Committee on the Present Danger

Well the same collection of self-important “neo-conservatives”, military industrial complex profiteers, and Likudniks, that have rendered the status of the USA to that of a global pariah, and consistently been proven wrong, while mendaciously presenting their war on Islam as an effort to spread freedom and democracy, are at it again.

The June 23 edition of the Asian Times online contains a rather lengthy, but really informative, report of the formation of the “Committee on the Present Danger III (CPD).” The previous such “Committees” were formed in the 1950s and 1970 to promote higher military spending to counter the hyped Soviet threat. The difference in the current “Present Danger” is that it is not external; but, rather, the sagging public support for their screwball ideas of world military domination to maintain markets for USA good and services. The article is well worth a read.

It’s too damned bad that the USA media doesn’t usually carry such analysis; but, generally speaking, the management of USA media goose steps in time to the CPD tune.

Here is the article’s denouement, which I hope is correct in its conclusion that the CPD III is spinning its wheels:

“The ‘present danger’ of growing domestic dissent alarms CPD members. All the more alarming to the neo-cons and the pro-Israel hardliners in the CPD has been the rising criticism that US policy in the Middle East, including the escalating tensions with Iran, has been driven by the US-based Israel lobby. ”In this political context of mounting criticism, the contemporary CPD faces more adverse conditions in imposing its agenda. The first CPD closed down in 1953 after the country was well on its way to having a bipartisan foreign policy in support of Cold War militarization, and the second CPD defined the policies that would then become the guidelines for the Reagan foreign-policy team. Although apparently enjoying access to deep funding pockets, the prospects of CPD III achieving similar success appear dim. ”Like its two predecessors, the current CPD aims to create widespread public and policy community support for higher military budgets and expanded troop deployment to meet the "present danger". By raising fears that the Soviet Union represented an imminent threat to national security, the previous CPDs succeeded in isolating and impugning the credibility of the political leaders and public intellectuals who favored constructive engagement with the Soviet Union rather than a Cold War of global militarization. In both cases, the CPDs discredited the less politicized, more objective "threat assessments" prepared by the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon. ”The third CPD also aims to raise the level of fear among Americans by declaring that the United States is immersed in World War IV, but has not yet committed adequate resources to the global battle. But after five years of exaggerated threat assessments from the neo-conservatives and the Bush administration - many of which have already been publicly exposed, such as the weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein-Osama bin Laden ties that proved baseless in Iraq - the CPD faces a major challenge in winning acceptance for its call for the US government to expand its misdirected "war on terrorism" and its missionary crusade to spread "freedom and liberty". ”The new Committee on the Present Danger may be the first CPD that is unable to sell its alarmist version of the ‘present danger’".