Speaking of PNAC...read Max Boot's "Doctrine of the 'Big Enchilada'" 2002

[madfloridian]

https://web.archive.org/web/20131011003633/http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-101402.htm

Doctrine of the Big Enchilada

The National Security Strategy released last month by the White House may be the most significant U.S. foreign policy statement since NSC 68, the 1950 paper that codified the containment doctrine. Yet oddly most of the debate has focused on only one of its aspects -- the promise that America will strike preemptively against potential threats. Almost no one is criticizing President Bush's pledge to maintain American military hegemony.

This silence is curious, considering the flap that occurred the last time such an assertion was made. In 1992 staffers working for Paul Wolfowitz (then the No. 3 Pentagon official, now No. 2) drafted a planning document that suggested the United States should "maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." This mild language -- which referred to "mechanisms," not brute strength -- provoked fits in official Washington. As Andrew Bacevich reminds us in his forthcoming book "American Empire," Sen. Alan Cranston of California attacked the Bush administration for proposing to make the United States "the only main honcho on the world block, the global Big Enchilada." An embarrassed administration hastily retracted this indiscreet language.

Now the Big Enchilada doctrine is back. The new Bush strategy proclaims: "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." This is even stronger language than that used a decade ago. But now the reaction is . . . pretty much, zip. Why?

....Democrats, for their part, can't be too happy with a second implication of the predominance doctrine: Any nation with so much power always will be tempted to go it alone. Power breeds unilateralism. It's as simple as that. Oh, sure, American presidents may pay lip service to allies, but when push comes to shove, we just don't need anyone else's help very much. It's not just George W. Bush who feels this way. Judging by his unwillingness to defer to the United Nations in Bosnia (1995), Iraq (1998) and Kosovo (1999), so did Bill Clinton.

Get used to it. If the non-reaction to the National Security Strategy is any indication, we're all hegemonists now.

The writers of the Project for the New American Century said that we needed a New Pearl Harbor

Many of us have felt that 9/11 met that goal and more.

Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor.

The Rebuilding Defenses link also states that Iraq was only the immediate justification for our Middle East presence. It's all spelled out.

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.

This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.

And that is happening also.

Most anything was okay to keep us safe after 9/11. Now a new terror threat seems to pop up whenever the powers that be think they need stronger laws. It works very well.

[daleanime]

1. It's OK as long as we're the ones doing.....

short sighted and stupid.:bang head:

[rhett o rick]

2. k & r. Thanks for posting. nm