Rumsfeld is one of the Gang of Four - four protocons (proto-conservatives) [proto: in the thing's earliest, original, or chief form] who, having originally worked closely together under Nixon (George H.W. Bush was also there), would each become a Defense Secretary in later Administrations:

Rumsfeld, Cheney, Carlucci and Weinberger. They are a tight-knit group of individuals who have sought, in various combinations under various administration since the days of Nixon, to promote the right-wing conservative agenda that failed to come to complete fruition when the Nixon administration collapsed under the weight of the Watergate scandal [see Elliot Richardson].

That agenda was originally fashioned by an earlier group of similar men who were, under the post-WWII adminstrations of Truman and Eisenhower, the very first Defense Secretaries in U.S. history - Forrestal, Lovett, Marshall, and Wilson. These were the men who invented and promoted the interwoven tapestry of foreign and domestic policies that we have come to know, in its reified form, as 'the Cold War'. The present lineage holders, the Gang of Four, have had no choice - in the absence of the traditional Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union - but to scrap their old identity as 'Cold Warriors' and re-invent themselves as 'Warriors Against Terrorism'. In order to do this they'd have to return to the very premises on which the concept of the Cold War was originally constructed, so that those assumptions could be tweaked to fit the new geo-political situation. (The assumption, for instance, that the only battle worth budgeting for is a battle between Superpowers that are identified as States).

They discovered, in other words - probably around the time of the Reagan Administration - that the tall defense-policy ladder on which they had climbed nearly to the top, was actually (under present circumstances) up against the wrong wall. They'd have to climb down, move the ladder to the right wall, and climb back up. Nothing short of a complete paradigm-shift, in other words, was called for. The old structures had to be conceptually and practically deconstructed and reconstructed, nearly from scratch, to produce a new, an adequate (in their eyes) 'defense' policy. The 'Project for a New American Century' (PNAC) is the way they have chosen to present/sell that new paradigm to the public.

This is why the study of PNAC promises, to anyone who would understand and adequately respond to the threat that is posed by these individuals, the greatest and quickest return on one's investment of time and energy.

The problem that the neocons will have is the problem that anyone with a new paradigm has: new paradigms are not readily accepted by persons immersed in the old paradigm. They are successfully promoted only through the introduction of a specific set of new concepts, languages, practices, epistemologies, methodologies and beliefs - each of which supports, in combination with the others, the new paradigm. Without these supports, the new paradigm is easily resisted. In fact, without these supports the new paradigm cannot even be adequately understood or appreciated - a fact that Thomas Kuhn, the guy who coined the term 'paradigm-shift', described as the 'incommensurability' of paradigms.

The best way - in the present situation - to discovery what kinds of concepts, practices, languages, etc (lets call these 'paradigm supports', for easy identification and reference) will be necessary in order to smooth the way for the introduction of the new 'defense' paradigm - is to take a close look at what paradigm-supports the Cold War originally rested on. Then all we need to do is figure out which of these can be extracted from the Cold War paradigm and refurbished for use in the new 'War on Terrorism' paradigm. What features, in contrast, will have to be trashed? And what NEW supports will be necessary for the new paradigm, and where can they be found?

Take, for example, the concept of 'pre-emptive war'. For many of us this notion came as a shock when it was recently introduced. A loathsome, dangerous concept, that ran against the grain of our deep-seated belief in the precept that one is 'innocent until proven guilty'.... But, as it turns out, this concept of pre-emptive war is not a new concept. It was, in fact, a concept that was in the foreground of active debate in 1946, in the early days of what, in retrospect, we'd now call the Cold War - when those who develop policy, and their critics, were arguing the pros and cons of a U.S. first-strike atomic attack on the Soviet Union. It was offered as a rationale for such a strike. And it was put forward in tandem with the notion that nuclear war was a black-or-white 'all or nothing' sort of affair. You either won big or lost big and the difference between a winner and loser might be nothing more than a matter of critical timing. Both of these two idea-complexes - pre-emptive war that is also total war, have risen again to the surface in the post-Cold-War debate on foreign policy.

Our ears should prick up when we hear this kind of juxtaposition of things : strategic methodology (pre-emptive strike), military technology (nuclear strike), beliefs in the field of jurisprudence ('guilty until proven innocent') - - because this is a tell-tale sign.

When these features come together like this, and recur after an interval of about 50 years - then something is fishy, somebody is trying to revive and refurbish an trusty old paradigm for new use, in a situation that has, for whatever reason, rendered the old paradigm ineffective.

Add a few other elements to the list of combined 'supports' - like the fact that we are being asked to accept an unusual definition of war, as 'endless' (recall the shock that many of us recently felt when we realized that there WAS NOT going to be an end to the military improprieties of the present administration), and an enemy that is 'faceless' (and thus difficult to actually DESTROY) - and we have two more support features that have been imported from the early days of the Cold War. Features that make sense ONLY in combination (because, you see, if you can't clearly identify the enemy, for instance, this is a fact that will result in no distinct END for the war).

The interesting thing here is that NONE of these assumptions, these premises, have to be accepted, embraced without question - although we are neverhtless being promopted to do so. We could - and in fact SHOULD - subject each of these new pieces of the puzzle to serious scrutiny. And one of the easiest ways to do that is by taking a good look at the relevant history of these things.

When you do that, you find that - for instance - that in 1946, a number of people (including J. Oppenheimer, the principle architect of the atom bomb) were arguing that ALL of the strategies that were being offered for the USE of nuclear weapons (i.e., first strike, nuclear retaliation, massive retaliation, strategies based on mutually assured distruction [MAD] as deterent, etc) were flawed, and that the only real alternative for escaping disaster was international cooperation and disarmament.

You also find that back in the early 50s, under Eisenhower, his Defense Secretary (a man named 'C.E. Wilson' - who was, like the present SoD Dick Cheney - the C.E.O of the the biggest arms distributor at the time (G.M.). He was promoting a concept that he called 'permanent war economy'. 'What is good for General Motors, is good for the country', he said. But what he really meant was 'War is good for General Motors, so lets find a way of keeping it going, even if there is no actual war being fought' - hence the idea of a 'Cold War' - a war that isn't really happening, but could happen at any moment, and be IRREVERSIBLE, so we've got to be ready. (In fact, this is the KIND of war that you can't be 'ready' for - no re-sponse can possibly be adquate. Hence all you can do is pre-spond.

You also find, when you take a look back at those years, huge tax cuts, coupled with hand outs for the rich, an exponential escalation in military spending, a rollback in civil liberties, and the attempted nationalization, under military control, of mass communications (radio, in the days of Woodrow Wilson); not unlike the colonization of cyberspace that is explicitly espoused in PNAC.

All of these things, all of these paradigm-supports, are being put into place for the same reason. The whole show, the new paradigm, is being promoted and implemented for one overall purpose: to defeat foreign and domestic resistance to the policy and practice of U.S. imperialism and global expansionism.

PNAC puts forward, as another interesting 'paradigm-support', the notion that in present circumstances we need to 'expand' what it calls the 'security perimeter' - the line that we draw around the country (previously 5 miles offshore), across which it is considered a grevious international offense for another country to step. We must now draw that line - not 5 miles off shore - but somewhere in the sands of Iraq, and Iran, and Syria. As Rumsfeld made the argument on TV in four blood-curdling words - "Better Bagdhad than Boise" - a kind of PNAC inspired sound-byte.

Step over the line that we draw in Bagdhad, oh ye citizens of Iraq, and you are, in effect attacking America - and we thereby have the God-given right to defend ourselves with whatever force is necessary.

But what gives us that right, actually? Nothing. It is simply an illusion that is created by the smoke and mirrors of language. The skills that the Bushes genetically lack in this regard, are manifest in abundance in the minions that are promoting this new 'defense' paradigm for them. If we are going to be successful in unmasking the illusion that they are trying to create, we must find the ways, and take the time and effort, to expose these tricks, these linguistic, conceptual and psychological sleights of hand.