This Century's Neoconservative Project

This Century’s Neoconservative Project

By Kurt Schulz

The only demon in today’s ideological sphere that could be more poisonous to humanity than neoliberalism is neoconservatism. Just like the former, neoconservatism is a radicalization of the non-neo equivalent that in fact clashes with some fundamental ideology of the former. This is exemplified particularly in the United States and their thirst for a corporate-government world with America at the heart. Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and other well-known neoconservatives have been involved in the radically American imperialist think-tank Project for a New American Century that outlines America’s quest for global hegemony, raises questions about the Bush Administration’s handling of 9/11, and maps out the staunchly elitist agenda of the right.

There has never been a period in recorded history where imperial powers did not conquer, massacre and terrorize. The justifications vary, but like the Roman Pax Romana and the British Pax Brittanica, the United States runs on a policy of achieving world peace through the building of an American Empire. Pax Americana, as it has been called, entails that the entire world will benefit when the benevolent nation that is the United States seeks global domination. In the late 90s, a handful of radically right-wing politicians congregated to push their dream of an American globe on the US government. Most peculiar is their obsession with tackling Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a goal that the many PNAC members who made it into the Bush Administration pushed as soon as they believed the world would listen. In a classic bait-and-switch, the Administration pushed aside a year’s worth of work in making Osama bin Laden public enemy number one in favour of fabricating evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq and always implying but never confirming Hussein’s involvement in the September 11^th attacks.

Of course, none of this was done before using the attacks as an excuse to induce the public into a ridiculously inflated sense of fear of the terrorists and then utilizing that fear to revoke civil liberties and dupe the American people into blind patriotism. It was this blind patriotism that led to dubious accusations of “treason” or “anti-American” against those who disagreed with the Bush Administration. This sense of hostility led to the blatantly nationalist displays of anti-French sentiment leading up to the Iraq War and a disgusting cheapening of public dialogue in the United States. Pax Americana has certainly proven to be a disaster, as Gwynne Dyer notes in his book “The Mess They Made: The Middle East after Iraq”. Iraq has been destabilized and has plunged to a level one step away from civil war, Afghanistan’s drug lords and warlords haven’t had it this good in years and floods of refugees from both conflicts have poured into Pakistan, Syria and other neighbouring countries. Essentially, the idea that American dominance over foreign lands that neither the American government nor the average American seem to understand seems to have failed to pan out – who would have guessed? Then again, with the dialogue in America having been so limited to who is a patriot and who is not, it is easy to see how the lack of availability of knowledge would lead to such confusion.

The PNAC’s biggest error was making public their knowledge that their agenda could not be pushed without “another Pearl Harbor”. How lucky for them that not even seven months into assuming office that Pearl Harbor were to come. The September 11^th, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington caused a death toll similar to that of Pearl Harbor and much as the American public’s outrage at Japanese aggression pulled them into a war, the American public’s outrage at terrorism pulled their nation into a war. This time, however, the war was not with another major power over dominance of a global region, but a war against a noun. Theories that the 9/11 attacks were pulled off by the United States government are abound, but whether or not these are true is irrelevant because of one undeniable fact: the Bush Administration’s bureaucrats wanted something like this to happen. Regardless of whether they pulled it off themselves, allowed it to happen with full knowledge that it would sooner or later matters or simply got very lucky matters little and the far more pressing question becomes what is to be done about such a travesty.

When a government is willing to allow over 3,000 of their own citizens to perish in hellfire so that they may make the remaining 298,000,000 live in constant fear and thereby run amok with their grudging approval there is something gravely wrong. This simply goes to show the low regard that the right holds for human life, which was already made evident by their support of capitalism which, among other things, decries social assistance as being a disincentive to work while they themselves pull in millions of dollars in labourless income. This is a system intricately woven for the purpose of empowering the ruling class in business and in government while allowing everybody else to suffer or die for that power. The PNAC wished for a new Pearl Harbor and they got their wish, but at a cost of the lives of Americans on that day and in the subsequent wars as well as the many deaths in the zones of conflict. This Pax Americana has not made anybody’s life better save for said elite.

Witnessing their blatant apathy for human life, the right that controlled PNAC and now controls the US government is a danger to all people. When those who accumulate money become so detached from the average person and then come to power in government, what can be expected? What is needed is a strong community-democracy that allows full participation of all people and holds the government to accountability through immediately recallable, non-partisan delegates. It is only unity of the common person that can stand up to the financially powerful think-tanks like PNAC and stop them from hijacking the world.