Reply #90: That is your premise [View All]

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In September 2000, the PNAC drafted a report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century."

The conservative foundation- funded report was authored by Bill Kristol, Bruce Jackson, Gary Schmitt, John Bolton and others. Bolton, now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, was Senior Vice President of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

The report called for: ". . . significant, separate allocation of forces and budgetary resources over the next two decades for missile defense," and claimed that despite the "residue of investments first made in the mid- and late 1980s, over the past decade, the pace of innovation within the Pentagon had slowed measurably." Also that, "without the driving challenge of the Soviet military threat, efforts at innovation had lacked urgency."

The PNAC report asserted that "while long-range precision strikes will certainly play an increasingly large role in U.S. military operations, American forces must remain deployed abroad, in large numbers for decades and that U.S. forces will continue to operate many, if not most, of today's weapons systems for a decade or more."

The paper claimed that, "Potential rivals such as China were anxious to exploit these technologies broadly, while adversaries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea were rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they sought to dominate. Also that, information and other new technologies – as well as widespread technological and weapons proliferation – were creating a ‘dynamic' that might threaten America's ability to exercise its ‘dominant' military power."

The Chinese would dispute the PNAC assertion that they pose a threat to the U.S.; as far as I know, there is still a normalization of relations between our two countries. Perhaps they are alluding to the transfer of weapon's technology between nations; or the threat to Taiwan. In any case, the conservative document's allusion to U.S. "dominant military power" sounds a lot like destabilization to me.

Between peaceful nations, parity and balance of our respective forces and weaponry is the maxim in our expressions of our defense and security goals. Any open declaration of the need for military dominance is an invitation to a dangerously competitive, world-wide arms race.

In reference to the nation's nuclear forces, the PNAC document asserted that, " reconfiguring its nuclear force, the United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself."

"The (Clinton) administration's stewardship of the nation's deterrent capability has been described by Congress as "erosion by design," the group chided.

The authors further warned that, "U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals –from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq – and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force."

In addition, they counseled, "there may be a need to develop a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets of military requirements, such as would be required in targeting the very deep underground, hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries."

The 2002 PNAC document is a mirrored synopsis of the Bush administration's foreign policy today. President Bush is projecting a domineering image of the United States around the world which has provoked lesser equipped countries to desperate, unconventional defenses; or resigned them to a humiliating surrender to our rape of their lands, their resources and their communities.

President Bush intends for there to be more conquest - like in Iraq -as the United States exercises its military force around the world; our mandate, our justification, presumably inherent in the mere possession of our instruments of destruction.

Our folly is evident in the rejection of our ambitions by even the closest of our allies, as we reject all entreaties to moderate our manufactured mandate to conquer. Isolation is enveloping our nation like the warming of the atmosphere and the creeping melt of our planet's ancient glaciers.

We are unleashing a new, unnecessary fear between the nations of the world as we dissolve decades of firm understandings about an America power which was to be guileless in its unassailable defenses. The falseness of our diplomacy is revealed in our scramble for ‘useable', tactical nuclear missiles, new weapons systems, and our new justifications for their use.

The PNAC ‘Rebuilding America' report was used after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks to draft the 2002 document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," which for the first time in the nation's history advocated "preemptive" attacks to prevent the emergence of opponents the administration considered a threat to its political and economic interests.

It states that ". . . we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country." And that, "To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."

This military industry band of executives promoted the view, in and outside of the White House that, " must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. . . We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed."

‘Peace through strength’; big kid on the block,' is a posture which is more appropriately used to counter threats by nations; not to threats by rouge individuals with no known base of operations.

Their strategy asserts that "The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."

So their plan is to attack whomever, whenever they feel our security is threatened, no matter if the nature and prevalence of the attack is uncertain. The U.N. should have studied this document before it wasted its time trying to reign President Bush in.

What I speak of and what John Kerry speaks of has nothing to do with conquest. You take my words and drape your own cynical view on top and claim that I am for some dominating bully of a country. My view, and Kerry's does not assume that we are omnipotent, rather that we need to work with other nations to effect the change that we can agree on.

There are longstanding relationships around the world that have been stretched beyond accomodation by Bush's manufactured mandate to dominate. That is a far cry from Kerry's assertion that the U.S. should be the preeminent, superior force in the world, militarily and economically, and work with our partners and others to effect the peace and prosperity that people deserve, not dictating that but working cooperatively, in concert. Short of that is destablizing inaction, beyond that is dominating hegemony.

We should repair these world relationships by reengaging with the world community. John Kerry says that: “Americans deserve a principled diplomacy...backed by undoubted military might...based on enlightened self-interest, not the zero-sum logic of power politics...a diplomacy that commits America to lead the world toward liberty and prosperity. A bold progressive internationalism that focuses not just on the immediate and imminent, but insidious dangers that can mount over the next years and decade, dangers that span the spectrum from the denial of democracy, to destructive weapons, endemic poverty and epidemic disease. These are not just issues of international order, but vital issues of our own national security.”

I challenge you to move beyond your rhetoric and tell me what other country you would be comfortable with having military and economic superiority over America. Why should we cast ourselves as a weak sister in world engagements?

Progressive internationalisn doesn't have to encompass the worst aspects of interventionism and it shouldn't be tarred with the most cynical of calculations. It should be measured and judged by how it is applied. Certainly nothing that John Kerry has spoken of is akin to the PNAC doctrine of dominance and conquest.