Reply #134: Two Diaries at Kos that you might find interesting

[sarahlee]

Cheney and Jefferson both tied to Nigerian bribery scandals??

In looking at how the William Jefferson bribery scandal is related to Halliburton-Dick Cheney shenanigans involving millions of dollars in bribes to Nigerian government officials (and god knows who else), I realize the whole thing might sound outlandish. So as you read on, know that my facts/quotes come from a variety of sources:

And

PNAC Co-Founder Endorses Dems in '08

Robert Kagan is the co-founder with William Kristol of the Project for the New American Century and he thinks it will be better for America if the Democrats win the 2008 contest for the Presidency. If that surprises you, you haven't been paying attention. As far as the PNAC crew goes, power isn't about being a Republican or a Democrat, it's about owning both parties. And, fortunately for us, Kagan is spectacularly upfront about this. To understand his mindset it's important to understand that he doesn't divide the world up into left and right, but into interventionist and isolationist. Kagan has representatives in the Democratic Party. They can loosely be described as the members of the Democratic Leadership Council and the writers at The New Republic.

These opinion leaders consider America to be the 'indispensable nation' and they consider it vital to world peace and security that America maintain its role in the world. For example, it's critical that we maintain military bases from Okinawa, to Tashkent, to Kandahar, to Baku, to Turkey, Baghdad, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Dubai, to Eritrea. From the outside, it looks like they benefit from their association or investments in the companies that do business in those countries, or the companies that arm our military to defend themselves in foreign lands and equip our home defenses to protect against the resentment our occupations cause. But, from the inside, it's more complicated. It's about the evils of communism, or fascism, or Islamo-fascism, or whatever is required as a rhetorical tool next week.

Kagan is part of a literal cabal of people in Washington (in Congress, in thinktanks, in this case, the Washington Post's editorial pages) that assure that any new administration's 'options' are limited and that their approach will not be stunningly different from Bush's. These are the folks that brought you the stalemated Korean War and the need for permanent bases in the south, the disastrous Vietnam War, the Committee on the Present Danger, and Team B. They employ journalists like Judith Miller to write about anthrax, and journalists like Peter Beinert to advocate a tougher foreign policy line from Democrats. They love and contibute to politicians like Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden, Diane Feinstein, and Jane Harman. As long as they can control the debate, assure a centrist nominee from the Democrats, and keep the level of fear in the public high, their racket is safe, even if the people in the World Trade Center were not.

Some may see this as a typical leftist critique. But it's more than that. This is how Washington works, how power wields itself, how the Democrats are co-opted, and how we keep repeating our mistakes by involving ourselves in costly foreign entanglements.

Perhaps the most flamboyant and successful of their campaigns was the one they used to convince us that we defeated the Soviet Union through military spending. It had nothing to do with the superior example our society made to the world through our civil liberties, personal freedoms, prosperity, and human rights advocacy. Nor did it have anything to do with the Soviets poor example and lack of these things. No, no. We brought the Soviets to their knees by spending billions on a failed missile shield and the V-22 Osprey.

In the comments:

The PNAC worldview is a front. It's a mirage. It serves a different purpose that the purpose it purports to support. It's not about Zionism as its critics so often contend, but about money. It's about shaping the mind of the public, and that is where the Straussian stuff comes into play.

The DLC (as it pertains to foreign policy) is just another face or mask of the same phenenomon.

So, you're right to say that the DLC worldview is not exactly aligned with the neo-conservative one. But the PNAC is almost as happy to use the DLC's mask as their own.

They would rather the DLC control the Democratic Party than the Bushies destroy the brand of both PNAC and the DLC.