Pissants at the Creation
The National Security Archive have acquired and published (redacted) versions of the famous “benevolent hegemony” documents that became, first, the 1992 “Defense Policy Guidance,” and, since September 2002, “The National Security Strategy of the United States” under the Bush Administration.
Facing the successful conclusion of the Cold War, the honchos at DOD could have released a “let’s go fishing” plan. But that’s not the way large institutions work. Instead they set out to justify continued massive levels of spending and prestige. This required a policy of continuing to pick fights all over the globe.
Comment by abb1 —
March 2, 2008 @ 9:26 am
Is this really new? I thought I saw some Wolf-man’s “No Rivals Evah” strategy document long time ago.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 2, 2008 @ 9:35 am
Supposedly this archive has drafts and work product that haven’t been part of previously published editions.
Comment by Jennifer —
March 2, 2008 @ 9:38 am
If this were a novel rather than my own country’s reality, this would all be very, very funny.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 2, 2008 @ 11:09 am
The question is, does the DOD have the necessary equipment to go fishing?
Boats? Check!
Explosives? Check!
Fishing trip is cleared for launch!
Comment by abb1 —
March 2, 2008 @ 11:36 am
rather than my own country’s reality
Hey, this is not country’s thing, it’s a natural thing. It’s just how it is, blame human nature.
Comment by Nell —
March 2, 2008 @ 12:03 pm
This might be in your top five post titles.
Comment by Nell —
March 2, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
Having recently been corrected by Gary on the same point, I’ll save him the post: It’s the National Security Archive, singular.
Comment by Nell —
March 2, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
Speaking of the National Archives, and the National Security Archive: I sure hope the next administration rolls back the secrecy-promoting executive orders and insane, paranoid stonewalling classification standards of this regime.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 2, 2008 @ 7:02 pm
If nobody from this regime gets in trouble for it, why should the next regime bother to end the practice? Now they know it’s safe to do it!
Hope for ice cream and a pony. It’s a more likely outcome.
Comment by John Emerson —
March 2, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
I remember around that time when the journalistic mouthpieces of the various war bureaucracies realized that they’d lost their reason to be. There was a little panic, but the general mood was, “Let’s not let these wonderfully lethal weapons we’ve developed go to waste. Narcoterrorism and (believe it or not) ecoterrorism competed with Islamofascism for awhile, but it was really no contest. The idea of spending a hundred billion dollars a year going after Earth First!, Greenpeace, ELF, and PETA was sort of amusing, though. Make those supermodels squeal!
One of the mouthpieces was Georgie Anne Geyer, who is now, ironically, an anti-war paleocon. Her pieces had a tendency to be slcikly nasty like David Brooks, but whe was not completely irrational and was pretty upset when she had to watch her party being taken over by Armageddonists and grafters.
Comment by Nell —
March 2, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
Thoreau: If nobody from this regime gets in trouble for it, why should the next regime bother to end the practice?
Because Barack Obama has a track record on sunshine issues. I’m far from starry-eyed about what will or can get accomplished with him in the White House, but I do have a lot more confidence in him on these kinds of matters, where executive orders and directives to the agencies make a difference.
In particular, one of Bush’s very first executive orders was to seal off his father’s presidential papers for an extra number of years, and his own. Obama, I believe, has the power to undo that one with the stroke of a pen, to restore presidential records opening to the previous norm.
Also, it’s difficult for me to believe that an Obama White House will continue to operate with an email system that flouts the requirements of the Presidential Records Act — if only for mundane security reasons.
We’ll probably still have troops in Iraq in 2012, we almost certainly won’t have much of anything in the way of universal health care, George Bush and Dick Cheney will not be impeached or indicted, etc. etc. etc. But there’s reason for some mild optimism on the fairly-honest-and-competent management front.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 2, 2008 @ 8:35 pm
Nell, I hope you’re right.
John Emerson, I seem to recall that in the 1990’s the intelligence community was desperately trying to scare us with stories of European spies stealing industrial secrets from companies. Not to trivialize theft of proprietary information, but it was obviously not as lucrative of a fear source for them as Islamofascism.
Comment by joe —
March 2, 2008 @ 9:50 pm
I remember Congressional hearings on Narc-terrorism in the early 90s.
The Myanmar regime was sometimes referred to as “Narco-Stalinist.”
Thoreau has always been soft on Narco-Stalinism.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 2, 2008 @ 9:53 pm
They hate us for our freebase.
Comment by Doug T —
March 3, 2008 @ 9:15 am
Wasn’t the drug connection the main justification of invading Panama? In retrospect, the narco-terrorism stuff seems like a bit of ajoke, but the propaganda machine is very, very good. It served its purpose.
Just as the Islamic terrorism fear-mongering will serve its purpose, until China grows into their role as Yellow Menace.
Comment by joe —
March 3, 2008 @ 12:21 pm
The question, Thoreau, is “Whose Freebase?”
Comment by mds —
March 3, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
Irrelevant. It all belong to us.
Comment by sglover —
March 3, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
If you want an amusing trip down memory lane, look up issues of the Naval Institute Proceedings from the 90’s. The magazine was stuffed with loopy articles from mid- and high-level officers desperate to “prove” that the Cold War navy was still absolutely perfect for a world with no USSR. I know I saw at least one that claimed that aircraft carrier battle groups were ideal for the fight against the (conveniently broad) “narco-terrorist” threat.