Neo-conservative nonsense

by

Gerald Plessner

January 5, 2007 - In what has to be the dumbest move in a stupidity plagued presidency, George W. Bush has put the neo-conservatives who talked us into the disaster of Iraq in charge of our Iraq policy!

Rather than having any role in salvaging the disaster they helped create, neo-conservatives should be hounded from the public square, their security clearances canceled for life.

William Kristol, a leading neo-conservative and editor of The Weekly Standard, the flagship neo-conservative magazine, is reported to be helping the White House formulate strategy behind the president's plan for a "surge" of tens of thousands of additional American troops into Iraq.

Kristol was also chairman of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which in the late 1990s proposed that the United States remain "the world's preeminent power...to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests."

As part of their plans, they initiated the idea of attacking Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein so that a democratic state could flower in his absence.

(For an understanding of PNAC and its goals go to: http://www.geraldplessner.com/articles/article.cgi?doc=20020621213358)

Also working on White House surge plans is Douglas J. Feith who was a policy chief in the office of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a PNAC member.

Feith's responsibilities under Rumsfeld were to organize and manage the Office of Special Plans, which gathered intelligence from other agencies and then "cherry picked" that information to make the case for invading Iraq. The information which Feith distributed included what critics have referred to as the lies told by the president, vice president and others to force members of Congress into approval of the president's plans to take military action against Iraq.

The incompetence and arrogance of Rumsfeld and his assistants are the primary causes for the difficulties we now face in Iraq. It is difficult to believe that Feith could contribute anything of value to new war plans.

Other members of PNAC who had a role in promoting and/or managing the war on Iraq include Robert Kagan, Elliott Abrams who serves on the president's National Security Council staff, and who was convicted of perjury in the Iran-Contra affair, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is under indictment for disclosing the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, and Paul Wolfowitz, who is now president of the World Bank.

As with seemingly everything in this administration having to do with foreign affairs or defense, the influence of vice president Cheney hovers over the rejection of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which proposed a gradual draw down of American troops in Iraq.

The return to influential positions of men whose initial advice was so wrong does not bode well for achieving an end to the war. Because of their presence, we can probably expect more failures costing precious American military and Iraqi civilian lives.

In all the public discussion about the surge, important facts are constantly obscured.

These fact include: 1.) The war was foisted on the American people by ideologues with a hidden agenda and should be held accountable; 2.) Nobody who urged us into war and almost nobody who served in the Administration had any understanding of the culture, the religious and political reality in Iraq; and 3.) Nobody has suggested holding the major architect of this war, Richard Cheney, responsible for causing the deaths of more than 3,000 American service men and women, the injury of more than 25,000 of our military personnel, and the squandering of hundreds of billions of tax dollars on the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The American people voted decisively to tell this administration that it should end our involvement in Iraq. If the president and his vice president refuse to honor the expressed will of the American people, then they should resign. Failing that, the Congress should begin to consider impeachment.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gerald Plessner is a Southern California businessman who writes regularly on issues of politics and culture. He would be pleased to hear from you and may be contacted at gerald@geraldplessner.com.