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Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a
nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a
"Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed
considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense
initiatives more successful? Can such an application of
science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable,
necessary or impossible?
Read Debates, a new
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almarst2003
- 10:00pm Mar 31, 2003 EST (#
10853 of 10879)
NEO-CONS - http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15481
What do William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Elliot Abrams,
and Robert Kagan have in common? Yes, they are all die-hard
hawks who have gained control of U.S. foreign policy since the
9/11 attacks. But they are also part of one big
neoconservative family – an extended clan of spouses,
children, and friends who have known each other for
generations.
Neoconservatives are former liberals (which explains the
"neo" prefix) who advocate an aggressive unilateralist vision
of U.S. global supremacy, which includes a close strategic
alliance with Israel. Let's start with one of the founding
fathers of the extended neocon clan: Irving Kristol. His
extensive resume includes waging culture wars for the CIA
against the Soviet Union in the early years of the Cold War
and calling for an American "imperial" role during the Vietnam
War. Papa Kristol, who has been credited with defining the
major themes of neoconservative thought, is married to
Gertrude Himmelfarb, a neoconservative powerhouse on her own.
Her studies of the Victorian era in Britain helped inspire the
men who sold Bush on the idea of "compassionate conservatism."
The son of this proud couple is none other that William
Kristol, the crown prince of the neoconservative clique and
editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard. In 1997,
he founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a
front group which cemented the powerful alliance between
right-wing Republicans like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld,
Christian and Catholic Right leaders like Gary Bauer and
William Bennett, and the neocons behind a platform of global
U.S. military dominance.
Irving Kristol's most prominent disciple is Richard Perle,
who was until Thursday the Defense Policy Board chairman, is
also a "resident scholar" at the American Enterprise
Institute, which is housed in the same building as PNAC. Perle
himself married into neocon royalty when he wed the daughter
of his professor at the University of Chicago, the late Alfred
Wohlstetter – the man who helped both his son-in-law and his
fellow student Paul Wolfowitz get their start in Washington
more than 30 years ago.
Perle's own protege is Douglas Feith, who is now
Wolfowitz's deputy for policy and is widely known for his
right-wing Likud position. And why not? His father,
Philadelphia businessman and philanthropist Dalck Feith, was
once a follower of the great revisionist Zionist leader,
Vladimir Jabotinsky, in his native Poland back in the 1930s.
The two Feiths were honored together in 1997 by the right-wing
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).
The AEI has long been a major nexus for such inter-familial
relationships. A long-time collaborator with Perle, Michael
Ledeen is married to Barbara Ledeen, a founder and director of
the anti-feminist Independent Women's Forum (IWF), who is
currently a major player in the Republican leadership on
Capitol Hill. Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and another
neo-con power couple – David and Meyrav Wurmser – co-authored
a 1996 memorandum for Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu
outlining how to break the Oslo peace process and invade Iraq
as the first step to transforming the Middle East.
Though she doesn't focus much on foreign-policy issues,
Lynne Cheney also hangs her hat at AEI. Her husband Dick
Cheney recently chose Victoria Nuland to become his next
deputy national security adviser. Nuland, as it turns out, is
married to Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol's main comrade-in-arms
and the co-founder of PNAC.
Bob's father, Donald Kagan, is a Yale historian who
converted from a liberal Democrat to a staunch neocon in the
1970s. On the eve of the 2000 presidential elections, Donald
and his other son, Frederick, published "While America
Sleeps," a clarion call to increase defense spending. Since
then, the three Kagan men have written reams of columns
warning that the currently ballooning Pentagon budget is
simply not enou
almarst2003
- 10:09pm Mar 31, 2003 EST (#
10854 of 10879)
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