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ADC Update:
ADC Op-ed in Chicago Tribune: "The misadventures of
neoconservatives"
The following op-ed article, "The misadventures of
neoconservatives" by ADC Communications Director Hussein
Ibish and ADC member and cofounder of electronicIraq.net Ali
Abunimah, appears in the April 15 edition of the Chicago
Tribune.
The Chicago Tribune
April 15, 2003
The misadventures of neoconservatives
By Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
As the war in Iraq moves toward its conclusion, neoconservatives
in and around the Bush administration are beginning to
aggressively push a chilling agenda for a generalized war
against much of the Arab and Islamic worlds.
This program to deliberately unleash a calamitous "clash of
civilizations" must be urgently confronted before it
succeeds in plunging us into a cycle of uncontrolled chaos and
confrontation.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey illustrated how extreme this
vision really is when he recently told a group of California
college students that the United States is engaged in fighting
"World War IV," which will "last considerably
longer than either World Wars I or II," but hopefully not
as long as the Cold War.
The enemies in this war, which he unconvincingly presented as a
campaign for democracy, are the rulers of Iran, the
"fascist" rulers of Iraq and Syria and groups like Al
Qaeda.
Woolsey also singled out the pro-American rulers of Egypt and
Saudi Arabia, declaring "We want you nervous. We want you
to realize now, for the fourth time in 100 years, this country
and its allies are on the march and that we are on the side of
those whom you--the [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubaraks, the
Saudi royal family--most fear. We're on the side of your
people."
Norman Podhoretz, editor-at-large of Commentary magazine, who
was the first to dub the project World War IV, and other
neoconservatives, openly call for "regime change" in a
whole list of Middle Eastern states, governed by both pro- and
anti-American regimes.
For Podhoretz, the global extremism, chaos and violence that the
war on Iraq may provoke are not the undesirable side effects of
a noble mission, but the necessary pretext for more aggressive
American intervention. He says that the U.S. can "win"
this war and "reform" Islam provided that America has
"the stomach to impose a new political culture on the
defeated parties."
Neoconservatives long have been demanding an attack on Iraq as
the first step in a far more ambitious regional and global
agenda, but for the past decade made little headway with the
rest of the foreign policy establishment.
A 2000 report from the neocon think tank, the Project for a New
American Century, co-authored by several key members of the Bush
administration, laid out the vision of a world order completely
dominated by unilateral American power. It also lamented that,
due to opposition from more responsible elements in government,
their hyper-aggressive agenda would have to be advanced slowly,
"absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new
Pearl Harbor."
Playing exactly that role, the Sept. 11 attacks opened the
political space necessary for the attack on Iraq, promoted
mainly through the theory that Iraq might one day supply
chemical or biological weapons to terrorists.
Many Americans reluctantly supported the attack on Iraq because
they truly believed that it would make America safer and Iraqis
freer.
Precious few have willingly signed up for a new, catastrophic
and completely unnecessary global confrontation with Islam.
An increasing number of more sober voices are speaking out
against this recklessness.
A full scale civil war on the right over foreign policy has
broken out in the press, with conservative icons such as
columnist Robert Novak trading bitter accusations with
overwrought neocons like David Frum, author of the irresponsible
"axis of evil" speech.
Stalwarts of the first Bush administration such as former
Seretary of State James Baker, former National Security Adviser
Brent Scowcroft and former Secretary of State Lawrence
Eagleburger have been openly trying to steer President Bush away
from what one unnamed former senior official called "this
bum advice he has been getting" from neocons. Another
observed that "The only one who can reach the president is
his father but it is not timely yet to talk to him,"
indicating a plan for a protracted campaign. They have obvious
potential allies in the Cabinet such as Secretary of State Colin
Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Liberals are also joining the fray, with Sen. John Kerry
(D-Mass.) leading the call for "a vision of the world that
is very different from what these excessively ideological
unilateralists want to thrust on us."
These voices of reason need to be encouraged and emboldened.
President Bush has insisted that U.S. troops will not stay in
Iraq any longer than necessary. The question is, necessary for
what? The Pentagon intends to rule Iraq directly for the
meanwhile, and no plans exist for any election or representative
government.
Among those slated for senior positions in Iraq is James Woolsey.
Woolsey's latest statements, and continued ambiguity about
long-term American intentions in the region, can only fuel fears
that neoconservatives in the administration intend not to give
Iraq back to its people as soon as possible, but to use it as a
launching pad for further adventures that may truly plunge us
all into World War
IV.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of electronicIraq.net and Hussein
Ibish is communications director for the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee
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