Hichem Karoui…Papers

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Lew Rockwell Archives

Commentators across the spectrum have finally clued in to neo-conservatism as the intellectual framework of the Bush administration. We are suddenly faced with long think pieces on the role of political philosopher Leo Strauss in influencing the architects of the Iraq war and Bush’s governance in general. We are also learning about the ideological path taken by former college Trotskyites into the Republican Party of the 1970s. It’s an instructive example of tenacity and dedication in translating ideas into practice.

Along with the political victory of the neocons (by victory I mean the reality that they now control many levers of power) has come shock and alarm of those who disagree with their policies. Their critics left and right regard their use of domestic police powers as contrary to constitutional guarantees, and their foreign policy as nothing but untrammeled aggression that violates human rights and makes us ever more vulnerable. Read more

Tom Barry

The International Relations Center

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was established in 1997 by a number of leading neoconservative writers and pundits to advocate aggressive U.S. foreign policies and “rally support for American global leadership.” One of the group’s founding documents claimed, “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.”1

PNAC, which phased out most operations by 2006 and let its website expire temporarily in May 2008,2 was perhaps best known for its ability to attract divergent political factions behind its foreign policy agenda, which the group repeatedly demonstrated with its numerous sign-on letters and public statements. PNAC forged an influential coalition of rightist political actors in support of its calls for an aggressive “war on terror” aimed largely at the Middle East, including the invasion of Iraq. Although some observers have exaggerated its impact—two scholars, for instance, argued in the Sociological Quarterly that PNAC almost single-handedly “developed, sold, enacted, and justified a war with Iraq” 3 —the group was arguably the most effective proponent of neoconservative ideas during the period between the beginning of President Bill Clinton’s second term and President George W. Bush’s 2003 decision to invade Iraq.4 Read more