Once upon a time Paul Wolfowitz (and his deputy I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby during the realm and regime of King Ronald Wilson Reagan):
.... then-under secretary of defense for policy, supervised the drafting of a 1992 policy statement on America's mission in the post-Cold War era. Called the "Defense Planning Guidance," it is an internal set of military guidelines that typically is prepared every few years by the Defense Department. This policy guidance is distributed to military leaders and civilian Defense Department heads to provide them with a geopolitical framework for assessing their force level and budgetary needs.
The 46-page classified document circulated for several weeks at senior levels in the Pentagon. But controversy erupted after it was leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post and the White House ordered then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to rewrite it.
http://www.pbs.org/...
I'm just taking a look at the present theatre of the world, a world in which President Obama has announced a decision to send some 17,000 additional military personnel to Afhganistan, despite a promise he'd made earlier to put Afghanistan on hold for 60 days to review U.S. policy there.
The world theatre of War v. Peace, Department of Defense v. Department of State, the military v. statesmanship and diplomacy.
Does the hand of Dick Cheney still write largely in this drama as it did in the revamping of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance?
Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
There are three additional aspects to this objective: First the U.S must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.
We're Number One! We're Number One!
Cheney goes on to state that another "U.S. objective is to safeguard U.S. interests and promote American values, " besides being prepared to "take unilateral action" to enforce the previous objectives.
Shades of PNAC (Project for a New American Century)!
For more public consumption, the document has been reduced to the following gobbledegook:
(DOD) This document, issued by the Secretary of Defense, provides firm guidance in the form of goals, priorities, and objectives, including fiscal constraints, for the development of the Program Objective Memorandums by the Military Departments and Defense agencies.
http://usmilitary.about.com/...
There are some other players to be aware of (February, 2003):
Andrew W. Marshall, "the Pentagon's 81-year-old futurist-in-chief, ... along with his star protégés Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - is drafting President Bush's plan to upgrade the military."
http://www.sourcewatch.org/...
I mention Marshall because of his role in penning the Defense Planning Guidance:
Andrew Marshall was consulted for the 1992 draft of Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), created by then-Defense Department staffers I. Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and Zalmay Khalilzad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
And, another name that must be mentioned is an "acolyte of Andrew W. Marshall:
Michael G. Vickers is Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low Intensity Conflict & Interdependent Capabilities (within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy). His areas of expertise are Military Strategy and Policy, Military Revolutions, Transformation of the Military, Future Warfare, and Military Research and Development. Vickers is considered one of Andrew Marshall's "acolytes."
http://www.sourcewatch.org/...
Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad, born in Mazari Sharif in northern Afghanistan, was a major player in the George W. Bush administration.
Michael G. Vickers was a major player in a little game the U.S. played in Afghanistan during Reagan's regime, a little game called "Charlie Wilson's War."
More on Charlie Wilson (Charles Nesbitt Wilson) in another post.
But, in the meantime, I'm asking, is this still Dick Cheney's bizarre world. Are his, and Donald Rumsfeld's agents burrowed into President Obama's Department of Defense? Where are all the characters who played major roles in Dick Cheney's theatre of world domination?
Who persuaded Obama to change his mind about a 60-day moratorium before moving on the situation in Afghanistan?
Why does the Department of Defense still seem to overshadow the Department of State, military action favored over statesmanship and diplomacy.
And, why the hell can't the United States have a Department of Peace?