The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [89]
As proof of motive, Truthers, like the ones I met in the diner, often point to a document called “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” a policy paper about future defense strategies crafted by PNAC in September 2000. In particular, Truthers highlight a passage late in the document that reads as follows:
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.
This single passage is considered a smoking gun in 9/11 Truth circles. The amazing thing is that the “transformation” envisioned in the PNAC document has absolutely nothing to do with the launching of energy wars in Mesopotamia or the institution of repressive domestic security laws like the Patriot Act. In fact, if you actually read “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” what you find is a rather drab and conventional conservative policy paper seemingly written by a group of people who played too much Risk as kids, one that indulges heavily in masturbatory and oftentimes wildly inaccurate speculation about the shape of future military conflicts around the world and America’s ability to fight and win them. It is a paper about reconfiguring the cold war fighting force for the challenges of the twenty-first century, and while it spends a lot of time worrying about maintaining American preeminence, there’s no evidence in it for anything like the evil plan Truthers insist is in there.
So a “new Pearl Harbor” was needed to justify the invasion of Iraq? Not according to “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” which not only did not argue for a need to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but confidently asserted that little needed to be done to ensure security in the region. “Kuwait itself is strongly defended,” the paper’s authors conclude. “With a minor increase in strength, more permanent basing arrangements, and continued ‘no fly’ and ‘no drive’ zone enforcement, the danger of a repeat short-warning Iraqi invasion…would be significantly reduced.”
The paper moreover argued that the strong ground presence in Kuwait obviated the need for increased naval activity in the region. “With a substantial permanent Army ground presence in Kuwait,” PNAC writes, “the demands for increased Marine presence in the Gulf could be scaled back as well.”
The paper made a wide variety of suggestions with regard to its vision for a “transformation” of the armed forces, including but not limited to:
1. Reducing the size of the National Guard.
2. Reducing or eliminating spending on aircraft carrier programs.
3. Reducing or eliminating spending on the Joint Strike Fighter.
4. Instituting a global missile defense system (this is heavily emphasized in the paper).
Yes, the paper argued for increased spending on defense, using the ageold Republican trick of showing how defense spending as a percentage of GDP had fallen in the Clinton years. And yes, the paper argued vaguely for an increased emphasis on building capability to fight “constabulatory” wars to police potential challenges to American preeminence. But when they talked about America needing a “new Pearl Harbor” to “transform” the military, what they were talking about was transforming the old cold war military designed for combat against the Russians in Europe into a new, modern military designed to fight localized wars across the globe against nonstate actors like terrorists and rogue groups, particularly those that