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Project for the New American Century is dead

In Wall-Street-Bank fashion, The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is effectively finished (Except it has been extinct for 2 years now).

If you’re unaware of what PNAC is, from their website: “The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle”

I’ve always got a kick out of the order of their “fundamental propositions”. Military strength first, then diplomacy, then moral principle. Doesn’t that just about sum up the Bush Administration’s 8-year record?

Anyway, back to the point. PNAC is basically the group of neo-Conservatives that has driven Bush’s foreign policy with their long-term global imperial goals or as they say “American leadership”. PNAC is arguably synonymous with “the Bush Doctrine”.

On January 26, 1998, PNAC wrote a letter to Bill Clinton to tell him that American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding and that Saddam Hussein should be removed from power because “we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War”.

“It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard

This letter was signed by (among others), Richard L. Armitage (former Foreign policy advisor to Bush), Elliott Abrams (former Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy under Bush), John Bolton (An architect of the Iraq War), Richard Perle (former Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee under Bush), Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz (former Deputy Secretary of Defense under Bush).

The most recent article I can find on PNAC’s website is dated December 11, 2006, shortly after the Democrats were voted into power in the mid-term election. There haven’t been any articles posted on PNAC’s website that pertain to the Iraq war since September 13, 2005 (Approximately around the same time the Iraq war started to spiral in the wrong direction).

After being very busy publishing articles from 1997 to 2005, when the war in Iraq went downhill, the plans to further American imperialism were also diminished. These men whom had a vision in 1998 to replace Saddam with a US-friendly government in an effort to protect Israel and protect a “significant portion of the world’s supply of oil” had given up their hopes. Most (If not all) of the original signers of the letter are no longer in the government, their vision has been lost, the economy is plummeting, and with Bush ending his term, a significant era is about to end.

I’m proud to have lived through this era, and I’m proud that these men didn’t succeed in their mission. Who knows how high they were aiming and what they were looking to achieve in the end.

But whatever it was, it is scary as hell.

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