Neoconservatives Declare Victory, Prepare To Close Up Shop

Here is a story of great interest to me that has received little attention... The infamous neoconservative think tank Project For A New American Century is closing up shop (although their fascist ideas will no doubt reemerge in a new form in the not-too-distant political future) after less than 10 years and two disastrous wars later. Washington Post columnist Al Kamen reported on Monday that-

The doors may be closing shortly on the nine-year-old Project for a New American Century, the neoconservative think tank headed by William Kristol , former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and now editor of the Weekly Standard, which is must reading for neocon cogitators and agitators...

...The goal was to continue the Reaganite, muscular approach to projecting American power and "moral clarity" in a post-Cold War world, the group's manifesto said. The targets were liberal drift and conservative isolationism.

PNAC and its supporters dominated the Bush administration's foreign policy apparatus and championed a policy to get rid of Saddam Hussein long before Sept. 11, 2001...

...There had been debate about PNAC's future, but the feeling, a source said, was of "goal accomplished" and it looks to be heading toward closing. Former executive director Gary J. Schmitt , who had been executive director of President Ronald Reagan 's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, left recently for a post at the American Enterprise Institute. (Not a big move. Actually, only five floors up from PNAC.) Still, seems like a short century.

"Sorry for destabilizing the Middle East and destroying the U.S.'s reputation worldwide. We gotta run."

I first wrote about this group last June on my old blog after the Downing Street memo surfaced. I also wrote about the neocon implosion after William Kristol was schooled by Stephen Colbert in April.

I have always been so amazed that this group has gotten so little press/attention in the past years, given that a) they were the ideological architects of the Iraq war, and b) its members overwhelmingly make up the President's political inner circle and include his biggest supporters in the press. Just check out this list of its members and supporters over the years: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Scooter Libby, John Bolton, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Zalmay Khalilzad, Robert Zoellick, Dan Quayle, William Kristol, and newspaper columnists Norman Podhoretz and Charles Krauthammer. These people created the Bush foreign policy. Much blood is on their hands. If the left-wing equivalent of this group had existed before/during a disastrous and politically embattled Democratic administration, I am sure it would have been covered in spotlights. Still, after years of pulling the strings from the shadows, it goes now to die a much deserved political death.

Farewell. We'll always have the Weekly Standard.

[See also previous entry- Neoconservatism Is Dead, Long Live Neoconservatism]