9/11: Al Qaeda's Project for Ending the American Century Succeeded

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/09-0

WASHINGTON - A decade after its spectacular Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York City's twin World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and despite the killing earlier this year of its charismatic leader, Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda appears to have largely succeeded in its hopes of accelerating the decline of U.S. global power, if not bringing it to the brink of collapse.

That appears to be the strong consensus of the foreign-policy elite which, with only a few exceptions, believes that the administration of President George W. Bush badly "over-reacted" to the attacks and that that over-reaction continues to this day.

That over-reaction was driven in major part by a close-knit group of neo-conservatives and other hawks who seized control of Bush's foreign policy even before the dust had settled over Lower Manhattan and set it on a radical course designed to consolidate Washington's dominance of the Greater Middle East and "shock and awe" any aspiring global or regional rival powers into acquiescing to a "unipolar" world.

Led within the administration by Vice President Dick Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and their mostly neo-conservative aides and supporters, the hawks had four years before joined the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The letter-head organization was co- founded by neo-conservative ideologues William Kristol and Robert Kagan, who, in an important 1996 article, called for the U.S. to preserve its post-Cold War "hegemony as far into the future as possible."

More at the link --

[patrice]

1. This country was suckered into doing the same thing that we supposedly did to the USSR. nt

[AntiFascist]

3. Neocons of the day hated ending the Cold War...

they desperately wanted the American empire to go on to succeed in military domination of Eurasia. Cheney and Rumsfeld grew out this movement.

[patrice]

5. Ever since the end of WWII it's been about perpetuating/growing MIC.

That's what caused 9/11.

[leveymg]

2. Whether they know it or not, PNAC and al-Qaeda have been working together, VERY effectively

Neither could have succeeded in overstretching and bankrupting this country without the other.

They are the common enemy of America, and should be dealt with as such.

[patrice]

6. PNAC may have American in its name, but significant FOREIGN influence therein is very

very possible. We are caught in internecine multi-national life-or-death struggle and the Derivative Crash of '08 was just the latest round in a hostile take-over.

[Rex]

4. Repukes earn their nickname. They didn't just win it in a gameshow.

They really are the scum of the Earth.

[elleng]

7. True