We are only weeks away from the Centennial of the beginning of the “Great War,” World War I .
At the conclusion of World War I, the victorious British and French enjoyed a Mandate for the Partitioning of the defeated Ottoman Empire into new nation states in the Middle East. The borders of these new nation states were drawn by the European colonial powers with little regard for ethnic populations, tribal affinity, native languages, cultures or sectarian religion, or even natural boundaries.
“Mesopotamia,” which later came to be known as Iraq, was administered by the British Mandate until the establishment of the Kingdom of Iraq in 1921. The Republic of Iraq was established in 1958 following a military coup d’état. Iraq has largely maintained its British Mandate imposed borders until today.
Following the long and bloody Iran–Iraq War (1980-1988), and the U.S. led Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991, Neoconservative intellectuals (sic) in the United States and Israel formulated a plan to once again reorder the Middle East as the European colonial powers had done at the end of World War I.
This plan was known as A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (commonly known as the “Clean Break” report), a policy document that was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by former United States Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Prime Minister of Israel.
The Clean Break report advocated an aggressive new policy of regime changes in order to restructure power in the Middle East, including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, and the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare. Richard Perle was the “Study Group Leader,” but the final report included ideas from Douglas Feith, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser.
The following year, Neoconservative intellectuals (sic) in the United States formed the Project for the New American Century, founded by William “Bloody Bill” Kristol and Robert Kagan. PNAC’s first public act was releasing a “Statement of Principles” on June 3, 1997, which was signed by both its members and a variety of other notable conservative politicians and journalists (see Signatories to Statement of Principles), a veritable “who’s who list” of members of the Bush-Cheney regime to come (2001-2009), and the conservative media entertainment complex.
Richard Perle, the “Study Group Leader” of the Clean Break report, later became a core member of PNAC, and was involved in the goal of regime change in Iraq. In 1998, Perle and other core members of the PNAC—Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Elliot Abrams, and John Bolton—”were among the signatories of a letter to President Clinton calling for the removal of Hussein.” PNAC also supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (H.R.4655), which President Clinton had signed into law.
On September 20, 2001 (nine days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks), PNAC sent a letter to President George W. Bush, advocating “a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq,” or regime change:
…even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.
From 2001 through 2002, the co-founders and other members of the PNAC published articles supporting the United States’ invasion of Iraq. On its website, the PNAC promoted its point of view that leaving Saddam Hussein in power would be “surrender to terrorism.”
Sen. John McCain was a patron of Ahmad Chalabi, the exiled leader of the Iraqi National Congress (and a fugitive from justice in Europe) whom Neoconservatives like McCain supported and thereby lent his credibility. Chalabi and his protege “Curveball” provided U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense with falsified information that the Neoconservatives relied upon to justify the invasion of Iraq. The Cover-ups of John McCain – WMD Intelligence Failures.
In March 2003, the Neoconservative war mongers who populated the Bush-Cheney regime used this falsified intelligence and propaganda to lie this country into an unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq. Their Neocon war for a Pax Americana Empire bogged down when it unleashed ancient ethnic and sectarian hatreds in a bloody civil war in Iraq. PNAC closed up shop in 2006.
None of these Neoconservative war criminals and their propagandists in the conservative media entertainment complex have ever been held accountable for their war crimes. Every one of them should be charged and tried before a Nuremberg-style tribunal under the Nuremberg Principles.
None of these Neoconservative war criminals should be sought out for comment by the media and given a soapbox from which to blame President Barack Obama for their hubris and failure in Iraq.
The disintegration of Iraq is exactly what the opponents of the Neoconservatives’ war in Iraq predicted would happen. These warnings were dismissed by the yellow journalism of the feckless corporate “lamestream” media.
Political posturing by Neocon Sens. John McCain and his puppet boy, Little Lindsey Graham, for the U.S. to come to the rescue of the failed Nouri al-Maliki government in Baghdad is as infuriating as McCain’s championing the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the permanent U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Any military action by the U.S. in Iraq at this point should consist of only one thing: the Neoconservatives responsible for this war and their propagandists in the conservative media entertainment complex should be frogmarched onto an airplane and parachute into Iraq: Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham can lead this “Chickenhawk Brigade” of Neoconservative war mongers into battle. If these war criminals are not willing to accept responsibility for the consequences of their illegal war in Iraq, then they can stand trial for their war crimes before a Nuremberg-style tribunal.
UPDATE: MSNBC’s Chris Hayes does a nice job of reminding his viewers of just how completely wrong “Surge” McCain’s predictions about Iraq have been over the last decade or so on his show this Thursday.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab6PWIGkhM4]