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Perhaps they are still ‘toxic’…

Writer Jim Lobe shares the most recent declaration by the Foreign Policy Initiative calling on President Obama “to fully resource this effort, do everything possible to minimize the risk of failure, and to devote the necessary time to explain, soberly and comprehensively, to the American people the stakes in Afghanistan, the route to success, and […]

Writer Jim Lobe shares the most recent declaration by the Foreign Policy Initiative calling on President Obama “to fully resource this effort, do everything possible to minimize the risk of failure, and to devote the necessary time to explain, soberly and comprehensively, to the American people the stakes in Afghanistan, the route to success, and the cost of defeat.”  Stay strong, these wizened creatures of the foreign policy establishment (which apparently includes Sarah Palin now), tell Obama, don’t let the defeatists lead you astray. Remember, Mr. President, your manhood is at stake, too.

Like Blackwater Worldwide becoming “Xe,” FPI is just another name for the Project for a New American Century, the now infamous Washington think tank of neoconservative gas that helped to fuel the Iraq invasion and continued to cajole and provoke the former Bush Administration into the smoking landscape that Iraq is today. Discredited, it reemerged as FPI in 2009 with Robert Kagan, William Kristol, and Dan Senor at the helm. Need we say more?

Lobe points out, however, that unlike the January 2005 letter by PNAC to Congress calling for more boots on the ground in Iraq, the range of signatories to this latest missive is rather thin and narrow in ideological scope. “[It] suggests that the neo-conservative brand is still considered toxic, even to those who agree with them on Afghanistan’s importance,” Lobe writes.

He’s got a point — that 2005 letter had Clinton-era liberal interventionists all over it, including Michele Flournoy, founder of the COIN-centric Center for a New American Security, who now sits in Doug Feiths’ old job at the Pentagon. Also eager to sign on were Peter Beinart, Will Marshall, Ivo Daalder and James Steinberg, now a Deputy Secretary of State. Flat out, they no longer need to serve as courtiers, they are the court. They no longer need to reach for relevance by signing onto war-hawk demands to Congress. No doubt they still require influential support from neoconservatives like Kristol and the flying Kagan Family to keep Republicans behind what appears to be another advance into the quagmire, but they don’t have to sign onto FPI manifestos to get it.

If anything, a look back at those PNAC memos and the Democrats who signed onto them will serve as an important, albeit lamentable, reminder of where this administration might be headed towards today.

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