The Unknown Candidate: Everything Old Is New

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Everything Old Is New

Everything Old Is New
By William Rivers Pitt

"Everything old becomes new again, or so the saying goes. Nowhere is this more evident than in the highest reaches of neo-conservative power in Washington, DC. The term itself - "neo-conservative" - is little more than a shortened version of the old maxim.

Over the last several weeks, an old White Paper found new life in the shattered ruins of Lebanon's infrastructure. Titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," the paper was masterminded by three neo-con hawks who, in the fullness of time, became powerful members of the Bush administration: Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser. The three were working for a pro-Israel think tank called the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies when the paper was first drafted.

[...]

Perle, Feith and Wurmser's vision for a new Israel centered around the re-invigoration of the discredited policy of pre-emption, i.e., attacking a perceived foe based on whatever premise can be found in order to show strength in the region and intimidate local governments into compliance. "Israel's new agenda," read the paper, "can signal a clean break by abandoning a policy which assumed exhaustion and allowed strategic retreat by reestablishing the principle of preemption, rather than retaliation alone, and by ceasing to absorb blows to the nation without response."

Beyond reviving pre-emption, the paper argued that Israel's wisest course of action involved a military invasion of Lebanon, followed by attacks upon Syria and Iran. "Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil," read the paper. "An effective approach, and one with which American[s] can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon."

In order for pre-emption to be successful, according to the paper, a premise for attack must be established. It did not matter if the premise was based upon actual facts or genuine threat. It only needed to be plausible enough to rally the support of the American people. "A Clean Break" advocated attacking Lebanon and Syria based upon the premise that Syria is involved with laundering drug money and counterfeiting. The paper likewise instructed Netanyahu to draw the world's attention to Syria's WMD stockpiles.

[...]

Everything old becomes new again. "A Clean Break" was written ten years ago to advocate for an Israeli attack on Lebanon, and by proxy Syria and Iran. It was cast aside then, but appears to have been revived for this current disaster. The lessons Israel is learning in Lebanon have been vividly available in Iraq these last years, as the basis for that invasion was essentially premised upon a slightly edited version of the same paper.

Those lessons have not achieved purchase with the neo-conservatives, and "A Clean Break" may come again to serve as the basis for an attack on Iran. There is little hope that such an attack will meet with any more success than the last two conflicts inspired by this dangerous document and the men who wrote it." Read more.

I'd say, based on current propaganda on CNN & MSNBC, the current threatening rhetoric coming from Bush & Co, and the above -- odds are darned good that Georgie-boy is bent on going to war with Syria & Iran real soon. That way, the press will have a new war on which to fixate 24/7, thereby diverting voters attention away from BushCo's disastrous Iraq failure. And who knows, maybe Bushie'll throw in a terrorist attack in the US first -- claim that it was initiated by Iran and, and if the "terrorist" attack is horrific enough, he may even be able to declare marshall law and call off the elections all together -- effectively ending democracy in America.

As preposterous as some of you may think this sounds -- based on history, it is entirely conceivable. The American public that would never have let their government get away with the kinds of criminal acts committed by BushCo is no longer. Bush should have been impeached, convicted, tried in International Court for crimes against humanity and thrown in a dungeon by now. We should all be storming Washington with the largest, loudest protest in American history demanding that these criminals be removed from office.

Instead, we resort to desperately blogging our warnings to people to wake up before it's too late--while we secretly fear that it already is.