...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Friday, January 02, 2004
      ( 11:57 AM )
 
NeoCon Manifesto for the New Year

I haven't seen any blogging on this article that appeared in the London Telegraph two days ago - since blogspot went bonko and yesterday was a holiday, I'm just now getting to it. But I thought it deserved some airing as it is quite unbelievable...well, not really.

President George W Bush was sent a public
manifesto yesterday by Washington's hawks,
demanding regime change in Syria and Iran and
a Cuba-style military blockade of North Korea
backed by planning for a pre-emptive strike on
its nuclear sites.

[...]

The manifesto is contained in a new book by
Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser and "intellectual
guru" of the hardline neo-conservative movement,
and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter. They
give warning of a faltering of the "will to win" in
Washington.

I'm not sure how Perle got tagged as an "intellectual guru," but it wasn't by anyone I've ever heard of. So it appears that Perle and Frum are disgruntled by the slow pace of empire-building and the quagmire their most recent plot has ended up in. So in order to jump-start the new year, they've come up with some brilliant ideas on how we can really get this world moving towards a new horizon of wonderfulness!

The book demands that any talks with North
Korea require the complete and immediate
abandonment of its nuclear programme.

As North Korea will probably refuse such terms,
the book urges a Cuba-style military blockade
and overt preparations for war, including the rapid
pullback of US forces from the inter-Korean border
so that they move out of range of North Korean
artillery.

Such steps, with luck, will prompt China to oust its
nominal ally, Kim Jong-il, and install a saner regime
in North Korea, the authors write.

Not only is this an insane idea, it's stupid. What makes them think that China will or can do anything about Kim Jong-il - not to mention that said Kim Jong-il is a lunatic and has nuclear weapons. I'm sure blockading them will do a whole hell of a lot of good too, since their population is already starving to death because we already refuse to send supplies there. I especially liked the "such steps, with luck..." part of the plan.

But wait, that's not all! We have all kinds of pre-emptive goodies in this manifesto!

The authoritarian rule of Syria's leader, Bashar
Assad, should also be ended, encouraged by
shutting oil supplies from Iraq, seizing arms he
buys from Iran, and raids into Syria to hunt
terrorists.

[...]

The book calls for tough action against France
and its dreams of offsetting US power. "We should
force European governments to choose between
Paris and Washington," it states. Britain's
independence from Europe should be preserved...

So, presumably after we oust Syria's leader and install another occupation force there (or maybe just install Ariel Sharon), we are then turning our sights on Europe. Because obviously Britain's "independence from Europe" is in question - I just know all those brits are quaking in their boots over the invasion from France that is all-too-imminent.

All mocking aside, the scary thing about this is that this manifesto is serious. Perle and his kind actually believe these things, and these people are actually in positions of authority. Ten or twenty years ago, when they floated the idea that we should use any excuse possible to invade Iraq and establish an occupied country there to try and influence the balance of middle east politics, most people laughed and thought "well, no one will ever go along with that silly idea!" And here we are, with a puppet president that gives not only his ear to people like Perle, but hands over his foreign policy plans to them.

Can we truly afford to laugh at these ideas any more? I am afraid we can't. This is where our country will be headed if we cannot remove Bush from office this year. Colin Powell has already declared he is out of there if there is a second term, which means that the last moderate voice in the administration will be silenced. I don't think we can be to serious about doing everything we can to get these people out of power.

| -- permanent link