Like Father, Like Son
VIEW FROM THE LEFT
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, July 21, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

Here are three of my favorite quotes:

"I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

"It depends on what your definition of 'is' is."

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile."

The first two quotes, as everybody knows, were uttered by former President Bill Clinton. The last, published in the May 17, 2002, New York Times, was attributed to Condoleezza Rice, national security advisor to President George W. Bush.

All three quotes fall into the broad category of obfuscation, telling the literal truth with intent to deceive.

…When the time comes to investigate the present Bush administration, trying to determine what went wrong and why, and who was responsible, my advice to the investigators would be to take a very, very close look at George Herbert Walker Bush.

It's impossible for an outsider like me to untangle all the webs of intrigue operating in national politics, but in this case I think a good start would be to look at something called "Project for the New American Century," now known by its detractors as PNAC.

PNAC laid out its " statement of principles" on June 3, 1997. Its 25 signers read like a Who's Who of Bush cronyism, with a few marginal characters thrown in to give the illusion of balance: Elliott Abrams, Bill Bennett, Gary Bower, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalizad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel and Paul Wolfowitz.

Most of these people had roles in the former Bush administration and now have roles in the current one.

…Where did the phrase "New American Century" come from? I wondered about that, so I did a Nexis search of The New York Times through the 1980s and '90s.

Guess what? Almost every time the phrase was mentioned by the Times, it came out of the mouth of the first George Bush.

March 17, 1989, in Houston: "My agenda for a new American century ..."

Jan. 27, 1992, 1992, to a group of religious broadcasters: Said his State of the Union messsage would "detail how we can nuture creativity ... and harness it to the needs of a new American century."

March 22, 1992, at a swearing-in ceremony, "... help us compete in a new world economy and create a new American century."

April 2, 1992, in Philadelphia: "Today our mission is to begin restoring the principles of our founders and guaranteeing for our children a new American century."

And so on. If you put everything into context, "new American century," as used by the elder Bush, did not mean a new century in America. What it meant, in simplest terms, is that the United States would dominate the world in the 21st century.

And that's what the younger Bush is clearly striving for: world domination.

…It's hard to tell now when the Bush family steamroller will finally be brought under control. When it is, I do hope the investigators took a good look at Daddy. He Da Man! [p6: and a happy Black English Month to you, too!]