The 'Right' Way To Dominate The World
"
I'd be the last person to compare anyone with Hitler,
but I have to admit that the plan drawn up by the
Cheney people -- for whichever Bush happened to be
in power at the time -- reads in some respects
remarkably like "Mein Kampf."'
sfgate.com Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, September 30, 2002
If you like conspiracies, you'll love an article in the
Sept . 15 Sunday Herald (Glascow, Scotland). In the
article, author Neil Mackay reveals a plan by the
Bush administration to take over the world.
Mackay doesn't say that Bush plans to take over the
world, but the plan he cites gives that impression.
The plan was drawn up and published by a
conservative think tank known as "The Project for the
New American Century." It was published in
September 2000, before Bush was elected president.
According to another report, this one in The Moscow
Times, an outline of the plan was drawn up much
earlier, in 1992, when George H.W. Bush was
president and anticipating re-election.
The team that drew up the first version was headed
by Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense and
flushed with success over the Gulf War. Others
involved included Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz,
Zalmay Khalilzad ("special envoy" to Afghanistan),
John Ellis ("Jeb") Bush, and I. Lewis ("Scooter")
Libby (Cheney's current chief of staff).
(In the strange, interconnected world of Washington,
Lewis also was an attorney for Marc Rich, whose
pardon by President Bill Clinton drew the ire of
Republicans.)
What I'm calling the plan to take over the world was
titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses -- Strategy,
Forces and Resources For a New Century."
The think tank that wrote it is headed by William
Kristol, often seen on television as a conservative
commentator. According to a Sept. 17 editorial in
The Charleston Gazette, Kristol was paid $100,000 a
year by Enron, the troubled energy broker.
The think tank grew out of the New Citizenship
Project, which was funded by the conservative
Bradley Foundation, a part of Rockwell Automation, a
former defense contractor.
These convoluted relationships remind me of the
laughter and derision that greeted Hillary Clinton
when she referred to "a vast right-wing conspiracy."
In any event, Hillary's husband gets mentioned often,
and always derisively, in the "take over the world"
plan. He is repeatedly accused of "degrading"
America's defenses.
George W. Bush, when he was running for president,
made the same accusations. Then, when elected, he
submitted the same military budget that Clinton had
previously submitted. It wasn't until after Sept. 11,
2001, that Bush asked Congress for more military
spending.
Our military budget, by the way, is bigger than that of
"the next eight spenders combined, and 22 times the
combined military budgets of our fiercest enemies --
Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Iraq and Sudan,"
according to an article by Frida Berrigan, a research
associate at the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade
Policy Center, posted on commondreams.org.
According to the CIA, the U.S. military budget in
1999 was $276.7 billion. Compare that with the
military spending plans of the United Kingdom ($36.9
billion), China ($12.6 billion), France ($39.8 billion)
and Iceland ($0).
And, incidentally, we're told our service people now
fighting in Afghanistan are part of the world's
best-ever fighting machine, but that very same
machine was said to be in dangerous disrepair by
George W. Bush when he was running for office and
by the authors of the "take over the world" plan.
In essence, the "take over the world" plan says we
should be equipped to fight and win multiple
simultaneous wars in widely separated parts of the
world.
It suggests that we should move into the Gulf region
and control the flow of oil, particularly in Iraq, even if
Saddam Hussein ceases to exist.
The Moscow Times article on the plan compares it
with "Mein Kampf."
I'd be the last person to compare anyone with Hitler,
but I have to admit that the plan drawn up by the
Cheney people -- for whichever Bush happened to be
in power at the time -- reads in some respects
remarkably like "Mein Kampf."
It has the same kind of arrogance, the sense that we
are right and everyone else is wrong, the
unquestioned belief that only our great nation is
capable of leading all the lesser nations out of the
wilderness.
It goes further than that, hinting broadly that only the
conservative members of our government can be
trusted to lead the world safely to an
American-dominated planet.
The plan is very dry reading and 90 pages long, but I
suggest you scan it if you have the time. If you read
between the lines, you'll conclude -- as I have -- that
we're going to invade Iraq no matter what.
Our leaders believe it's our destiny to control the
world.
Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist and
iconoclast. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him
at harleysorensen@yahoo.com. |
