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"Infused with the righteousness of the true believer, neo-conservatives are terrifyingly fanciful when it comes to international affairs. [[Robert Kagan]] and [[William Kristol]], two neo-con architects of GOP policy, recently penned an essay in the conservative ''National Review'' entitled 'The Present Danger' in which they explicitly held up the Cold War era Reagan model as appropriate for the next president. While the authors admit that the new Present Danger is not incarnate in any adversary--'it has no name'--they nonetheless recommend that the US spend an extra $60-100 billion per year above current defense budgets to combat it. This money would be devoted to enhancing America's ability to project force abroad and the pursuance of '[[regime change]],' i.e., the invasion of foreign countries and the overthrow of leaders unpalatable to Mr. Kagan and Mr. Kristol. Flagrant disregard for international law and arms racing is to make the world safe for democracy--again.
"The flagship neo-con journal, the ''The [[Weekly Standard]]'', offers an analysis of the present international scene that can only be described as paranoid delusional, claiming in a recent editorial that 'it's hard to think of a time when America's international standing has been so low, when Washington's credibility was in such disrepair.' The piece goes on to compare [[Bill Clinton]]'s foreign policy 'drift' to Carter's 'weakness'; the implication being that what America needs is another maniacal spread-eagle cowboy like Ronald Reagan. There's no Soviet bogeymen to rally behind and no charismatic leader this time around, but apparently certain unnamed mortal threats and Bush Jr. will have to do. We are surrounded and our freedom in grave peril, and apparently only ''The Weekly Standard'' has the vantage point needed to see this.
"Connections between propagandists for the new Present Danger and the original Committee of the 1970s are not limited to nostalgia and borrowed catchphrases. A list of current advisors to George W. Bush reveals former members of the old Committee, most notably Richard Perle, who served as Reagan's Assistant Secretary of Defense. Along with Harvard Sovietologist Richard Pipes, Perle was the most vocal proponent of '[[winnable nuclear war]]' in Reagan's first Administration. Known as a hawk's hawk, he once famously described the European peace movement as an expression of mere 'protestant angst.' The millions that marched against US policy weren't really worried about getting fried in a nuclear war, you see, they were just reading too much Kierkegaard.