I'm assuming that if I were to walk the streets, randomly asking total strangers what they could tell me about 'the project for a new American century'... very, very few would respond, "it's one of Dick Cheney's personal-pet projects" with the goal of promoting "American global leadership"...

Even fewer might able to answer that this concentrated political agenda has been around since the early '90s, although at that time the think-tank was referred to as New Citizenship Project. But in the spring of '97, the PNAC was founded, and in '99, they released a document, co-written by Wolfowitz, titled 'Rebuilding America's Defenses', it stated on page 63, that one of the best ways to get the American public behind the outing of Saddam and the occupation of Iraq would be a "new Pearl Harbor".

Well, luckily for the Cheney and the other members of the PNAC, they only had to wait another two years for their "new Pearl Harbor". Which allowed them to cut-right-to-the-chase with their key 'statement of principles', one of which being: "we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future".

As I mentioned here on this blog earlier, Bush just announced a $48 bn increase in defense spending, the largest increase in 20 years. This in combination with the fact that the United States, since going into Korea in the '50s, has been at war with some one, in some corner of the globe, right up until present day:

Guatemala - '50 to '53, Korea - '50 to '53, China - '45 to '48 and '50 to '53, Indonesia - '50 to '53, Cuba - '59 to '61, Congo - '64, Vietnam - '61 to '73 (although we were having France do our fighting long before '61), Laos - '64 to '73, Peru - '65, Grenada - '83, Lebanon '83 to '84, Cambodia - '69 to '70, Panama - '89, Bosnia - '95, Afghanistan - '98 and '01 to ??... just to name a few.


Wouldn't it be amazing if one day, I could stumble out of bed only to find that, in a bold move, our government decided to cut back on military spending - and instead of paying $399.1 bn, more than the rest of the industrialized world combined, we were only going to match the spending of Russia at $65.2 bn, our next highest spenders. And the left over $333.9 bn was going to be spent on education... renewable energy... healthcare... all that "crazy stuff". I think I would be so happy that I would just start crying.

But maybe I shouldn't hold my breath.