The United States has recently made public a road map
“To a permanent two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict,” which was co-formulated by the U.S., U.N., European
Union and Russia.
EDITOR:
The United States has recently made public a road map “To a permanent two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” which was co-formulated by the U.S., U.N., European Union and Russia. While President Bush seems intent on brokering a successful solution to this conflict, many Americans don’t realize Bush is also following other “road maps.”
Perhaps the most imperial road map was written in 1991 by Paul Wolfowitz, then Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the elder Bush administration and now Deputy Secretary of Defense in the current Bush administration. Wolfowitz’s road map, “Defense Policy Guidance,” calls for a new U.S. foreign policy which deters “potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role,” the need for “pre-emptive military intervention,” using U.S. military power to assure “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil” and eschewing the United Nations by using unilateral force when “collective action cannot be orchestrated.”
By 1997 Wolfowitz’s road map found a welcome home at a new think tank, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). PNAC’s founding statement emphasizes a strategy of preventive war, the need to challenge regimes hostile to U.S. interests and for the U.S. to “meet threats before they become dire.” A few notable conservatives who signed on to PNAC are: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Gary Bauer, William Bennett, Elliott Abrams, Steve Forbes, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Frank Gaffney and Jeb Bush.
In January of 1998 PNAC sent President Clinton a letter strongly urging the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. In addition to original PNAC signatories, this letter was signed by John Bolton, Richard Armitage, James Woolsey and Richard Perle. Clinton didn’t act, but PNAC kept pushing by writing a new September 2000, foreign policy road map titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” which warmly embraced Wolfowitz’s 1991 “Defense Policy Guidance” and which identified Iraq, Iran and North Korea as possible targets for regime change.
PNAC advocates realized their road map called for such a marked change in foreign policy – from using military force only when attacked to all out war against other nations suspected of challenging U.S. interests – their new defense policy would be difficult to sell to the American people. “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” mentions it may take a long time to gain public acceptance – except for “some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor.”
One year later Sept. 11 became our new “Pearl Harbor,” and George Bush accepted much of PNAC’s foreign policy as his own. Last July President Bush enunciated his new foreign policy “The National Security Strategy of the United States,” at West Point, and set the stage for an indefinite worldwide war on terrorism.
Bush critics claim the war in Iraq is merely a test case of his new foreign policy, and more wars are on the way. An unending series of wars will kill thousands of innocent civilians, spawn even more terrorism against the United States and eventually bankrupt our nation, say critics. With the current Pentagon budget at $399 billion a year, only about 46 cents of every discretionary tax dollar can be spent for non-military purposes. Wiliam Kristol, PNAC chairman, advocates increasing Pentagon spending to $500 billion per year.
Kristol also suggests the United States should “work for the fall of the Communist Party in China.” American Enterprise Institute fellow Michael Ledeen and other Beltway conservatives are vetting additional nations for regime change: Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. War, regime change, nation building, the Pax Americana road map goes on and on.
Jim Groff,
Morgan Hill
