General Wesley Clark… said the aim of this
plot [to "destroy the governments
in... Iraq,... Syria, Lebanon, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan and Iran”] was this:
“They wanted us to destabilize the
Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.”
He then recounted a conversation he had had
ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz - back
in 1991 - in which the
then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not
toppling Saddam, told Clark:
“But one thing we did learn [from the
Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region - in
the Middle East - and the Soviets won’t stop us.
And we’ve got about
5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes - Syria,
Iran [sic], Iraq - before the next great
superpower comes on to challenge us.”
Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s
desires because, as Clark put it:
“the purpose of the military is to start
wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?”
[I]n the aftermath of military-caused regime
change in Iraq and Libya… with concerted regime change efforts now
underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and
escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a
modest military deployment to
South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six -
count ‘em: six - different Muslim countries, it is worth asking
whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being
actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and
multilateral than full-on military invasions (it’s worth remembering
that neocons specialized in dressing up their wars in humanitarian
packaging: Saddam’s rape rooms! Gassed his own people!).
As Jonathan Schwarz… put it about the
supposedly contentious national security factions:
As far as I can tell, there’s barely any
difference in goals within the foreign policy establishment. They
just disagree on the best methods to achieve the goals.
My guess is that everyone agrees we have
to continue defending the Mideast from outside interference (I love
that Hillary line), and the [Democrats] just think that best path is
four overt wars and three covert actions, while the neocons want to
jump straight to seven wars.
***
The neocon end as Clark reported them -
regime change in those seven countries - seems as vibrant as ever.
It’s
just striking to listen to Clark describe those 7 countries in which the neocons plotted to have regime change back in 2001, and then compare
that to what the U.S. Government did and continues to do since then with
regard to those precise countries.
Libya