A New American Century?

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday February 13, 2003 13:18 by Elisha Commins elishacommins at netscape dot com Co. Galway 087-9317233

www.newamericancentury.org is a website sponsored by a group of influential U.S. politicians including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and Dan Quayle, promoting aggressive U.S. militarism and provides an enlightening background to current U.S. aggression.

At a meeting hosted by the Galway Alliance Against War this week in Galway Labour T.D. Michael D. Higgins drew the audience’s attention to www.newamericancentury.org, a sinister web-site which explicitly confirms what many have been thinking all along of the current U.S. administration.

The Project for the New American Century, established in 1997, describes itself as a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership.

Among its signatories are Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Governor of Florida Jeb Bush, former Democratic Vice-President Dan Quayle and millionaire publisher and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes.

‘Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?’ they ask.

‘We need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values’ according to the group’s statement of principles.

Fighting for ‘a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century’ is listed as top priority.

In a report entitled, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" the group calls for unprecedented hikes in military spending ‘to transform U.S. forces to exploit the ‘‘revolution in military affairs’’, ‘to fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars’ and for the ‘creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of space control’.

Reganite policies hold a particular appeal for this group: -‘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.’

‘Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today’, they reassure us, ‘but it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.’

Against such a background of aggressive militarism Washington is now poised to seize control of Iraq, a country with the world's second largest reserves of oil, even if it means extinguishing the lives of countless innocent human beings, as part of its ‘war on terror’.

U.S. government belligerence keeps the American people in fear with countless terror alerts and talk of various ‘rogue nations’ allegedly having weapons of mass destruction, many of which were at one time supplied by the U.S.

According to Stephen Gowans writing for the Global Policy Forum ‘It appears as if the 21st century is indeed shaping up to be the new American century, one in which the US stands above all other countries, its supremacy uncontested.’