|
|
|
|
More cannon fodder, please, say
neo-cons
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, - Amid rising concern about
the over-extension of US military forces and the
growing budget deficit, the Project for the New
American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative group
whose past foreign-policy recommendations have
often been followed by President George W Bush, is
urging Congress to add 25,000 new soldiers to US
ground forces each year over the next several
years.
The appeal, which comes on the eve
of Bush's State of the Union address, is certain
to fuel the growing debate over whether Washington
can afford the interventionist vision long
espoused by PNAC and its highly influential
founders - that of a global "Pax Americana" in
which the US military in effect acts as the
guarantor of international peace and security.
"The United States military is too small
for the responsibilities we are asking it to
assume," said the open letter addressed to the
congressional leadership and signed by 34 defense
and foreign-policy analysts, mostly prominent
neo-conservatives but also a smattering of retired
generals and, significantly, several
national-defense alumni of Bill Clinton's
administration.
It was published as the
lead editorial in the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly
Standard, which is edited by William Kristol,
PNAC's chairman and founder.
"Our national
security, global peace and stability, and the
defense and promotion of freedom in the post-9/11
[September 11, 2001] world require a larger
military force than we have today," the letter
went on, adding, "The [Bush] administration has
unfortunately resisted increasing our ground
forces to the size needed to meet today's (and
tomorrow's) missions and challenges."
PNAC
itself consists of a handful of people besides
Kristol and PNAC's director, Gary Schmitt. Since
its creation in 1997, it has acted primarily as a
platform from which prominent neo-conservatives
could issue policy recommendations and invite
influential analysts from other ideological
currents to sign on.
Thus its founding
charter, which called for a "Reaganite policy of
military strength and moral quality", was signed
mostly by neo-conservatives, such as former
Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz; Vice President
Dick Cheney's current chief of staff, I Lewis
Libby; the current deputy defense secretary, Paul
Wolfowitz; and the current director for Middle
East affairs on the National Security Council,
Elliott Abrams.
But several individuals
more closely associated with an
aggressive-nationalist position, notably the
current Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney,
and magazine magnate Steve Forbes, also signed, as
did Gary Bauer, a leader of the US Christian
Right.
The signers' make-up thus presaged
the three-headed coalition of hawks -
neo-conservatives, aggressive nationalists and the
Christian Right - that gained control of the Bush
administration's foreign policy after the
September 11 terrorist attacks.
From 1997
until Bush's election in 2001, PNAC issued a
number of policy statements signed by the same or
a similar cast of characters, as well as several
longer reports and a book, Present Dangers,
that prescribed many of the policy initiatives the
Bush administration has since adopted.
PNAC first urged Washington to work for
"regime change" in Iraq in 1998 but, within nine
days of the September 11 attacks, the group called
for a similar policy to be applied as well to the
Palestinian Authority, Syria and Iran if they
failed to cooperate fully with the US campaign
against terrorism.
While strongly
supportive of Bush, PNAC first began expressing
some disappointment with the administration almost
exactly two years ago for its failure to increase
the proposed military budget from 3.4% of gross
domestic product to something closer to 4% of GDP,
which, it noted, was still below the 4.8%
Washington was spending in 1993, at the end of the
Cold War.
Two months later, as US forces
launched their invasion of Iraq, PNAC issued
another letter expressing concern that the
administration was unprepared to provide the
stabilization and reconstruction process in that
country with enough military and economic
resources.
That letter, which was widely
construed as an attack on Rumsfeld, was signed
mostly by neo-conservatives but also included for
the first time since Bush had become president a
number of former senior Clinton officials, such as
his deputy national security adviser, James
Steinberg; a former senior Pentagon official,
Walter Slocombe; and several others.
PNAC
has since indicated reservations about the Bush
administration's coziness with Russia and China -
two areas where the administration has generally
spurned the hawkish advice of the
neo-conservatives - but the latest letter
indicates a higher level of frustration.
It is the first addressed to Congress and
thus appears as a more direct challenge to the
administration's reluctance to increase the
defense budget. Like the 2003 letter, the new one
also includes the signatures of "liberal hawks" -
mostly the same former Clinton officials who
signed the 2003 letter - as well as
neo-conservatives.
The principal target
appears to be Rumsfeld, who has strongly resisted
suggestions that US ground forces - which
currently include almost 500,000 active-duty army
troops, more than 175,000 marines, and a roughly
equal number of reservists - are inadequate to the
tasks they face.
Rumsfeld has argued that
increasing the size of US ground forces will delay
the military's "transformation" into a lighter,
more lethal and more high-tech force capable of
deploying overwhelming military power to any
strategic hotspot within hours. Additional and
unanticipated expenses for equipping, training and
maintaining an expanded ground force will take
money away from the development and deployment of
new technologies.
The only way to do both
is to increase the defense budget, since the price
tag for just two new divisions, totaling 34,000
soldiers, is an estimated US$20 billion. But with
the federal budget bleeding red ink as far as the
eye can see, Bush would have to find new sources
of revenue - either by cutting social programs
that have already been slashed, rolling back tax
cuts, or imposing new taxes. None of these
alternatives is attractive, especially to many
Republican lawmakers for whom the mushrooming
deficit is seen increasingly as the Achilles' heel
of their party's current political dominance.
"We understand the dangers of continued
federal deficits, and the fiscal difficulty of
increasing the number of troops," the PNAC letter
reassures its readers. "But the defense of the
United States is the first priority of the
government."
(Inter Press
Service) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette Sex and Entertainment News
|
|
|
