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This
Week on the Right
Liberal Hawks Ally with
Project for the New American Century
Neocons
and Liberals Together, Again
By
Tom Barry
[Excerpt]
The
neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its
intention to continue shaping the government’s national security strategy with
a new public letter stating that the “U.S. military is too small for
the responsibilities we are asking it to assume.” Rather than reining in the
imperial scope of U.S. national security strategy
as set forth by the first Bush administration, PNAC and the letter’s
signatories call for increasing the size of America’s global fighting machine.
The
January 28th PNAC letter advocates that House and Senate leaders take the
necessary steps “to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and
Marine Corps.”
Joining
the neocons in the letter to congressional leaders
were a group of prominent liberals—giving some credence to PNAC’s
claim that the “call to act” to increase the total number of U.S. ground forces counts on
bipartisan support.
After
an initial spate of public pronouncements after September 11th and during the
onset of the Iraq occupation, the Project
for the New American Century is again positioning itself as the policy
institute that will set the second Bush administration’s security agenda.
Although PNAC’s 1997 statement of principles included
only prominent right-wing figures—many of whom later joined the first Bush
administration—the neocon policy institute has
repeatedly reached out to liberals to give its public letters to the Congress
and the president the gloss of bipartisanship.
Its
new call for congressional leaders to increase overall U.S. troop levels includes
endorsement of key liberal analysts. Among the signatories are the leading
foreign policy analysts at the Brookings Institution and the Progressive Policy
Institute, which are closely associated with the Democratic Party. The
endorsees of the letter are largely neoconservatives who are principals in such
neocon-led institutes as PNAC, American Enterprise
Institute (AEI), Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and the Center for
Security Policy. However, this call for a larger expeditionary force was also
signed by prominent liberal hawks, including Michael O’Hanlon, Ivo Daalder, James Steinberg, and
Will Marshall—all of whom have signed previous PNAC letters and policy
statements.
Mugging and Hugging
Irving
Kristol, known as the “godfather of neoconservatism,” famously defined neoconservatives as
“liberals who have been mugged by reality.” That political mugging occurred in
the late 1960s and early 1970s with the rise of the counterculture, the
anti-war movement, and progressive New Politics of the Democratic Party.
Former
Trotskyite militants and Cold War liberals like Kristol,
Norman Podhoretz, and Midge Decter
switched their loyalties to the Republican Party. The “reality” that mugged the
neocons was the progressive turn in the Democratic
Party led by such figures as Jesse Jackson, Bella Abzug,
George McGovern, and Jimmy Carter. In contrast, the neoconservatives found the
militant anticommunism and social conservatism of the Ronald Reagan faction in
the Republican Party invigorating. In the neocon
lexicon, liberalism became synonymous with secularism, women’s liberation,
anti-Americanism, and appeasement.
Over
the past quarter century, the neocons have sought,
with increasing success, to rid the Republican Party of its isolationists, its
anti-imperialists, and its realists. The younger neocons,
such as William Kristol (son of Irving) and Elliott Abrams
(son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter), have promoted a new right-wing internationalism
that holds that America should be both a global
cop and a global missionary for freedom.
Traditional
conservatives and Republican Party realists say that the neocons’
foreign policy agenda is, respectively, neo-imperialist and unrealistic about
the capacity of U.S. military power to remake
the world. Apart from their militarist friends in the Pentagon and defense
industries, the neocons are finding that their
closest ideological allies are the internationalists in the liberal camp.
Having recuperated from their mugging, the neocons
are now reaching out to liberals who share their idealism about America’s global mission. To the
delight of the neocons at PNAC and AEI, an
influential group of liberal hawks share their vision of a U.S. grand strategy that will
create a world order based on U.S. military supremacy and America’s presumed moral
superiority.
(Tom Barry is policy
director of the International Relations Center, online at http://www.irc-online.org and author of
numerous books on international relations.)
See
complete Right Web article online at: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2005/0502ally.php
With
printer-friendly .pdf version at: http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/pdf/0502ally.pdf
For more information
about the liberal hawks, see the following Right Web profiles from the IRC:
Project
for a New American Century: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/pnac.php
Will
Marshall: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/marshall/marshall.php
Progressive
Policy Institute: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/ppi.php
Democratic
Leadership Council: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/demleadcoun.php
Social
Democrats/USA: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/social-democrats.php
Topical
Profiles
Frank
Gaffney: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/gaffney/gaffney.php
Center
for Security Policy: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/csp.php
Charles
Krauthammer: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/krauthammer/krauthammer.php
Elliott
Abrams: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/abrams/abrams.php
Condoleezza Rice: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/rice/rice.php
Letters
and Comments
Re:
Douglas Feith (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/feith/feith.php)
I
was very impressed with your article on Douglas Feith
and all that he has done to help shape neoconservative policies in this
administration. I consider myself a conservative/populist American. However, I
don't consider myself a Republican anymore due to George W's four years of
misguided Middle East policies. It was so interesting to finally see the connection that the neocons and the militarists have with all these lobby
groups that represent only their short-minded view of the world--or the
interest of nation other than our own. After I read this and other articles, I
am more convinced now that this administration is more concerned with Middle East "democracy" than
it is of our own safety.
- Craig
Zander < craig_zander@yahoo.com>
Re:
Michael Novak (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/novak/novak.php)
Aunque fue
en 1994 que se publicó el libro. Este hemisferio de libertad
de Michael Novak, siempre lo comenté
en una modesta universidad en la escuela de ciencias políticas de mi país. Estoy convencido que es muy oportuno
promover conferencias sobre la temática de esa obra y de otras
que posibiliten continuar fortaleciendo y entendiendo la democrácia como una forma de vida, especialmente en mi país El Salvador. óoy fundador de una organizacion de reciente creación : fundacionlibertad.org.sv
.
- Rafael
Menjivar Lopez (raphaelml3@yahoo.com)
Re:
Right Web Individual Profiles (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/index.php)
Wish
you would expand your list to include, among others, Ralph Reed, Tom DeLay, Dennis Hassert, Paul Weyrich, etc. It
would be useful to understand ALL of the "players" in the right-wing
movement, the roles they play, etc. An interactive web site, and perhaps a CD
with the web site on it would be a great tool for the politically interested to
understand size and scope of the conservative machine.
- Franz
Hespenheide (franzh@comcast.net)
