PNAC Goes AWOL

by Tom Chartier
by Tom Chartier

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The Project For The New American Century, PNAC, has gone Absent Without Leave. They have seemingly vanished with the sands of time. It sounds too good to be true which means, it probably is not true.

What alerted me to the sudden disappearance is the fact that the PNAC website, chock full of bombastic and arrogant reports, declarations, letters and memos is now "suspended." Their boastful website is down and with it much of their inter-asylum memos along with some of their "best" work.

When did this happen? None but the cursed may tell the tale. However, the PNAC website appears to have been "suspended" on July 8, 2008. Awe gee… they missed Independence Day by only four days. How did I miss that? I always liked to check in from time to time for a good belly slapper of lunacy. Perhaps it was the week I was engaged in my Israel Challenge Army Experience. Or maybe I was off on my annual Ted Nugent Sunrize Safari. Whatever, I missed the grand closing ceremonies… but then there were none.

How odd PNAC should kill their own website. Their rhetoric and boasting always struck me as a matter of PNAC pride. So… did they just stop paying their bills? Did they file for bankruptcy? Did they start to feel insecure and unpopular? Are they gone?

Hardly. Possibly more dangerous than ever the PNAC opinion leaders (more about them later) have dispersed and gone underground. No longer are they willing to advertise their master plans in public. But fear not, they are still crawling around in the sewage of Washington and in mainstream propaganda offices.

However, before I continue a little amnesiatic background music if you please. PNAC was an offshoot Neocon think tank of the bigger Neocon think tank the American Enterprise Institute. Both have had their grubby little paws in the bowels of US Foreign policy which helps explains the mess. And I don’t think they remembered to wash!

Hatching forth from some mutant egg leftover from the Reagan Administration in 1997, PNAC "contributed" a number of letters and reports to our past two executive morons. On January 26, 1998, they sent Bill Clinton a letter strongly urging him towards: "implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power." Saddam Hussein was, in their paranoid opinion, actively developing WMD and likely to destabilize the Middle East. God forbid! Presumably, Slick Willy promptly filed that away in the "raving crackpot" folder. Or maybe PNAC’s agenda wasn’t in sync with Clinton’s agenda.

Fear not! It was time to look for another natural born blunderer. PNAC’s search led them to the perfect spirochete to infect the White House, George W. Bush. Dubya was more than happy to allow himself to be governed and manipulated by PNAC’s crazed theories and delusions steering the helm of foreign and domestic policy. It was a match made in Purgatory.

PNAC also lays claim to the dubious distinction of assembling the notorious report: Rebuilding America’s Defenses. I was unaware US defenses needed rebuilding. Anyway, for those in the dark, published one year prior to 9/11, Rebuilding America’s Defenses was a lengthy and massive plan to build up US military might far beyond that necessary for "defense." It was a dream of becoming not the globe’s only superpower, which the US was at the time, but the globe’s only power. Call it the only Uber Mega-Superpower.

If that weren’t enough, Rebuilding America’s Defenses included the infamous statement, which can be found on page 51 of the report: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

Now, I do not accept this as any sort of proof that 9/11 was an inside job at all. However, it does point out the immorality "ends justifies the means" mentality of PNAC as well as pure tactlessness at the very least.

The PNAC website was also stuffed to the gills with memos of self-righteousness, reinforcing and never questioning their delusional beliefs. Always headed with the chilling greeting: "To Opinion Leaders" these memos were an insight into a world of dangerous insanity.

Is not the term "opinion leaders" little more than the same as "perception managers" or better yet "propagandists"? And that they were. I’m sure they new it, unless they have perfected the technique of believing their own lies. However PNAC "opinion leaders" felt it more prudent to cloak themselves in a kinder gentler euphemism.

What struck me as most frightening of all the "goodies" which could be found in the PNAC website was the Statement of Principles. This was most bizarre since as far as history can tell, the members of PNAC had no principles… and they still don’t.

Short and sweet, the PNAC Statement f Principles spelled it all out in clear uncertain terms. It opened with the statement that is certainly true today: "American foreign and defense policy is adrift." I should say so! American foreign and defense policy has been running amok completely unshackled from any pretense of reason much like a mad dog.

Well that won’t do at all if one seeks to wear the Laurels of Caesar! Unhappy with Clinton’s leadership PNAC formed in order to kick things up a notch. "We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership."

American global leadership?! Since when did God die and appoint America the Global Police? Is this really what Americans want? Do we really want to poke our noses in every international squabble that arises? Is this what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he spoke of avoiding foreign entanglements?

I suggest reading the whole PNAC Statement of Principles yourself. It appears to be a call for the formation of a fascist empire to dominate the world… all with the best of intentions of course. Joseph Goebbels couldn’t have done better.

Then came the chilling list of signatories: Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz.

And this Merry Band of Buffoons was just a handful of PNAC members. There were… are… more.

Do any of these names ring a nuclear bomb? Most of them are trying to. Need I say that the list contains quite a few of the usual suspects who have helped guide America into disaster? One wonders how they got into such powerful positions right under our noses. But then they were… and still are… expert "opinion leaders."

Well, PNAC may be lying low, but its father the American Enterprise Institute is alive. The revolving door has turned and the little weasels have scampered off into other rodent holes. The strategies may have changed but the goals have not and remember… the end justifies the means.

Tom Chartier [send him mail] played lead guitar in legendary Los Angeles punk band The Rotters for 26 years until their final appearance in January of 2004. He has lived in Tokyo and Los Angeles. Currently he resides somewhere in the Caribbean.

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