- A powerful group of neo-conservatives is launching a
new public relations campaign in support of President George W. Bush's
war on terrorism.
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- At a Tuesday gathering of the National Press Club,
members
of the new Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT) declared their
intention
to "take to task those groups and individuals who fundamentally
misunderstand
the nature of the war we are facing."
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- Those groups and individuals, AVOT claims, need to be
resisted both here and abroad. A full-page AVOT advertisement carried in
the March 10 Sunday New York Times pointed to radical Islam as "an
enemy no less dangerous and no less determined than the twin menaces of
fascism and communism we faced in the 20th century." At the same time,
the $128,000 ad lambasted those at home "who are attempting to use
this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of 'blame America
first.'"
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- "Both [internal and external] threats," the
ad continues, "stem from either a hatred for the American ideals of
freedom and equality or a misunderstanding of those ideals and their
practice."
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- To expose the internal "threats," AVOT has
compiled a sample list of statements by professors, legislators, authors
and columnists that it finds objectionable. The strategy appears similar
to an earlier, much-criticized effort to monitor war dissidents by the
American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a group founded by Lynne
Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, and neo-conservative
Democratic
Senator Joseph Lieberman.
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- AVOT's list of speakers it considers threatening
include:
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- - Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who said, "Some of
us, maybe foolishly, gave this president the authority to go after
terrorists.
We didn't know that he, too, was going to go crazy with it."
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- - President Jimmy Carter, who assailed Bush's use of
the phrase "axis of evil," arguing that it was "overly
simplistic
and counter-productive."
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- - Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who accused the president
of "canceling, in effect, the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth
Amendments" and called the war "the patriot games, the lying
games, the war games of an unelected president."
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- - American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner criticizing
"Bush's dismal domestic policies" and his "dubious notion
of a permanent war."
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- - Lewis Lapham, the editor of "Harper's
Magazine,"
who in a recent editorial said that Washington itself has used terrorist
tactics during the 1990s, including the bombing of civilian targets in
Baghdad and the Balkans.
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- Who exactly is behind AVOT's efforts? The newly-formed
organization is headed by a formidable array of right-wing luminaries.
At the top of the list is former Secretary of Education and drug czar
William
Bennett, AVOT's chairman. The group's Senior Advisors include former CIA
director R. James Woolsey; former Reagan Pentagon official Frank Gaffney;
William P. Barr, attorney general under George Bush, Sr; and mega-political
donor Lawrence Kadish. AVOT is a project of Empower America -- also
co-chaired
by Bennett -- whose principal members include conservative political
operatives
Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp, Vin Weber and William Cohen.
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- During the press conference, Bennett insisted that,
"We
do not wish to silence people," adding that for now, AVOT plans to
hold teach-ins and public education events, particularly on college
campuses.
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- In response to AVOT's criticism, Harper's Lewis Lapham
said Bennett is a "wrong-headed jingo and an intolerant scold."
He added that AVOT appeared to be a new "front organization for the
hard neo-con (neo-conservative) right," which has gained unprecedented
influence in the Bush administration, particularly among the top political
appointees in the Pentagon and Dick Cheney's office. "This is the
war-monger crowd," he said.
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- Indeed, AVOT is being initially funded primarily by
Lawrence
Kadish, chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and a top donor
to the Republican Party. Kadish, a real estate investor in New York and
Florida, was cited by Mother Jones Magazine as one of the country's top
individual donors, having given $532,000 to the GOP. His RJC has long tried
to build links between the Republican Party, including its Christian Right
component, and American Jews.
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- Bennett, Gaffney, and Woolsey are all veteran members
of a neo-conservative network of groups with overlapping boards of
directors
that have long championed rightwing governments in Israel and, among other
things, urged strong U.S. action against both Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein,
the Islamic government in Iran, as well as Palestine Authority President
Yasser Arafat.
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- Both Gaffney and Bennett, for example, were two of about
three dozen mainly neo-conservative signers of an open letter sent to Bush
in the name of the "Project for a New American Century" nine
days after the Sept. 11 attacks. It called not only for the destruction
of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, but also to extend the war to Iraq,
and possibly to Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestine Authority unless
those nations ceased their alleged support of terrorist groups opposed
to Israel.
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- Woolsey, meanwhile, was sent by the Pentagon's Defense
Policy Board to Britain in late September to gather evidence that could
link Iraq to the Sept. 11. He and has since become one of the most visible
commentators in the media in favor of extending the war to Baghdad. Woolsey
is also on the board of the Jewish Institute for National Security, a
hawkish
pro-Israel group.
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- AVOT is also linked through many channels to Richard
Perle, chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board (which sent Woolsey
on his Iraqi quest). Perle, like Jeane Kirkpatrick, perches full time at
the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a neo-con think-tank that has
emerged as the hub of an "axis of incitement" -- a small but
potent network of like-minded, ultra-hawkish officials, analysts and
opinion-makers.
It appears that AVOT is the latest institutional offspring of that network,
which is united by a passionate belief in the inherent goodness and
redemptive
mission of the United States; the moral cowardice of liberals and European
elites; the existential necessity of supporting Israel in the shadow of
the Holocaust and in the face of Arab hostility; and the primacy of
military
power.
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- These beliefs came through clearly at Tuesday's press
conference. Woolsey, for example, told reporters he agreed with those who
are "calling the war we're in now World War IV." But Gaffney
was the most strident of the speakers at the event, saying that we should
be skeptical of our "new-found friends" in the war on
terror.
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- "[We must] pay special attention to friends like
Saudi Arabia and Egypt whose ongoing use of media are creating problems
for our allies," (implying Israel), Gaffney said. Any criticism of
the administration's conduct of the war, he added, could be
"interpreted
in such a way as to hurt national resolve...(and) embolden the
enemy."
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- Jim Lobe writes on international affairs for Inter Press
Service, Oneworld.net, Foreign Policy in Focus and AlterNet.org.
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- http://www.alternet.org
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