A blast from the past: Project for the New American Century

[eridani]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm

http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/project_for_the_new_american_century

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."[4] 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."[5]

PNAC staff and directors included 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).[6] In addition, a host of both rightist ideologues and liberal hawks supported PNAC's various sign-on letters and policy statements. (See "A Complete List of PNAC Signatories and Contributing Writers," Right Web.)

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

Folded in 2006 and replaced by the Foreign policy Initiative
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Policy_Initiative

In an interview with Foreign Policy In Focus, Robert Kagan iterated FPI's position toward Iran, saying, "It is time to take military action against the Iranian government elements that support terrorism and its nuclear program. More diplomacy is not an adequate response."[12]

Center for a New American Security--PNAC for Democrats.

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2015/01/project-for-a-new-american-century-pnac-reboot-cnas-the-democratic-version-of-conquest-imperialism-3088064.html

It seems that supporters of imperial expansion have first regrouped to create the Center for a New American Security, which played in the Democratic Party a role equivalent to that of the Project for a New American Century (and today of the Foreign Policy Initiative) within the Republican Party. As such, they played an important role during the first term of Barack Obama and, for some, have integrated the deep state from whence they continue to pull the strings.

The originality of CNAS is that it is a Democrat think tank that collaborates with and integrates Republican hawks. It also multiplies meetings and discussions with members of the Project for a New American Century. It is funded by arms manufacturers or providers of Defense (Accenture Federal Services, BAE Systems, Boeing, DRS Technologies, Northrop Grumman), financial (Bernard L. Schwartz Investments, Prudential Financial), foundations (Carnegie Corporation of New York, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Ploughshares Fund, Smith Richardson Foundation, Zak Family Charitable Trust) and foreign governments (Israel, Japan, Taiwan).

Three generations of women at CNAS: Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton and Michele Flournoy


That Robert Kagan is on Clinton's foreign policy team means that Clinton foreign policy will be a rerun of Bush foreign policy. (Except that she isn't batshit crazy--which is actually important.

[cprise]

1. Kagan even described Hillary's policies as Neocon

to the NY Times. She is a warmonger.

Its interesting to note that Bill Clinton immediately swallowed the PNAC line about Iraq WMD and in 1998 declared his intent to overthrow Saddam Hussein... There is a video of it on Youtube.

[Live and Learn]

3. After her statements about Iran, there can be no doubt that she fully intends to continue her

warmongering path.

[Live and Learn]

2. Thank you. That really needed to se some daylight. K&R

My brother (who usually espouses Republican memes but did vote Obama) actually had the nerve to say the other day that he had never heard of the pipeline. That despite how may times I had told him about it and pointed him to the PNAC website.

I must say these arguments with Hillary supporters today remind me of my conversations with him at the time. Willful ignorance is the best way I can describe it.

[bigtree]

4. where did you get that 'Robert Kagan is on Clinton's foreign policy team'~?

... I believe that's false.


The Kagans have been trying without much success to ingratiate themselves in foreign policy for decades. Kagan endorsed Hillary in this election, but I haven't heard a peep about that from her campaign. He's 'leaving' the republican party, but I doubt they paid any more attention to him than the Obama administration did.

The Kagans are shameless opportunists who cling to anyone who they believe will give their racket visibility. I think the left promotes them more than the right does, typically with this kind of name-association politics used as a wedge against the Obama administration; now being used against Hillary Clinton, who, by the way, has not begun to formulate a cabinet or outline potential appointments.

The portrait painted by critics of Hillary Clinton as a neocon is disingenuous. The origins of the neocon movement was from the left; from folks fed up with coalition politics and sought a way to dismiss consensus government which stood in the way of their ambitions, much like the Kagan's political game. Hillary Clinton is a coalition politician who advances her initiatives by consensus.

But, more importantly, neoconservativism has proven itself to be an intellectually hypocritical and dishonest philosophy and its zeal for getting whatever it wants betrays a cravenness. They oppose any Obama intervention overseas, but work overtime to promote an evil axis intervention abroad. They oppose social adjustments to the tax rate to advantage working families, but favor tax adjustments to advantage the wealthy.

In all, for the right and left over history, neoconservatism has been little more than a protest against whatever establishment initiative they disagree with and has been a divisive tool to splinter party coalitions and tear down barriers for what they hope to accomplish.

Since the early seventies, neoconservatism has been the sole refuge of anti-democratic pols who believe they can dissolve the constructions of mostly Democratic legislative coalitions and Democratic presidents by dismissing constitutional reforms by hollering about original intent and the like. It's a transparent exercise to cloak their disruptive politics in populism; ignoring bipartisan progress and hoping to just collapse the constructions legislators have used to keep government responsible and vital to programs like education, health, justice, war...

Their intellectually dishonest desire to remove every government construction that doesn't suit their narrow, mostly conservative, agenda will quickly find itself at odds with a Clinton administration. No Democratic president could ever be counted on to suit their cynical politics of destruction, division, and anti-democratic disruption of the political process.

[eridani]

5. Kagan has endorsed Clinton n/t

[bigtree]

6. that means squat

...certainly NOT what you think it means.

[cprise]

9. She did promote his wife to Asst Scty of State, and put him on a team of advisers

A wife who BTW insisted (along with Kagan himself) that she edits and reviews all of his papers... that their positions dovetail so closely that its hard to say which aspect of his papers are him or her talking? They bragged about this to the NY Times for crissesake.

And then there is that dinner Mr. Kagan got at the Obama White House when Syria policy was being forged. You know, the policy shift toward "intervention" where Clinton's friends said "Yay! You did it!"

Both Mr. Kagan and his brother are taking considerable pains to describe their advocacy as broadly bipartisan. “The urgent priority is to unite internationalists on both sides of the spectrum,” said Fred Kagan, while his brother, Robert, mentioned his briefing of a bipartisan congressional delegation at Davos and his good relations with top White House officials, including the national security adviser, Susan E. Rice. (Their father apparently did not get the memo, calling Mr. Obama’s speech “pathetic” and saying of the president, “We should not underestimate the possibility of extraordinary ignorance.”)

But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his “mainstream” view of American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes. Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.

“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

Clinton won't explicitly acknowledge them in her campaign, but there it is in the NY Times.

The origins of the neocon movement was from the left; from folks fed up with coalition politics and sought a way to dismiss consensus government which stood in the way of their ambitions, much like the Kagan's political game. Hillary Clinton is a coalition politician who advances her initiatives by consensus.

Consensus with who? Oh, yes... those awful Republicans with whom she loves to triangulate (i.e. give away the henhouse). Both Clintons have swallowed neocon propaganda since at least 1998 when Bill declared that Saddam was manufacturing WMDs and that regime change was necessary.

Now that the Republican boat appears to be sinking, what do 'smart' neocons do??? Why, they set up shop under the Democratic banner:

Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html

[Peace Patriot]

7. Thank you, eridani! And OMG, it gets worse and worse AGAIN!

I don't know about you, but I find myself staggered by the sheer number of bad (if not evil) "clubs" the Clintons belong to: The Bush club. The Kissinger club (OMG!). The far right 'christian' Washington DC club. The Goldman Sachs club. The WalMart club. The Saudi Arabian club. The Prison Profiteer/mass incarceration (and disenfranchisement) of blacks club. The corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" club--and so many other cozy little meetings of the mind.

And now you tell me: The Democratic Paul Wolfowitz club!

I'm not at all sure that she isn't "batshit crazy." Anyone containing so much hypocrisy in one personality would almost have to be unstable. If the disastrous destabilization of Libya and Syria are any test, she is as crazy as the Bushwhacks. That has caused as much suffering to innocent people as the war on Iraq did, maybe more. And she did this....WHY???

I can't see any sense to it, even trying to look at it from her point of view--except perhaps the "sense" that chaos pays off big time for war profiteers. (Rumsfeld.)

Well, I'll say one thing for the Bernie Sanders campaign: It is inspiring us to educate each other in ways that might not have occurred if we did not have the hope of putting a true-blue, honest president in the White House.

A year ago, I figured it would be Bush vs Clinton, for the most nauseating political campaign ever to be held. One down. One to go. And, hallelujah! We have the most fascinating presidential campaign in our history, with Bernie Sanders THE most popular candidate in the country!

A real "Seabiscuit" he is!!!

[KoKo]

14. yes...

I'm beginning to wonder about her disconnects, myself... BSC...that she says one thing and then has proven to have done the opposite, over and over, does make one wonder.

I'm not at all sure that she isn't "batshit crazy." Anyone containing so much hypocrisy in one personality would almost have to be unstable. If the disastrous destabilization of Libya and Syria are any test, she is as crazy as the Bushwhacks. That has caused as much suffering to innocent people as the war on Iraq did, maybe more. And she did this....WHY???

[kgnu_fan]

8. Please wake up!!!!

[Jitter65]

10. I will say, this is the one big thing I hold against HRC. But is not enough to go for BS. nt

[tk2kewl]

13. so you can live with her neocon foreign policy because...

Bernie Sanders is _______________

fill in the blank please

[FlatBaroque]

11. MIC Saleswoman of the Year!! Go Hill!!

[tk2kewl]

12. kr