STINNETT-BUSH-PNAC: FULL CIRCLE

The Project for the New American Century was staffed and guided by people who had worked closely with Bush 41 while he was in office – Cheney had of course been Defense Secretary overseeing his grand war on Iraq. Khalilzad, Libby, and Wolfowitz had been top defense policy officials beneath Cheney, scheming up their plans for a new American Century to Cheney’s liking. Rumsfeld was mostly in the private sector, but was in and out at the White House and an old political ally of Cheney’s dating back to the Nixon-Ford years, when Bush himself was promoted to CIA director.

While the PNAC circle within the Bush 43 administration have been described as the Cheney faction, renegades from a more moderate Bush 41 tradition, somehow these same people (a “praetorian guard” by Paul O’Neil’s account) would eventually come to exert undue influence on their “moderate” mentor’s namesake son. Of a team of eleven "Vulcans" organized by Condi Rice tought W about the world in 2000, six of them (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Armitage, Perle, and Zakheim) were PNAC members. Another Bush son, John Ellis “Jeb” Bush, was in fact a PNAC founding signatory (that is, he signed the Statement of Principles in 1997) at the very least. Furthermore, Jeb reportedly helped commission Rebuilding America’s Defenses, in which that 2000 call for a “new Pearl Harbor” was put forth. Such close family connections for a renegade faction…

The alleged rift between the Bush 41 and 43 administrations was first widely visible in the lead-up to the Iraq war and the debate about unilateralism. While the Neocon war program was allowed to run its course to the "cakewalk" with IED-laden cakes, as the occupation ground on and the bodies piled up on both sides, the fates of the Neocons turned sour. The hawkiest of the hawks were gradually sloughed off or re-assigned; Bush’s second term saw onetime PNAC chairman John Bolton promoted, sent to whip the United Nations into line, while Iraq-war architect Wolfowitz was removed from the Pentaon and sent to head that quiet but all-powerful tool of empire, the World Bank. Certainly US unilateralism will be less necessary if these appointments follow their logical course toward American “global leadership.”

But as the war dragged into its fourth year, finally Rumsfeld himself departed the scene. Until then, this split seemed play-acted, a good cop–bad cop routine that gave the PNAC room for movement while token criticism made it look like they could be reigned in at any time. Once they were reigned in and the moderates (Bush Sr, James Baker, Lee Hamilton, et al) step in to help manage the situation, the set-up actually became more clear. As Bush sr. appeared on the cover of Newsweek more than twice the size of his son, I had to remind myself who was actually the President. Wasn’t one term and eight years of running the country from behind Reagan’s throne enough for the old man? Apparently not...

So anyway, the question posed by all this is: did Bush sr. know his old friend Stinnett’s new book on Pearl Harbor was out when the deeply Bush-connected PNAC called for their new Pearl Harbor? They needed “an event able to galvanize the nation and cause the U.S. Government to act,” as the Rumsfeld Commission put it. They needed a new rallying cry like 12/7 which, it had just been clarified by Stinnett, was engineered “at a time which suited US interests.” What was going through these people’s heads as they tumbled these two ideas around in the months before 9-11?