Here is something curious: evidence, via Liz Cheney, that the very idea of the U.S. as merely a major nation in the world of nations is considered by the Cheneys to be craven, weak, indeed pusillanimous to the point of effeminacy.
The occasion was local: a routine charge against President Obama that he is more a European than an American leader. The reason he is liked in Europe, says Liz Cheney, is that he does not respect the idea of American dominance. And he got the Nobel Prize because that is the kind of behavior Europeans want from an American president.
Americans think differently, she says. For us, nothing less than full belief in "dominance," and the display of dominance regardless of circumstance, can be counted an acceptable interpretation of America’s role by an American leader.
The political daughter of Dick Cheney here reveals more than she may have recognized. For U.S. "dominance" has never–not even at the height of the Bush-Cheney administration’s confidence and control of American opinion (2002-2005)–been openly admitted as the doctrine guiding American foreign policy. Dominance was felt to have too Roman and German a sound for general consumption; our military had so many outposts because America was genuinely threatened, case by case. The only place in which the sweeping doctrine was avowed in just those terms was in documents published by the Project for the New American Century; especially, its central policy statement, Rebuilding America’s Defenses (September 2000).
Where did Liz Cheney learn that American dominance was the stated doctrine of our foreign policy? Where imbibe it so casually that in an unguarded moment she could let it slip as the common view–widely shared by many Americans, part of our good publicity about ourselves?
They were calling it “hegemony” when it was the hot new idea in town. Permanent global hegemony. Also “exporting US power abroad” to places like Iraq.
This isn’t new. This is standard neocon doctrine.
Potsherd, absolutely. This is the embodiment of the neo-con wet-dream . . . that American military power is so awe-inspiring, it should be used to create a New World Order. So what we get are the parasitic Project for a New American Century, WINEP, JPPPI, Office of Special Plans . . . neo-con, Israel-first armchair warriors who want a free ride . . . put America’s young soldiers from the heartland in harm’s way to remake the Middle East while their kids go to Ivy League schools or make a Michael-Oren-style aliyah to n ethnically-cleansed kibbutz in Israel.
‘Dominance.’ Wow, what a Cheney-esque approach to the rest of the world. Hey, Liz, why do you think the rest of the world is conspiring against the U.S. to drop the dollar as the major global currency in world trade and in the pricing of a barrel of oil? Could it be . . . ‘dominance??’
Under your father and GWB, we squandered our status as the sole superpower in the world, every bit as arrogant as Nazi Germany. We’re living with the consequences. Stand down . . . your father condoned torture.
I’d like to draw a few distinctions. First, american hegemony has been the aim since at least WWII, but the style has varied a lot. New World Order was the post soviet strategy of unipolar american controlled stability. Cheney is american hard right, more prone to use wars as the first option, more impatient to fully consolidate american power. Neocons are the radicals who want to redraw the middle east to Israeli designs, to the way Sharon saw it for example. There are differences and conflicts between these groups. I don’t see NWO and neocons getting along well.
And this, as the Doctrine relates to Gaza:
link to electronicintifada.net
Re: “So what we get are the parasitic Project for a New American Century, WINEP, JPPPI, Office of Special Plans . . . neo-con, Israel-first armchair warriors who want a free ride . . . put America’s young soldiers from the heartland in harm’s way to remake the Middle East while their kids go to Ivy League schools or make a Michael-Oren-style aliyah to an ethnically-cleansed kibbutz in Israel.”
May I point out that while I agree that Israel First is The partner with USA First, both in the service of exceptionalism, and as an afterthought, America’s young soldiers from the heartland in harm’s way to bolster Israel’s hegemony forever do not have kids going to Ivy League school’s, nor do they
have any member of the family making aliyah?
You think Witty’s son is the same as a typical USA grunt in the middle east? LOL!
Bad sentence construction, Citi. I meant that the “neo-con, Israel-first armchair warriors” send their kids to the Ivies while the young teenaged grunts from the heartland die in the mud for the “honor of their country.” The great triumph of the Israel-firsters were to recognize that the dual loyalty charge was an achilles heel to their ambitions to co-opt the U.S. foreign policy program. So AIPAC and other Israel-first organization embarked on an ambitious program to spread the hasbaraic falsehood that the interests of Israel and the U.S. in the region were “identical.” The so-called “war on terror.” This is what Walt & Mearshimer were zeroing in on in “TIL.” And why they were so viciously attacked.
Now it’s readily apparent to any idiot that our interests in the region are not identical, not even close. That’s also why the hasbara has calmed down about Iran being an existential threat to Israel. Because Iran is NOT an existential threat to the U.S., so we have virtually no national interest in bombing Iran.
By the way, one of my very favorite quotes from a neo-con was John Bolton’s famous reason for why he didn’t go into military service in VietNam and instead decided (lucky for us and the rest of humanity!) to push wars in Iraq and Iran on other people’s children. As Bolton wrote in his Yale 25th reunion book “I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy.” Funny thing. I’m not sure the “at least 4,348 members of the U.S. military who have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003″ had the same choice our beloved John Bolton did, so bully for him!
Source: link to news.yahoo.com
The great triumph of the Israel-firsters were to recognize that the dual loyalty charge was an achilles heel to their ambitions to co-opt the U.S. foreign policy program. So AIPAC and other Israel-first organization embarked on an ambitious program to spread the hasbaraic falsehood that the interests of Israel and the U.S. in the region were “identical.” The so-called “war on terror.” This is what Walt & Mearshimer were zeroing in on in “TIL.” And why they were so viciously attacked.
Brilliantly said. And clearly correct.
They got the idea from the “founding fathers,” dominance is the chief characteristic of empire -
EMPIRE AND APPLE PIE
For the short version
“manifest destiny” has the same ring to it
Geeez and Louise…great link.
Just an aside for my fellow Israeli critics…sometimes self-righteousness is also self-delusion…
Someone wrote within the past few weeks that Israelis were “moral imbeciles” (for their lack of concern for Palestinians).
Maybe we are ALL moral imbeciles…
link to city-data.com
v… always has great links. But the info in this piece is only half there. The writer carries on the great manque-thinking of so many Americans who haven’t done their historical homework. (see this for a lengthier explication: link to tr.im
The King of Spain wanted to help the young American colonies and bitch-slap the British, the world’s hegemony power at that time. The King is the one who gave back the land won from the French – The Louisiana Purchase – to Napoleon so that it could be sold to Jefferson. Why? So Napoleon would have the money to fight the Brits. This history is around, embedded in real historical documents, but since the majority of us got our history from the poet Longfellow and the novelist Hawthorne, we dont have a clue. Spain owned the majority of the land now known as the USA until 1803; there was nothing “feeble” – as it says in that article – about its presence.
BTW, the writer of the link I gave is Tony Horwitz. I hadn’t realized that the NYT devoted an Op-Ed to him in July of this year in which Horwitz said:
During their eight years in power they didn’t use the term “dominance”. I agree.
But, in think tank study after think tank study, the neo-cons were speaking over and over about empire building, about “the time for an American empire has come”.
It was there for all to see as early as 1996.
Chris Matthew on Hardball tonight picked up the Liz Cheney story and links her with Bill Kristol – says Kristol is using Cheney as a front for a new group called Keep America Safe. The purpose of the group appears to be attacking Obama.
Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any safer.
“Where did Liz Cheney learn that American dominance was the stated doctrine of our foreign policy?”
As Bromwich implies, she learned it from the neocons – for whom she serves as a front. And the neocons have their real-life model: Israel.
It is a mistake to believe that a desire for world domination is endemic to American culture (such was not implied by the Monroe Doctrine or Manifest Destiny). The doctrine of world domination is a rather recent development springing first from the American policy of containment of world communism, and subsequently from the capture of US foreign policy by Zionism.
“It is a mistake to believe that a desire for world domination is endemic to American culture (such was not implied by the Monroe Doctrine or Manifest Destiny). The doctrine of world domination is a rather recent development springing first from the American policy of containment of world communism, and subsequently from the capture of US foreign policy by Zionism. ”
Well thanks for that enlightenment Call Me Ishmael…lol Now I can totally ignore the murder of thousands in in the invasion of the Philippines, and the consequent order to kill all males over the age of 10, it was the Zionists…and stealing land from Mexico and the impending troops sent there, more of that same Zionist stuff. The incursions into Central and South America to contain those “commies” for sure – well instead of breaking into a full historical discourse why don’t we target the commie hunting as an example (we can throw in Vietnam and Angola, etc. etc.) –
THE THIRD WORLD WAR
I would recommend that you listen carefully to this, because none of the Communist hunting had a thing to do with containing communism, but with empire. However, you be the judge -
Or, if you prefer the facts with more searing sarcasm –
BIG DOINGS
The second link is great!
What I was referring to was an American doctrine of world domination. It is something entirely new in history. What the US did in the Philippines, in Central America, etc., was not worse than what other colonial powers such as Britain, France, Spain did in their spheres of influence. Even the British Empire did not seek total world domination, nor Spain, nor the USSR, nor the Mongols, nor Rome. And neither did America until the last few decades.
Most people in America, even today, don’t subscribe to the idea of world domination. But there are powerful elements in the US political and foreign policy establishments that do. Liberal interventionists generally do not. Some neoliberals do. But the people who are most consistently and justifiably associated with the notion of world domination by the US are the neocons. And these radical extremists are backed by powerful Zionist forces within the Israel Lobby.
Yes, there are other important elements within the US foreign policy and military establishments who want to see America dominating the rest of the world. But in America today the power behind that mindset is wielded mainly by neocons and the Israel Lobby.
It is flat wrong to fool yourself into thinking that this is the predominant American attitude toward the rest of the world. And if the US Establishment isn’t aware of that yet, they soon will be.
That would be a fair reply Call Me Ishmael if that were my argument, but I never accused the general population of wanting to dominate the world. The argument I make is the same that it always was, that a moneyed and ruling elite wish for world domination. Each of the nations you mentioned were in a dead heat to try to expand their rule over the world, but as usual they fell apart internally in the process – because the will to empire always eats alive the host nation. The fact of the matter is that each nation that has tried to rule the world has followed the same course, and expanded over their domestic regions, overseas and into other land masses. It is the natural progression because each nation has chosen to make their government (whatever the time and form) a franchise of an elite. The USA is no different, it carried the diseases (so to speak) of Europe with it, attempting world domination. I am afraid that these are the facts of life, and until a people arises to put down this plague once and for all it will continue until it destroys the host nation.
“The argument I make is the same that it always was, that a moneyed and ruling elite wish for world domination.”
I think we are probably in agreement about that, v, if you mean the elite have always wanted to dominate that part of the world that is of use to them.
Where we may differ, though, is in this: You seem to think that nothing is new; that America has always been driven by a desire to dominate the world; that so also has every other empire in history.
I see it differently. Of course, all empires eventually burn themselves out through over-extension; the center cannot hold. But not because they sought to dominate their entire known world – only the part that was of potential use to them or that might threaten their borders. As for America, it has never sought to dominate its entire known world until recently. (Some people like to point to Woodrow Wilson as an example of how the US in the past sought to dominate the world, forgetting that the country’s endemic isolationism blocked any thoughts he may have had along those lines.)
One can argue that “America” wants to dominate the entire world today in order to ensure its security and guarantee a steady flow of needed resources like oil. I think that is incorrect; that most of the American political power structure does not want or seek such world domination. But there is a very significant part of the power structure that does, the part that was responsible for the Project for a New American Century. Those are not idle words; they were carefully chosen, and they reflect the plans neocons and their fellow travelers have for America.
If Zionists like the neocons were a fringe element in the American power structure, we would have little to fear from them. But they are in fact the dominant element (still) in the formulation of US foreign policy – and that, mainly, is why America (with ally Israel) is still threatening to dominate the world with its military power.
That is what is new in the world balance of power.
Don’t kid yourselves, it’s not just the neocons. The neoliberals, many on Obama’s team, are every bit as bad, maybe worse since they’re more subtle about it. It was Clintonista Madeleine Albright who came up with the “indispensable nation,” meaning there’s not a spot on the globe where the US doesn’t assert a compelling interest, potentially militarily. At least until the money runs out…
You raise a good point. It does seem an awful lot like the neoliberals are picking up where the neocons left off. Again.
Let’s be honest here. What’s the point of making the distinction between neoliberals or neocons, or democrats and republicans for that matter? When it comes to foreign policy, there is very little difference.
At the end of the day, 99.9% of Congress members follow the same agenda. The only difference is the rhetoric.
I can think of two exceptions, perhaps three actually; Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel and the late Ted Kennedy. Although, truth be told, Kennedy was more of a PEP – Progressive Except on Palestine. He didn’t speak against Palestinians, but he didn’t hold Israel accountable either. Perhaps the loss of his two brothers played a role in that decision.
Nolan, chaos – weren’t the neocons neoliberals before they became neocons? aren’t the two aspects of the same disease, each masking the same underlying disease? and isn’t the will-to-dominate the name of the disease?
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Podesta’s think tank (what was the name again? so similar to project for america…) shed the progressive pretense and come out as full blown neoliberal.
Only problem I see is this: we all agree what a neocon is. Unfortunatetly no two seem to agree on what a neoliberal is. I am still looking for a definitive definition and wikededia is no help at all.
Danaa, before getting to foreign policy, I begin with neoliberalism in its global economic meaning, which is the promarket “Commanding Heights” view: privatization, deregulation, relatively free trade, etc. Political neoliberalism in the US is closely related to that and is largely the creation of Clinton’s DLC mentor Al From. Under it the Democrats abandoned their working class contituency, adopted Republican globalist economic policies, replaced union funding with corporate funding, and marginalized their Gephardt wing the way the neocons marginalized the GOP’s Buchanan wing.
Well, yes, America First, both the repubs znd demos are Israel First, cutting across both dominent USA political parties. It’s the only thing that hold us together, along with
the military industrial comples, Big Pharma, and the banking and insurance industries.
Goldman Sachs uber alles.
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