As it turned
out the Bush administration's National Security Strategy, 'hastily' drafted in
response to September 11, was already prefigured to deal with any number
of real and/or imagined threats that had little connection to 9/11, an event the likes of which was still naught but a glint in the PNACers' eye. As evidenced by the developments that
followed in the wake of 9/11, this didn't just include sundry al-Qaeda 'terrormeisters',
Wahhabi extremists, Taliban fundamentalists, and monomaniacal
Muslims in general. And if it didn't transpire there would be enough of them going forward, as a back-up, the Bush Doctrine also identified
'clear and present' dangers posed by 'rogue' states such as Kim Il Jong's North Korea, the Iranian 'imamocracy', and Bashar al-Assad's Syria, to name a few. As far as new best
enemies go, America was blessed with a plethora of choice then.
All up, the godless, infidel 'communistos' of the Cold War era were superseded by the god-(aw)ful 'Islamistos' of the War on Terror. And the Evil Empire over time became the Axis of Evil! As prescribed by the Bush Doctrine though, for the ROW, the "choice" was very limited -- you were "either with us or against us!" Tellingly, the Bush Doctrine assumed, presumed then re-asserted American geopolitical dominion; the U.S. was now the one and only "indispensable" superpower, a status no rival power will ever be allowed to challenge. Manifest Destiny was 're-birthed' for the 21st century, with 'roids and uppers.
And the Bush Doctrine even provided a rationale for why the ROW should accept this state of affairs as a fait accompli: the expansion of more freedom, peace, democracy, liberty, and free markets than you could poke a Hellfire-armed, shoulder-mounted multi-purpose Stinger assault weapon at in a month of Bloody Afghanistan Sundays. What was there not to like? According to Bush, his gung-ho acolytes, and the righteous proselytes of the New American Century, this time Pax Americana will be rolled out "in the service of a balance of power that favors freedom." If achieving this version of Pax Americana means going to war, even if going to war means doing so twice -- or even a third or fourth time -- and doing so on the basis of a monumental lie or three, then so be it.
Cue here, another memory-lane flashback.
At the f*g end of the Clinton presidential tenure, the PNAC 'exceptionalists' were chomping at the bit for another crack at the biggest game in town, which in their view was going to become even bigger under their watch, and one that would operate by their rules. The RAD manifesto made that very clear for anyone listening or looking.
In fact in no small part, what motivated the New American Centurions and their Grand Old Party (GOP) stalwarts in the lead-up to the 2000 presidential elections was the mortifying prospect of another Democratic administration after the Clintons' Grand Old Soap-Opry reached its denouement. This looked highly probable given that their opponent almost certainly would be Clinton's vice president Al Gore. The GOP desperately needed a saviour of sorts to usher in their New American Century. That they found one in the unlikely personage of George W Bush, the son of former president George HW Bush (Number 41), is a measure of either their sheer desperation or determination, or both. Hey, "(The) Junior" may not have been "The Gipper", but he would just have to do until the next one got here or they could clone the original, neither prospect of which seemed possible before November 2000.
The Great Game Redux
As it turned out getting Bush II into the White House would be the easy part. Realising their goals and ambitions as noted, would be -- "absent a new Pearl Harbor" -- an altogether different challenge. Indeed, after the elections and before 9/11, for his part Bush was seen by many to be keeping the seat warm. It was almost like he was wandering around trying to make himself useful or holding the fort whilst waiting for the real president to put in an appearance. For his part 'Junior' struggled to look presidential -- any personal gravitas he could muster inevitably defying political gravity. It was almost as if he was aware he had not actually won the election, but had been given it on a silver platter, albeit one with the U.S. Supreme Court's logo engraved on it.
Yet though the affectionately dubbed 'Dubya' came across as a bit lacklustre, the much-touted Texas swagger somewhat less evident pre-9/11, like most things everything changed on that fateful day. Even for a president with limited insight into the nuances of history and geopolitics much less a full understanding of the task ahead of him, it didn't take long even for him to appreciate that 9/11 would not only shape his presidency and the future of his country, but that it would enable him to undertake said task with maximum unquestioning support and minimal effective opposition. Best of all, Bush wouldn't be required to do any heavy lifting; he had plenty of chaps for that.
And if the full import of the moment might have been lost on the president, it was not lost on others in his administration. When those planes inexplicably -- indeed, incomprehensibly -- ploughed through America's "impregnable" trillion-dollar air-defense systems and into, respectively, the World Trade Centre (WTC), the Pentagon and an empty field in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, it changed America, the world -- and the geopolitical zeitgeist -- forever. Such was the unprecedented, and for most of us, unexpected, nature of the moment, the planes of 9/11 tore a hole through the space/time fabric of history and rewrote the book on global power politics in one fell swoop.
That the event contributed to the making of Bush's presidency was evident to most at the time or thereafter. But that it contributed to the eventual un making of his presidency may though have been a somewhat less-expected outcome. That it was the unmaking of the American Empire is one consideration we cannot easily dismiss either. The events of 9/11 (the unique numerical identifier instantly becoming America's most valuable brand entity, recognized logo, and unambiguously imperial positioning statement), signalled to the privately self-styled if not so publicly declared Conquistadoros of PNAC their momento had arrived. An event such as 9/11 was exactly what they needed to all but hijack the U.S. foreign, defense, intelligence, economic, and national security-policy agenda, and proceed to rethink, reinvent, redesign, rebuild, reboot and then privatize the whole of government infrastructure and apparatus and take control of the resources that sustain and define it. The National Security Ship of State was theirs to command. They didn't just take advantage of the opportunity presented by the attacks; these guys were waiting 'on the dock' for something like 9/11 to happen, an event that they -- possibly short of organising the attacks themselves -- could not possibly have conceived of occurring in their wildest dreams. Or so we thought. Or were led to believe.
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