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US right weaves tangled but effective
web
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -
While most of the world is still trying to come to terms
with the neo-imperial ambitions of the post-September 11
Bush administration, US political analysts, particularly
those on the libertarian right and the left, have been
trying to map out the various forces behind the
administration's hawks the better to understand and
counteract them.
Most analysts have identified
three main components to the coalition behind President
George W Bush's aggressive foreign policy: right-wing
militarists, of whom Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
is the exemplar; neo-conservatives, led by former
Defense Policy Board (DPB) chairman Richard Perle, whose
world view is similar to that of Israel's Likud Party;
and Christian Right forces whose leaders are influential
with Bush's political guru, Karl Rove.
While
these forces are often depicted in the abstract, they
constitute a network of flesh-and-blood people who have
worked together closely and openly - both in and out of
government - for more than 30 years in some cases.
Over that period, they built up what analyst Tom
Barry of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) has
called an "infrastructure of the [right wing]
counter-establishment", of key individuals,
institutions, think-tanks and publications that has
emerged as the dominant power in the Republican Party -
and not only with respect to foreign policy.
Two
of the structure's most remarkable characteristics are
how few people it includes and how adept they have been
in creating new institutions and front groups that act
as a vast echo chamber for one another and for the
media, particularly in media-obsessed Washington.
In this, the neo-conservatives, who lack any
grassroots constituency, have been especially effective.
In fact, the network consists of a very small
elite, much smaller for example than the post-World War
II internationalist "establishment" that includes such
institutions as the Council on Foreign Relations, the
foreign service and the Wall Street lawyers, financiers
and business executives who have long dominated US
foreign policy.
To understand its dimensions and
the way it works, Barry and the IRC (for which this
author has written articles for compensation) compare it
to a spider's web - hence the name of their latest
Internet website, Right Web, probably the most
comprehensive and integrated effort yet to link the
various connections and relationships that have given
the "Right" its power and influence.
The site,
which is still being developed, covers some 175
individuals and dozens of organizations that have
constituted the network over the past quarter-century.
Even a brief meander through the site demonstrates both
just how small and incestuous this network has been and
how ambitious are its goals, both in foreign and
domestic policy.
Chances are, for example, that
you have never heard of the Foundation for Community,
Faith-Centered Enterprise, an innocent-sounding
initiative that suggests church-based community
organizing or perhaps a philanthropic group that awards
grants to church-related business initiatives. In fact,
the foundation and its sister group, Americans for
Community and Faith-Centered Enterprise, were founded in
mid-2001 by Michael Joyce, a right-wing kingpin who
helped turn the Bradley Foundation into the rainmaker of
an ever-growing network of institutes, publications and
think-tanks.
Joyce told the Washington Post in
June 2001 that he launched the two groups at the behest
of Rove, who was looking for ways to bolster public
support for Bush's efforts to fund religious
organizations that provide social services.
If
you look more closely at the group's profile on the
website, you'll get a better idea of how this
two-year-old organization fits into the larger network
of the US right. Its associates include William Kristol,
the editor of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard and
chairman of the Project for the New American Century
(PNAC), and another neo-conservative, former education
secretary William Bennett, for whom Kristol once worked.
Midge Decter, another prominent neo-conservative
who co-headed (with Rumsfeld) the Committee for the Free
World during the administration of president Ronald
Reagan, currently serves on the foundation's board of
visitors, while Jeffrey Bell, former president of
another neo-conservative think-tank, the Manhattan
Institute, serves as the group's Washington lobbyist.
You will find further that all of these
individuals have supported the work of PNAC, which
played a key role in pushing Bush to war in Iraq, and
whose founding statement in 1997 was signed by Rumsfeld,
Vice President Dick Cheney and more than half a dozen
other top Bush foreign-policy figures, all identified as
key hawks.
If you click on a different group,
say Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT), you
might expect to find a different cast of characters. But
this group is headed by Bennett, and among its
associates and advisers are L Paul Bremer, currently the
chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in
Iraq; Center for Security Policy (CSP) director Frank
Gaffney; real-estate baron Lawrence Kadish; and former
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director James
Woolsey.
If you click on each of these names,
you will find that they all have supported PNAC, and
when you read Gaffney's profile you will see that he,
like Perle, once worked for Washington state senator
Henry Jackson and, indeed, for Perle himself, when the
"Dark Prince" toiled at the Pentagon under Reagan.
If you then click on CSP's name, you will soon
discover that it is one of the country's most hardline
foreign-policy groups, and has consistently opposed
arms-control treaties; favored the retention and
expansion of Washington's nuclear arsenal; warned of a
Chinese takeover of the Panama Canal; and served as a
major backer of Likud's policies in the Middle East.
You will also find an astonishing overlap
between its board of advisers, PNAC associates and top
Bush national-security officials - and that it is funded
heavily by big defense contractors.
If, on the
other hand, you opt for Woolsey, a frequent guest on
Murdoch-owned Fox News, you will find that the former
CIA chief is currently a member with Perle of the DPB,
works for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, has
supported PNAC, acts as CSP's honorary co-chair and
served on the Rumsfeld Commission on the
ballistic-missile threat.
Woolsey also worked
with the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP),
whose bland name disguises a band of nuclear-weapons
zealots that has long advocated developing new nukes,
smaller nukes, bunker-busting nukes and Star Wars.
As depicted by the site, Woolsey also served on
the Advisory Board of the Committee for the Liberation
of Iraq, a group set up 13 months ago in much the same
way that Americans for Community, Faith-Centered
Enterprise was - to support Bush's drive to war. Besides
Woolsey, directors included several other DPB members,
including Perle, Eliot Cohen, General Wayne Downing and
former House speaker Newt Gingrich, as well as Kristol
and about a dozen people also associated with PNAC.
If you click on Perle, whose principal perch is
the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), along with
Gingrich and former United Nations ambassador Jeane
Kirkpatrick, you are likely to find yourself occupied
for some time. Ditto for Kristol, whose offices are
located just five floors below AEI, close to 17th and L
streets in Washington.
Despite the centrality of
both Perle and Kristol, however, the genius of the
right's network, as noted by Barry, is its
improvisational "architecture".
"Rather than
operating from a single blueprint, they constantly
renovate and commission additions in the form of new
institutes, front groups, media outlets and political
projects," he says. "It's a post-modern structure with
no central office or main lobby, no fixed foundation, no
elevator that takes you to different levels."
Compared with its vitality and breadth,
according to Barry, its ideological foes on the left, or
even in the middle, "resemble aging cobwebs".
(Inter Press Service)
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