Letter from the Editor
You say that President Bush has gone too far this time? That
he has crossed the line separating reason from madness, dividing traditional
rules of play from intentional foul play, segregating the defensible from the
outrageous. But when was it exactly that you thought he crossed this line?
Probably not with the appointment of Condoleezza Rice, who is more popular than
Bush and whose nomination received strong Senate support.
More likely it was one of the latest string of nominations
that had you saying: "this time Bush has gone too far.” Each of us has our
special bête noire. For some, it may be the nomination of pardoned criminal,
right-wing Zionist, and death squad apologist Elliott Abrams to lead the
U.S.
global democracy initiative and oversee
Middle East
policy. Or that of Negroponte--the proconsul from
South Vietnam
,
Philippines
,
Honduras
,
Mexico
,
and
Iraq
--to be
the first-ever director of national intelligence.
Then came the naming of UN basher John Bolton to be
U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations--even though his idea of UN reform is to have
a Security Council of only one member: the United
States
. This week President Bush named Paul
Wolfowitz as new head of the World Bank, leading some to complain that this
hawk knows less about development than he does about the reality of war. Or
perhaps what really had you saying that the president had stepped too far was
the recent announcement that his PR hack, Karen Hughes, would direct
U.S.
public diplomacy in the Middle
East and around the
globe.
But President Bush has crossed no new line. He has been
explicit about his intentions to advance a foreign policy agenda that crushes
liberalism along with evil. He is only following the foreign policy blueprints
written by the neoconservatives in the 1990s--from the Defense Policy Guidance
written by Paul Wolfowitz and other high officials of this administration in
1992 that boldly described a new foreign and military policy based on eternal
U.S. military supremacy and preventive war, to the array of public documents
published by the American Enterprise Institute, Project for the New American
Century, Center for Security Policy, among others.
There is no new appointment (with the policy exception of
the nonideological Rice) that strays outside the boundaries of these agendas
for "full-spectrum dominance." Bush has elaborated on the
neoconservative agendas in his speeches about preventive war, global
democratization, and the special, providential mission of the
United States
in world history. So there should be
no shock. It's a little late for that.
These nominations should be fought with public education
campaigns and public pressure on the Senate. But criticisms that Bush has gone
too far are unwarranted. Bush has not stepped beyond the radical agenda that he
and his foreign policy advisers inside and outside government have time and
again spelled out for us.
What is becoming clearer is that the second Bush
administration's foreign policy team could be much more effective in advancing
the radical overhaul of
U.S.
foreign, military, and intelligence policy. It is a team of hawks, ideologues,
and highly effective operatives. These are women and men with proven
credentials as loyalists who don't let the Constitution, international law,
normal codes of conduct, or world opinion stand in their way.
The country's direction--whether in foreign policy, cultural
politics, global governance, civil liberties, or development issues--is not being
decided on the fly but is following the agenda set forth by the right's web of
institutions and individuals who have been working for this moment for three
decades.
To understand this radical agenda--and to stop it--we need
to better understand the right web itself. At the same time, we need to be
working on our own agendas that bring together cultural, ethical, national
security issues, among others. This what the IRC is attempting through the
Right Web program and our other programs--Foreign Policy In Focus, Project
Against the Present Danger, and Americas Program.
Right Web is 100% supported by private donors. The right's
blitzkrieg has left liberal foundations quivering, and they are afraid of
coming under media, IRS, and congressional scrutiny for supporting any project
that monitors--and criticizes--the right's architecture of power and influence.
The good news is that last week we received $1,750 in
private donations--up from $155 the previous week. The bad news is that ten
individuals unsubscribed from Right Web News as a result of the suggestion that
subscribers should be paying for what they get. Good news is that new
subscriptions doubled those we lost.
If you use the IRC's Right Web program for your own research
or education, then please consider supporting our work, or going elsewhere for
your information. Try CNN or Fox, or AEI, which also has an NGOWatch project
together with the Federalist Society. The IRC program's annual budget is
$146,000, which means that we are facing a $97,000 shortfall. If you appreciate
and need Right Web, then please consider supporting us.
We can be indignant about
Bolton,
Wolfowitz, Abrams, Chertoff, etc., but it's long past the time for shock. The
Bush presidency launched a "shock and awe" foreign policy from its
get-go.
You can support Right Web by making an online donation
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simply call or write us with your credit card donation or check: PO Box 4506, Albuquerque, NM
87196 and (617) 666-5300.
Sincerely,
Tom Barry
Right Web Director
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This Week on
the Right
Bush's PR Person to Direct
U.S. Public Diplomacy
By Jim Lobe
The most intriguing aspect of U.S. President George W.
Bush's nomination of Karen Hughes to take charge of Washington's public
diplomacy apparatus--and particularly outreach to the Islamic world--is the
building out of which she will be working.
The decision to put Hughes, who, along with Karl Rove, has
been Bush's closest political adviser since he first ran for
Texas
governor in the early 1990s, under Condoleezza Rice at the State Department
took insiders by surprise.
It suggested that Rice is building a major power center at
Foggy Bottom, one that is capable of ensuring that she can penetrate the circle
of foreign policy hardliners led by Vice President Dick Cheney and bolstered by
national security adviser Stephen Hadley, and his deputy, J.D. Crouch, any time
she wants.
See complete analysis online at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2005/0503hughes.php
Full-Throttle Unipolarity
By Jim Lobe
While Bolton's nomination was the
immediate cause of the reassessment that is now taking place, there have been
other signs that the balance of power within the administration has indeed
shifted strongly toward the hawks.
Perhaps the most important was the little-noted appointment of J.D. Crouch as
the deputy national security adviser under Rice's former deputy, Stephen
Hadley. While Hadley's foreign policy views were seen as a mixture of realism
and Cheney's aggressive nationalism, Crouch, who served most recently as
ambassador to Romania,
is regarded as a right-wing extremist on both domestic and foreign policy
issues.
Jim Lobe is a regular contributor to the Right Web program of the
International Relations Center (IRC), www.irc-online.org.
He is the Washington
correspondent for Inter Press Service.
See complete analysis online at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2005/0503throttle.php
Featured
Profiles
*Cold Warriors Turn
Post-Cold War Alarmists
The Jamestown Foundation applies its anticommunist and
anti-totalitarian ideology to China,
Eurasia, and the Middle East.
Right Web Profile: Jamestown
Foundation http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/jamestown.php
*Vulcans & Company
This package of profiles and
analysis from the IRC's Right Web program pieces together the new figures of
the second Bush administration's new foreign policy and homeland security team.
The foreign policy advisers for candidate George W. Bush's 2000 electoral
campaign privately called themselves the Vulcans. These Vulcans later became
the foreign policy team that radically changed the course of U.S. national security strategy. Most of those Vulcans, such as
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld continue to oversee U.S. foreign and military policy. The Vulcans & Company
offers readers information about the new and upgraded members of this team that
is assaulting civil liberties at home and international law abroad.
See Right Web profiles:
Elliott Abrams: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/abrams/abrams.php
John Bolton: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/bolton/bolton.php
Dick Cheney: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/cheney_r/cheney_r.php
Michael Chertoff:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/chertoff/chertoff.php
Stephen Hadley: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/hadley/hadley.php
John Negroponte: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/negroponte/negroponte.php
Roger Noriega: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/noriega/noriega.php
Condoleezza Rice:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/rice/rice.php
Donald Rumsfeld: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/rumsfeld/rumsfeld.php
Paul Wolfowitz: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/wolfowitz/wolfowitz.php
Robert Zoellick: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/zoellick/zoellick.php
Featured
Analysis
*Bolton’s Legal Sleaze
By Tom Barry
(Excerpted from Bolton’s Baggage, an IRC/Right Web
special report, that is at: http://www.irc-online.org/content/commentary/2005/0503bolton.php
)
John Bolton, a Yale-trained lawyer, rejects the legitimacy
of international law--at least when international conventions, treaties, and
norms constrain what he regards as U.S. national interests. Bolton also has a
record of questionable legal and ethical dealings at home.
As an associate at the high-powered Covington law firm,
Bolton in 1978 worked with Sen. Jesse Helms and the National Congressional
Club, the senator’s campaign-financing organization, to help form a new
campaign finance organization called Jefferson Marketing. According to the Legal
Times, Jefferson Marketing was established "as a vehicle to supply
candidates with such services as advertising and direct mail without having to
worry about the federal laws preventing PACs, like the Congressional Club, from
contributing more than $5,000 per election to any one candidate's campaign
committee." After its formation, Jefferson Marketing became a holding
company for three firms--Campaign Management Inc., Computer Operations &
Mailing Professionals, and Discount Paper Brokers.
Together with another Covington attorney, Brice Clagett,
Bolton later represented the National Congressional Club and Jefferson
Marketing--which were treated as a single legal entity--in various lawsuits
filed against it by the Federal Election Commission (FEC)--all of which led to
a $10,000 fine levied by the FEC against the National Congressional Club in
1986.
In 1987 the National Congressional Club reported a debt of
$900,000, with its major creditors being Richard Viguerie, Charles Black, Jr.,
Covington and Burling, and the DC law office of Baker & Hostetler--all of
which maintained good relations with the right-wing political action committee
as their debts for services offered went unpaid. Jefferson Marketing was the
PAC’s largest creditor, with more than $676,000 due from the National
Congressional Club. By the end of the decade, FEC documents showed that Helms’
political action committee owed Covington $111,000. But this was not considered
a major concern for Covington, according to firm spokesman H. Edward
Dunkelberger, Jr.
A decade later Bolton was again entangled in money
laundering schemes to support Republican candidates, but this time it involved
money channeled from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the Republican Party by way of a
“think tank” linked to the Republican National Committee (RNC). In 1995-96
Bolton served as president of the National Policy Forum (NPF), which, according
to a congressional investigation, functioned as an intermediary organization to
funnel foreign and corporate money to Republicans.
The NPF had been established in 1993 in anticipation of the
1994 general election. Founded by the RNC’s chairman Haley Barbour a few months
after he assumed the party’s chairmanship, the forum was organized as a
nonprofit, tax-exempt education institute, although the IRS later ruled that
NPF was a subsidiary of the RNC and not entitled to its requested tax-exempt
status.
A congressional investigation into foreign money and influence
in the 1996 presidential campaign brought to light the role of the NPF, which,
according to a minority report of the congressional committee, channeled
$800,000 in foreign money into the 1996 election cycle after having also used
the same mechanisms to fund congressional races around the country in 1994.
When John Bolton became NPF president in 1995, the forum
began organizing “megaconferences” as a hook to raise money for the party.
These conferences brought together Republican members of congress, lobbyists,
and corporate executives to discuss matters that were frequently the object of
pending legislation. An NPF memo laid out the funding strategy: “NPF will
continue to recruit new donors through conference sponsorships. ... In order
for the conferences to take place, they must pay for themselves or turn a
profit. Industry and association leaders will be recruited to participate and
sponsor those forums, starting at $25,000.”
Corporate representatives professed surprise at the size of
the contribution request. “It's pretty astounding,” said one invitee. “If this
doesn't have ‘payment for access' (to top GOP lawmakers) written all over it, I
don't know what does.”
Bolton also made sure that handsome contributors received
their money’s worth. In another NPF memo, two NPF employees told Bolton that,
in return for a $200,000 donation by US West, the telecommunications company
should be assured that the policy issues of most concern to it should be
incorporated into the NPF agenda for their upcoming telecommunications
“megaconference.”
In addition to the continuing money laundering, during John
Bolton’ tenure as NPF president, the forum received a $25,000 contribution from
the Pacific Cultural Foundation. Both Barbour and Bolton expressed their appreciation
in a letter to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative, which functions
as Taiwan ’s embassy in Washington. According to one communication with
Taiwan’s official representative in Washington, it was noted that the “generous
contribution” would enable the forum “to continue to develop and advocate good
international policy.”
Bolton left his position at the National Policy Forum
shortly before Congress launched its probe into whether the group illegally
accepted foreign contributions. No charges were ever filed as a result of the
congressional hearings, which according to the Democratic Party minority
members of the committee didn’t devote adequate resources into the
investigation of NPF operations.
See Right Web Profile John Bolton online at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/bolton/bolton.php
Letters From
Our Readers
(Editors Note: We encourage feedback and comments, which can be sent for publication
through our feedback page, at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/form_feedback.html.
Thank you.)
All of the following letters are in reference to: Immigration Restrictionism
Gains Political Clout http://www.americaspolicy.org/columns/amprog/2004/0412pan.html
1) If America “needs” immigrants, then how many immigrants does America “need”?
How many people can America sustain, and still maintain a quality of life
commensurate with high American standards?
Should Americans accept a declining standard of living for no other purpose
than to support continuing immigration, indefinitely, whether we “need” it or
not?
How many immigrants are too many? How many Americans are too many? How will we
stop immigration once we reach that point, especially if we refuse to control
it now?
What percentage of domestic terrorists have been immigrants?
Do YOU lock the doors of YOUR house when you are away or at night? How about
during the day? Why not allow anyone who wants free access to your home? Do you
lock your home and your car to RESTRICT access, in order to be SAFE? What’s the
difference between restricting access to your home and doing so in our country,
which is our collective, national “home”?
Why would you be a restrictionist when it comes to YOUR property, but argue
against those who would be restrictionist regarding OUR property? Isn’t THAT
the very definition of a hypocrite?
You cannot reasonably or rationally argue for a continued mass influx of people
into the U.S., much less into a home, a theater, a school, or a shopping mall,
without having some idea of what the natural, physical, social, and environmental
limitations are, and how to stop the flow once those limits are exceeded, for
the well-being and safety of the “immigrants” already here.
Why is it that, in your thinking, immigrants have the “right” to “a better
life” if they are on their way here, but once established here, as citizens or
permanent residents, they no longer have the right to protect the “better life”
they have attained, often at high personal cost?
-- Ron “RonBo” Brown
2) I would like to make some comments about the final paragraph of your “open
borders” article:
“The anti-immigrant forces are certainly right in their contention that
immigration—legal and illegal—is an issue that needs the urgent attention of
policymakers. However, by scapegoating immigrants for so many of the country’s
ills—environmental degradation, low wages, tax burdens, crime, social
disintegration, and even terrorist threats—the new wave of restrictionists are
building a vicious backlash movement that’s deepening the social, economic, and
political divides in the nation. In the process, the anti-immigrant groups are
diverting popular attention away from the more fundamental causes of the
socio-economic problems that are eroding the substance and spirit of America.”
Response: I believe the dominant attitude among immigration restrictionists
such as myself, which can be confirmed by listening to the public discourse, is
that we do not ascribe very much of the blame for the for the economic and
social maladies caused by uncontrolled immigration to the illegal aliens; we
instead place the blame where it belongs, which is on the politicians, media,
and other entities such as religious organizations which have decided it is in
their interest to promote the violation of the immigration laws.
Consequently, most immigration reform advocates direct their anger precisely
where it should be directed—at the politicians and media.
There is no widespread hostility or violence going on toward illegal aliens. I
am hard pressed to think of anyone among even the angriest of illegal
immigration critics who believe that the illegal immigrants themselves deserve
much of the blame for this problem.
If the open borders advocates get their way and the problem becomes even worse,
there may indeed arise a “backlash” where some people may begin to direct their
anger in the wrong direction, toward the illegal aliens themselves.
However, what you see now is simply a backlash against those in power who have
pursued policies that have caused hardship on their most vulnerable constituents.
Such a “backlash” is nothing more than a social movement for progressive
change.
Hopefully, the restrictionist agenda will be enacted into law before the
problem becomes so severe that it leads to a genuine public backlash against
those who bear little of the blame for the problem. If such a backlash ever
emerges, I will fight against that backlash just as hard as I fight the open
borders politicians and journalists who are turning our nation into a
feudalistic society of the very rich and the very poor.
-- Lance B. Sjogren
3) I enjoyed reading your recent article regarding illegal aliens, not
withstanding the ugly tone, since you use inflammatory phrases such as
“anti-immigration,” “xenophobic,” “white supremacist and nativist groups.”
You are quite correct in your basic premise that anti-illegal alien groups are
gaining clout. And for that I am very grateful.
Americans are and have been for a long time, fed up with illegals’ unrestricted
access into our country and we’re finally getting a voice within our political
system. It’s been a long time coming and it’s only going to get much louder.
If people like you choose to call me racist that’s a very, very small price to
pay.
¡VIVA LA MIGRA!
-- Bobbie Bennett <supernova@intergate.com>
