Before going on, I want to give everyone reading this article the website which is my primary source and to which the article will constantly refer. That website is http://www.newamericancentury.org, home to The Project for a New American Century, a rightwing political activism group. Among the signers of its "Statement of Principles" are names such as William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Steve Forbes, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and yes, even Dan Quayle. If you haven't an inkling of who these people are, please do the research and find out. Suffice it to say, this group is a cadre of high- officials within the U.S. government, all very conservative, and all very dangerous and very much in control.

Scoff if you will when I say "in control" and "dangerous." You may not see these men as a threat, and you may not believe that they really have all that destructive of an agenda. Let me quote to you a brief section of their "Statement of Principles":

We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.

Allow me to break down the sections of this statement for further examination. The signers are agreeing that the United States' policy must conform to the "...essential elements of the Reagan Administration..." in three ways.

The first of these is to create a strong military "ready to meet both present and future challenges." This concept can be exemplified in the enormous amounts of money being poured into military spending under the efforts of the current Administration, with key players Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz assisting the President in making these monetary decisions. Billions of dollars are being spent on our "mission" in Iraq alone. In fact, in an article by Project writers Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt entitled "The Right Fight Now" Counterinsurgency, Not Caution, Is The Answer to Iraq," there is a statement that even more military force needs to be sent into Iraq to quash "insurgents" and "radical clerics" (read, "terrorists") in that country. One of the concluding sections of the article calls for the Pentagon to "put on hold its plans to reduce the number of troops in Iraq" and for the Marines to "send fresh units back into Iraq."

Does this sound like free elections to you? What happened to liberation of the Iraqis? Why are we sending more troops into a country where we are plainly no longer wanted? And why is all of this coming out of the pockets of the American people? A recent Gallup poll, Oct. 24-26, stated that 39% of those polled, the plurality, wanted to "Withdraw some troops" from Iraq, while only 14% of those polled wanted to "Send more troops." (http://www.gallup.com/poll/focus/sr030610.asp)

The second way in which the Project wants America to conform to Reagan-era policies is that our foreign policy is expected to "boldly and purposefully [promote] American principles abroad." This is a statement of decisive purpose, and is backed up by the claim on the front page of the website that states that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world [and] that such leadership requires military strength."

Think about this. Do you, as a citizen of the United States, honestly believe that capitalist democracy is the very best system of government for the entire world? Do you believe that the Bush Administration, or any American Presidential Administration, is the very best leader for all the nations of the world? If you've answered yes to both of those questions, I want you to spend some time in thought about what your answers really mean. This group is essentially calling for a world-wide American Empire that would place us as the only power both domestically and abroad, and they are willing to use "military strength" to accomplish it.

In fact, in an article from the Project website entitled simply "The No-Nukes Party," writer Daniel McKivergan states that "Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld [will] seek to include language in the 2004 Defense Authorization bill that would repeal a 10-year-old ban on all 'research and development which could lead to the production by the United States of a new low-yield nuclear weapon, including a precision low-yield warhead.'" The Nuclear Test Ban is under intense scrutiny by this group, and they are more than ready to push wording through Congress to allow the resumption of nuclear weapons research and development.

If you'll allow me to give a statistic, according to the NDRC's¹ Table of Global Nuclear Weapons Stockpiles, found at http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab19.asp, the United States of America in 2002 had 10,640 nuclear weapons, leading our closest "competitor," the former Soviet Union, by over 2,000 weapons of mass destruction. What makes these statistics even more interesting is that the former USSR is disarming their nuclear weapons, at a rate of about 1,000 every year now, and we are actually up in our count from 2001--one hundred and forty nine new nukes. That means that not only do we already have more nukes than any other world power, but we're building new ones, and now the Nuclear Test Ban is up to be repealed. That will definitely give us the "military strength" to ensure that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world [whether you like it or not]" (emphasis and brackets mine).

Finally, and possibly most frightening of all, is the call for "leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities." This isn't a bad statement in and of itself, until you realize that with so many members of the Project currently holding high- government offices, the people writing this think that they are accomplishing it. These people think that getting into a war that almost all of the other highly-developed nations in the world were against was good. It means they think proceeding to maintain a presence there long after our own nation is against more troops being placed in Iraq is good. It means they think that attempting to repeal a perfectly reasonable ban on nuclear weapons development while continuing to make more nuclear weapons at the current of technology is all a very good idea and promotes the U.S.'s global responsibilities. At that point, one is moved to question what the Project considers our "responsibilities" to be.

The Project for a New American Century's website is full of jingoistic, "Big Brother" like language that must give any person surveying the website pause. With so many of its members in positions of power, this group is swiftly working toward its goal of American global domination using a might-makes-right foreign policy based on the strength of America's military. This website isn't widely known about, and the members of the Project are rarely exposed for who they are. When asked directly about the Project in a speech at Georgetown University, Paul Wolfowitz did not answer. The people in the Project deny its existence.

Don't ignore this website. Go there, read some of the articles, and understand what's going on with this group, before they have too firm a hold on policy decisions in our country. Being aware of what's going on in government and being involved in the process is, to quote the Project itself, the only way the "United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next."

Footnotes:
1 (Natural Resources Defense Council)