Remember the PNAC from the Bush Jr/Cheney years?

[wnylib]

The PNAC (Project for a New American Century) paper was published online in 2001 as the product of a far right think tank. I remember it very well. It sheds some light on current international events.

I printed out a hard copy and read the entire thing. Its main goal since the Soviet Union had collapsed was a,Pax Americana to ensure that no other nation ever became equal to or near equal in power or world influence to the US.

Among its goals was to end NATO and to break up the EU. Most chilling; though; was the goal of developing biological weapons specific enough to target select ethnic/racial groups.

Project 2025 (or P25 for short) looks like a modern update of the PNAC. Trump is only the visible face of evil. Behind him are financial and political backers who support him because he can get voter support and carry out agendas that are in line with theirs.

Vance would be just as bad, but without the perverse version of charisma that Trump has.

[niyad]

1. pnac was founded in 1997.

[wnylib]

3. Thanks for the info. I only became aware of it

in 2001 when it was online and was being discussed on several websites.

[Intractable]

2. "Project 2025 (or P25 for short) looks like a modern update of the PNAC."

That is just what I thought when I first heard of Project 2025.

[2naSalit]

10. Same here. n/t

[dflprincess]

4. The document that said the only way to get Americans to go along with another war in the Middle East

Required a "new Pearl Harbor".

[wnylib]

5. Which happened on 9/11/01

[PatSeg]

16. Yes and that is one of the reasons

so many people questioned the official version of 9/11.

[Wounded Bear]

17. Was always a LIHOP guy...

[PatSeg]

19. I think that was the best explanation

Though I think there was also a fair amount of incompetence on the part of the Bush administration.

Bush's reaction in August 2001 to the classified intelligence memo titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” was rather telling.

[wnylib]

22. It certainly was coincidental with PNAC needs and goals.

I do not believe as some do, that 911 was an inside job. But I do believe that the Bush administration intentionally backed off from from terrorism defenses that Clinton had spent so much time and energy on. I believe that Bush/Cheney wanted an attack in order to carry out its goals. Maybe they did not think that it would be so devastating.

(When I say Bush/Cheney, I mean Cheney. He had the most to gain from war in the Mideast via his energy contacts and Halliburton. Also, Bush Jr did not have the brains to run the country. He was only the public figurehead for what was essentially a Cheney administration.)

[PatSeg]

24. That is the way I see it as well

I think Cheney knew what was going on, but I see Bush as being taken by surprise by the attacks. I believe Bush was their useful idiot and Cheney and his pals were orchestrating a lot of what was going on behind the scenes.

There is so much we'll probably never know.

[dflprincess]

20. Exactly!

But we're supposed to pretend we never saw that.

[Straw Man]

6. Pax Americana?

To "ensure that no other nation ever became equal to or near equal in power or world influence to the US"?

I guess it's pretty ironic, then, that the Project 2025 figurehead, DJT, is working round-the-clock to flush American power and influence down the shitter.

[wnylib]

7. He is flushing American values and civil liberties

down the toilet along with the constitution and law.

But he is throwing the weight of US military power around the world and is using extortion in place of diplomacy to get what he wants. He is commandeering foreign oil and is achieving the goal of sowing chaos in NATO and the EU.

[Straw Man]

9. Point taken.

I believe, however, that his military adventurism is ill-conceived and ultimately doomed to failure. As far as his destructive actions regarding NATO and the EU, I believe that those actions only serve to weaken us in the long run. Favoring Russian interests over those of Western Europe is a fool's game. Putin would like nothing better than to see us destroyed, and Trump is happy to unwittingly oblige.

[harumph]

14. Spot on. This isn't going to work out the way the self styled "geniuses" think it is.

They're high on their own shit. I think it'll unify Europe - which is the opposite of what they intend. Europe also
has nukes and won't be as inviting a target as was Ukraine. Parallel systems will emerge (and are emerging) that
will isolate us. Wouldn't it be fun if American scientists flee and France no less - becomes the leader in
quantum computing? LOL.

[Figarosmom]

8. Yes I was thinking about that too.

[FadedMullet]

11. Jeez, I remember PNAC as an unholy alliance of Kagan, Kristol and Wolfowitz whose main purpose was to......

.......bomb the shit out of the Middle East to make it safer for Israel to continue to attract investment and "make the desert bloom". Did not know about NATO, the EU and biological weapons but not surprised.

[Martin Eden]

12. I learned about PNAC 24 years ago when I joined DU

It was a neocon manifesto for using US military superiority to force adversarial regimes to our will, starting with Iraq. The problem was getting the American people and Congress on board for the invasion. Something like a "new Pearl Harbor" might be necessary. Then 9/11 happened, and the Bush Cheney regime went into overdrive in a systematic campaign of lies to link Saddam to al Qaeda and to convince the public Iraq had a nuclear weapons program that would produce "mushroom clouds" over American cities.

In October 2002 the Iraq War Resolution giving Bush a free hand to use the US military in Iraq passed the House & Senate, with nearly half the Democratic lawmakers voting for it. I made a vow that none of them would ever get my vote in a Democratic primary. This included John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. I finally broke that vow in 2020 when I thought Joe had the best chance to beat Trump.

[tritsofme]

13. PNAC and neocons certainly weren't advocating an end to NATO, quite the opposite actually.

They were strong supporters of NATO’s eastern expansion.

That’s one major reason figures associated with PNAC (Bill Kristol, etc.) later broke with Trump and Republicans.

Other things like breaking up EU and race based biological weapons, I think you may also be confusing with other groups, it doesn’t sound congruent.

PNAC and the neocons were odious, they dragged us into a senseless war, but we don’t need to tell stories to make that point.

[pat_k]

15. Great analysis of the dangers of PNAC and the neo-con ideology

I saved this article ages ago..It's entitled The Rise and Demise of the 'New American Century' (2006)

If anyone is interested in an extensive report on neocons, I found a link to that old report:

https://sites.ualberta.ca/~raitken/documents/0606riseanddemise.pdf

It's now on my re-read list. As I recall, it provided some great insights that currently escape me (wish my brain wasn't such a sieve)

From the intro:

The IRC is publishing this special report on the Project for the New American Century, along with an accompanying report on the Committee on the Present Danger, as part of an effort to stimulate more reflection on the dangers of the ideology and political projects of the neoconservatives and their allies.

IRC (International Relations Center) was founded in 1979 by Tom Barry. IRC morphed into other things around 2007 when Barry joined the Center for International Policy.

I don't know what Mr. Barry is up to these days, but he also wrote an excellent 2009 article on our destructive immigration policies and the exponential growth of immigration prisons: A Death in Texas: Where profits, poverty, and immigration converge.

Things were already intolerable then. I still have trouble fathoming the magnitude of the hell we are descending into.

[wnylib]

21. Thanks for the info and link.

Looks like I misremembered the PNAC goal for NATO. I am certain about the goal of disrupting and ending the EU and thought that NATO was also a target.

I still see P25 as an updated version of the PNAC in some ways. But, I think that Trump and some of his circle have a personal agenda that is not completely compatible with the PNAC and P25. In Trump's mind (what's left of it) his personal power and wealth and the nation's power and wealth are fused together as one. He sees himself as belonging to an elite group of world oligarchs and seeks to be king of the mountain in that group.

[leftstreet]

18. PNAC wanted to expand NATO, not end it n/t

[Sweet Freedom]

23. FYI: Rebuilding America's Defenses

is still available: http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf