Peddlers of Crisis: The Committee on the Present Danger (Boston: South End Press, 1983).
41. Bruce Kuklick, Blind Oracles: Intellectuals and War from Kennan to Kissinger (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006).
42. Media Transparency, "Grants to the PNAC," www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=2243.
43. Media Transparency, "Grants to New Citizenship Project, Inc," www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=258.
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