A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing the Realm by Richard Perle etc

[Wetzelbill]

I highly recommend reading this report by a hard-right think tank in 1996. The principle authors were maniac tough guys Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser. You may want to note the section on Syria and take into context Israel's recent actions as well as the Syria Accountability Act currently bouncing around Congress. I would like to add that by proxy Israel pounding on Syria and Lebanon would definitely be in interest of PNAC goals. Certainly a proxy action that leads to a small theater war in Syria and eventual Israel constabulary duty control wouldn't hurt the feelings of Wolfy, Perle and the boys one bit. That's how I perceive it anyway.


A Clean Break:
A New Strategy for Securing the Realm


Following is a report prepared by The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000." The main substantive ideas in this paper emerge from a discussion in which prominent opinion makers, including Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser participated. The report, entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," is the framework for a series of follow-up reports on strategy.

Israel has a large problem. Labor Zionism, which for 70 years has dominated the Zionist movement, has generated a stalled and shackled economy. Efforts to salvage Israel’s socialist institutions—which include pursuing supranational over national sovereignty and pursuing a peace process that embraces the slogan, "New Middle East"—undermine the legitimacy of the nation and lead Israel into strategic paralysis and the previous government’s "peace process." That peace process obscured the evidence of eroding national critical mass— including a palpable sense of national exhaustion—and forfeited strategic initiative. The loss of national critical mass was illustrated best by Israel’s efforts to draw in the United States to sell unpopular policies domestically, to agree to negotiate sovereignty over its capital, and to respond with resignation to a spate of terror so intense and tragic that it deterred Israelis from engaging in normal daily functions, such as commuting to work in buses.



http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm

[soothsayer]

1. PNAC is ultimately a likudnik crowd

seems clear to me

[Wetzelbill]

2. very much so

These pro-Israel guys are ultimately the worst enemy Israel has too. Talk about irony. Perle and Wolfowitz remind me of mad scientists who totally outthought themselves into becoming deluded nutballs.

Our current crop of policy makers seem to have accepted hard Zionism as a model for foreign policy ambitions.

[Faygo Kid]

3. Thank you - more history, please

My biggest gripe about DU is the lack of historical knowledge and perspective. We were ALWAYS going into Iraq under GWB, 9/11 or no. Thanks for the perspective.

[Tempest]

6. Lack of historical knowledge and perspective?

That's funny coming from someone who hasn't been here very long.

PNAC and the neocons were outed in DU long before 9/11.

[Wetzelbill]

7. Interestingly enough

One of the PNAC cabal, Bruce Jackson, wrote all that "Axis of Evil" gunk about Iraq, Iran and North Korea into the GOP platform for 2000 before Dubya ever recieved the nomination. Whether or not it would have led to war if-for example- John McCain was president we will never know, however you can bet certain elements-think Neo-Con hard liners- would have definitely pushed for it. I know a group of future PNACers sent some pretty scathing letters to Bill Clinton encouraging him to go into Iraq a few different times. Notably in '98 when BC bombed the country, but he was never willing to go as far as these guys wanted him to. I'll try to drudge up a few things and post them when I'm finished doing some work. I will get up the Syria Accountability Act today for sure though. All of this stuff just encompasses me. Fascinating.

[sfecap]

4. Clark's friends!

(From "Gen. Wesley Clark Unplugged" , an interview with Jake Tapper.
Salon, March 23, 2003.)



Tapper: Of the people who are running this war, from Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and Powell on down, in terms of the political appointees, are there are any who you particularly like who you would work with again, hypothetically, in some ...

Clark: I like all the people who are there. I've worked with them before. I was a White House Fellow in the Ford administration when Secretary Rumsfeld was White House chief of staff and later Secretary of Defense, and Dick Cheney was the deputy chief of staff at the White House and later the chief.

Paul Wolfowitz I've known for many, many years. Steve Hadley at the White House is an old friend. Doug Feith I worked with very intensively during the time we negotiated the Dayton Peace Agreement; he was representing the Bosnian Muslims then, along with Richard Perle. So I like these people a lot. They're not strangers. They're old colleagues.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/03/24/clark/

[walkon]

5. Hashemite

So it would look as though we are going to "restore" the Hashemite constitutional monarchy in Iraq, with Pricne Hassn as King and merge it (restore it) with Jordan.