[A-List] Be very afraid

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The revival of a Cold War elite committee says a lot about how far
Washington's neocons are willing to go to keep Americans in a state
of fear and perpetual war.

by Sam J Noumoff

Al-Abram Weekly On-line, Issue No 707 (September 09 - 15 2004)


On 20 July, we were witness to a second resurrection of the
"Committee on the Present Danger" (CPD), an organisation with two
previous incarnations. Who are these people who seek a third life,
and what are their objectives?

The identity of the honorary co-chairs of CPD-III provides a clue as to
its orientation: Senators Joseph Lieberman and Jon Kyl.  Positioning one
member of each of the two major political parties at the helm continues
the tradition from earlier committees, CPD-I from 1950 and CPD-II from
1976. This bi-partisan alliance is yet another example which belies the
two party system in US politics; there are minimal differences.

What explains this Cold War relic surfacing again?  Speculation runs the
gamut from the need to find an institutional bastion for the so called
"neocons", should George W Bush be defeated in the forthcoming election,
to an anchor for the battle of the soul of the conservative movement
between the ideologues of US pre-emptive hegemony, such as Norman
Podhoretz, Kenneth Edelman and Max Kampelman, and the so- called
traditional, pragmatic, less interventionist conservatives, represented
by Colin Powell, Alexander Haig, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Gates.

As CPD-III lays claim to the legacy of its predecessors, let us go back
a bit and trace out that heritage.

The common thread of CPD-I, II and III is the perception by elements of
the US elite that major threats loom that the general population fails
to fully comprehend. This has led, the theory runs, to a dangerous,
potentially catastrophic lack of support for what they see as the
necessary defensive response. CPD-I was led by Harvard University
President James B Connant after his return from his European diplomatic
assignment. Parenthetically, one of Connant's lieutenants while in
Europe was the father of US presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry
of Massachusetts.

With the support of then Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Assistant
Secretary of State Edward R Barnett said it would be necessary to
initiate a "psychological scare campaign" directed at the American
people. It has been suggested that CPD-I was initiated to preserve
the good name of "anti- communism", which was being caricatured by
the antics of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The fear was that if McCarthy
maintained his dominance of the anti- communist movement it would result
in a diminution of the Soviet threat in the eyes of the American people.

CPD-I functioned on the basis of what was then called "ExSET" (Expanding
Soviet Empire Theory). Policies flowing from this theory were designed
to destabilise the USSR via a military build-up, economic isolation and
peripheral insurgencies. It maintained vigorous opposition to any and
all Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I and II) with the Soviet
Union. It took any such talks as a sign of US weakness. Among early
members was Jay Lovestone, former leader of the "City College faction"
of the American Communist Party who was purged and subsequently became
the backbone of anti-communism within the American trade union movement.

CPD-II resurfaced formally in 1976, led by Eugene V Rostow and Paul
Nitze, the latter having authored National Security Council document
NSC-68, which called for a massive military build up against the Soviets
and the maintenance of US global hegemony.

The resurfacing evolved out of a group organised by George Bush Sr, who
then headed the CIA, and was authorised by President Gerald Ford. This
group was known as "Plan B". The group was led by Richard Pipes and Paul
Nitze and included Paul Dundes Wolfowitz, four Generals and the Rand
Corporation, among others.

The political anchor of the group was The Coalition for a Democratic
Majority, led by right wing hawks of the US Senate from the Democratic
Party such as Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who believed that communism was the
great evil and had to be obliterated and replaced by global "democracy",
plus Secretary of State Dean Rusk. While the Democrats were in the
majority they were joined by those of similar persuasion from the ranks
of the Republican Party; the initial number totalling 193 members. To
this list were added UN Ambassador Jeanne J Kirkpatrick and Ronald
Reagan, who became a member of the Executive Committee in 1979.

During the administration of President Jimmy Carter, CPD-II considered
itself under siege as his foreign policy shifted away from US
unilateralism towards what was then characterised as "trilateralism";
a movement originating with the Trilateral Commission of which Carter
as governor of Georgia was a member, and where he encountered Zbigniew
Brzezinski, who became his national security adviser.

Trilateralism placed a renewed emphasis on strategic consultations
between the US, Japan and Europe, and saw arms limitation agreements
with the Soviet Union as being in American interests. Both aspects of
this policy were seen as anathema by CPD-II. Founding member William R
Van Cleave said "arms control had a depressant effect not only on our
military programmes but also on our ability to deal with the Soviets.
It has totally muddled our thinking." In other words, arms control
suggests that we in the "democratic world" accept the existence of
the USSR.

The Carter policy was reversed under the first Reagan administration
with the inclusion of 33 CPD- II members, with more than 20 of them
strategically placed in the national security apparatus. Included in
this group were Claire Booth Luce, former ambassador to Italy in the
late 1940s and the architect of undermining the impending Communist
Party electoral victory in that country. Others included Donald Rumsfeld,
Richard V Allen, as national security adviser, and Ray Cline, deputy CIA
director, with links to the World Anti-Communist League, and academics
such as the University of Pennsylvania's Robert Strasz Hupe.

Added to this group, under the influence of Jay Lovestone were prominent
members of the US trade union movement; the heads of the AFL-CIO, the
International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers Union, the American Federation of Teachers, the Iron Workers
International Union and the International Union of Operating Engineers.
Other labour affiliated groups included the A Philip Randolph Institute,
the Free Trade Union Institute, the African-American Labor Center, the
Asian-American Free Labor Institute, the Bayard Rustin Fund, the League
for Industrial Democracy, the Social Democrats of the USA, Freedom House,
the International Rescue Committee and the National Democratic Institute
for International Affairs.

Not to be left out, the corporate sector was represented by Hewlett-
Packard, the Potomac International Corporation, Concept Associates,
Goldman-Sachs Investments, Gateway National Bank, Time Inc, Reader's
Digest, Digital Recording, Prudential Insurance, Nichols Co,
International Bank and Honeywell.

Bringing up the rear, were the think tanks, including the Hudson
Institute, the Rand Corporation, the Hoover Institution on War,
Revolution and Peace, the Brookings Institution, the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, and the Middle East Institute
of Columbia University.

Initial funding came from David Packard of Hewlett-Packard, followed by
grants from three foundations linked to Richard Mellon Scaife, of Gulf
Oil, totalling $300,000 from 1973 to 1981, from 1984 a sustaining group
of 1,100 contributors. If this is any consolation, individual
contributions were limited to $10,000 per year.

As can be seen, the skeleton group of the 1950s developed into a
full-blown bi-partisan elite of the most bellicose elements within US
political life. With the implosion of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s
the driving force of many CPD-II members seemed to wane. That the US was
elevated to the position of sole remaining superpower was self evident
and its hegemony understood by all. NATO under American guidance had
broken Yugoslavia, advanced to the borders of European Russia and
established a military presence in Central Asia.

Two phenomena combined have led to the third life of CPD. One was the
emergence of an increasing divergence within Europe from the tactical
and strategic goals of the US, under the slogan of "multi-polarity",
joined by a preliminary realignment of China and Russia around the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. To this are added the so-called
pariah states of Iran, Syria, Libya, the DPR of Korea, Cuba, Vietnam,
Laos and Cambodia; a broad and tenuous alliance of states in one way or
another hostile to the US. The sole commonality between them is a desire
to inhibit US intervention in their domestic polities and dilute the
power of its hegemony. This was an irritant to US policymakers, but not
sufficient to regenerate the CPD. If we combine this with the totally
unanticipated response to the invasion of Iraq, the chemistry seems
right.

What has terrified hawks who have morphed into "chicken-hawks"
(defined as those prepared to sacrifice others when they themselves
avoided military service) is the increasing alienation of the entire
Muslim world in tandem with the acts of terrorism from an amorphous
adversary under the misnomer "Al-Qaeda". While we have not yet reached
the state where "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", multiple groups
have emerged which reinforce the challenge to US global domination.
It is within this context that CPD-III surfaced.

The primary fear of CPD-III's initiators is that a growing anti-war
sentiment in the US will weaken America's historical resolve to
undertake the arduous task of maintaining its global dominance. As the
two honorary chairs of CPD- III, Senators Lieberman (Democrat) and Kyl
(Republican) have argued, we must not permit a political undertow (read
anti-war sentiment) in the US to "wash out the recent gains" of the
invasion of Iraq. CPD-III's line continues: "too many people are
insufficiently aware of our enemy's evil worldwide designs which include
waging jihad against all Americans and re-establishing a totalitarian
religious empire in the Middle East", and the war against it is the
"test of our time". In their mission statement it is explicitly stated
that reform must be supported "in regions threatening to export terror".
It is important to note that regions which do not export terror are not
worthy of mention.

Consistent with previous CPDs, support for "decisive victory" must be
built against what one of the 41 CPD-III adherents, Frank Gaffney, calls
"islamofascism". This is not just a political creed; it has taken on a
form of religious zealotry. Kenneth Edelman, another member of the
41-strong CPD-III has argued that it is our duty and destiny to
eliminate totalitarian threats from radical Islam, while Midge Decter,
a current and past member of CPD, has cautioned that it is time for
Americans to understand that they have been chosen by providence.

Until now I have scrupulously avoided mention of a lateral issue of
significance - the Israeli connection to CPD. Six of the 41 current
members of CPD-III overlap in membership with the Likud- oriented Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), Middle East Forum or
the US Committee for a Free Lebanon. The linchpin in this relationship
is Michael Ledeen, comrade-in- arms with Oliver North in the Iran-Contra
affair, with David Kimche, in the release of US hostages from Lebanon,
with Morris Amitay, of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, and
Francesco Pazienza of the Italian secret police, SISMI. Ledeen, a
founding member of JINSA who has recently argued for "regime change" in
Iran, Syria and Lebanon, holds to the view that violence is the essence
of history and boasts that "creative destruction is our [America's]
middle name". Currently resident at the right wing think-tank, the
American Enterprise Institute, he may be characterised as the theologian
of the neocons. Parenthetically, he has also called for a purge of
"environmental wackos and radical feminazos". It appears clear that the
invasion of Iraq, the war on terror, proposed action against Lebanon,
Syria and Iran are motivated in large part by the perverse view that
Israel is best defended with these policies.

In a recent article by Laura Rozen posted on Altnet, the funding sources
for CPD-III are identified. They include Edgar Bronfman, president of
the World Jewish Congress, Charles and Andrea Bronfman of Seagrams,
Bernard Marcus of Home Depot, Leonard Ambramson of US Healthcare, the
Judy and Michael Steinhardt Foundation, Dale Feith, father of
Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee, among others. There is an apparent link between
these benefactors and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,
which was initiated to improve Israel's public relations in the US and
gain support for the Israeli reaction to the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/print/2004/707/op42.htm

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Published in Cairo by Al-Ahram established in 1875


Bill Totten     http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/