I didn’t vote for Bush in the last election – not so much because of worries about him, or his support by the religious right. The far right and left have been shouting at one another from the trenches for decades, and abortion, gay rights, etc. will always be a battle-ground.
My concerns were that, if something happened to George W. Bush, we’d find ourselves being “led” by Cheney and his ideological buddies at the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) – and that scares me.
My bringing this up late in 2005 may seem odd, but the ongoing chatter and yammer about “Plamegate”, WMDs, CIA reports, and Jimmy Carter’s statements (on CNN.com this morning), have kept my original misgivings alive and well.
The former president said, “Americans Were Misled on War“.
No we weren’t. There was no secrecy about our intent. I really cannot figure out why Americans are even slightly surprised that the executive level of our government might have been willing to take any excuse – no matter its credibility – and run with it into Iraq. Our current leaders have planned to go there for a decade.
Since 1997, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and many other well-known individuals have been quite open about their goal of (in part) a “foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad“. In June of that year, PNAC published its “Statement of Principles“, and have since been moving forward almost unimpeded with their long-standing agenda.
“The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge” [emphasis mine]
This policy of preemptive strikes to “promote American principles” is known to the world as American Imperialism – and we put this ideology into power. Folks – these are the neoconservatives. The “neocons”. Surely you’ve heard of them. So why the surprise?
Why are we even having dialogue about Iraq, or those mysterious Weapons of Mass Destruction? What difference does it make whether the intelligence about Iraq’s capabilities was credible, or looked at carefully?
We gave them a “mandate”. Remember?
To read more about PNAC (from both advocates and opponents), here is a google search link on the term.
Good post, Polimom. It’s interesting listening to leading Democrats protesting how they are shocked, shocked, that some of what was (universally) believed to be true prior to the invasion of Iraq has turned out to be untrue. That the intelligence services of the US, France, Russia, the UK, Spain, Italy, etc., all believed Iraq either was working on, or had suspended and was looking to restart at the first available opportunity a WMD program seems to be forgotten. That the intelligence services and governments were kidding themselves seems certain–that they were lying to the public seems to be false. They clearly believed the (erroneous) info.
As for PNAC, they have been around for quite a while. They have been hiding neither their membership nor their beliefs since they were founded. A rational person might have expected an Administration top heavy with PNAC members to follow the PNAC “theory of the world”, but apparently, the major media is “shocked, shocked” to discover that these folks actually believed what they said. Sigh. . .
Claude Rains is no doubt smiling in his grave . . .
“Master”:
I’m not quite clear on your response. Are you suggesting in your first paragraph that the Democrats (or anybody else) should not be shocked?
Believing “Iraq was working on, or … was looking to restart… a WMD program” would still seem (to me) to be inadequate reason to launch a preemptive a war. There’s a vast difference between credulity (gullibility?) of the past (whether by Carter, Clinton, or the man on the moon), and action in the present by PNAC-driven ideologues.
Yes, like the Republicans, leading Democrats also said – even back in the late 1990s – that Saddam Hussein was dangerous. But where Iraq had historically been considered an international issue and threat (and dealt with in that arena), this US administration (ab)used the (mis)information in a deliberate way. Intent carries a great deal of weight in law, and I see this similarly.
Furthermore, I don’t see Bush as the director of the orchestra, which perhaps is the biggest lie of all.