Project for the New American Century
In 1997, a small group of potentially powerful people, just twenty five of them, announced the formation of a new organization dedicated to building up the power of the United States to unparalleled levels. They were clearly looking forward to the presidential election of 2000 and the beginning of a new millennium, because they called their organization "The Project for the New American Century" (PNAC). Among the principal signers of the Statement of Principles were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, as well as a number of people whom they recruited to join them in the Bush administration, including Cheney's National Security Adviser, I. Lewis Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, former Middle East envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, and new special Middle East envoy Elliot Abrams. A few right-wing Republican politicians, Jeb Bush, Dan Quayle, and Steve Forbes signed on; two influential representatives of the Christian Right, William Bennett and Gary Bauer; and some influential neo-conservative intellectuals and writers, such as Francis Fukuyama, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, and Eliot Cohen. This was a pretty tight group; according to their declaration of principles they were committed:
"to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."
Intimately connected to those who signed the declaration of principles were other people who had drafted much of the language of the organization and would later make the recommendations of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) into the foundation of a new, definitive U.S. policy-for example, Richard Perle, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board that reports to the Pentagon; William Kristol of The Weekly Standard; John Bolton, at the State Department as chief arms control negotiator; and Douglas Feith, chief assistant to Rumsfeld. The Project for a New American Century from the beginning saw itself as an agent of bold change, one that could strengthen Israel as well as the United States. Just a year before its founding, in 1996, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was presented with a report that recommended repudiation of the Oslo Accords and the whole idea of "land for peace," and instead called for the seizure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as encouraging an outright invasion of Iraq by the United States. It then suggested the next items that should be on the agenda: toppling the governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. This report, entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," was co authored by Perle, Feith, and David Wurmser, who now works at the State Department under Bolton. A few days later these ideas, which would later become key policies of both Netanyahu and Sharon, were endorsed by the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.
= new reply since forum marked as read