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.