The Little Brown Reader

Influential neoconservatives, including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, have been arguing for years in favor of an assertive U.S. strategy in the post-Cold War world. In 1997, they and other like-minded intellectuals organized the Project for the New American Century, which urged then-President Clinton to confront Iraq. "America was being too timid, too weak, and too unassertive in the post-Cold War world," Kristol argues. "American leadership was key to, not only world stability, but any hope for spreading democracy and freedom around the world."

Hartcher says, "This [war] is about the neoconservative view, the idealistic view, the Wilsonian view, that the world would be a better place if only America can make it that way." The neoconservatives advocate a paradigm shift in which the United States spreads American values by asserting American power-by force, if necessary.

The neoconservative champion is Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., now an ardent supporter of war with Iraq. "We must keep our nerve," McCain said last month, "have the courage to understand what our experiences have taught us, have faith in the necessity and rightness of our cause, and do what must be done to make this a safer, freer, better world."

Has Bush adopted their cause? Apparently. In his February 26 speech to the American Enterprise Institute, he said, "By the resolve and purpose of America and our friends and allies, we will make this an age of progress and liberty. Free people will set the course of history. And free people will keep the peace of the world."