Linkmeister

Another one?

These outfits keep cropping up. The speech Woolsey gave at UCLA on Wednesday (below) was under the auspices of Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (henceforth referred to as AVOT), a nice innocuous name and goal. However, if you look at their Statement of Principles, one finds some rather chilling stuff. It's aimed squarely at radical Islam, but its principles have some disturbing aspects:

• 2. The radical Islamists who attacked us did so because of our democratic ideals, our belief in, and practice of, liberty and equality. AVOT will take to task those who blame America first and who do not understand--or who are unwilling to defend--our fundamental principles.
  
• 6. Because of the threat posed by radical Islamists and others, Americans will have to rethink many of their preconceptions about fighting terrorism. AVOT will defend policies that preserve civil liberties without sacrificing common sense and our common defense.
  
• 8. Improving our gathering and effective utilization of intelligence is a necessity. AVOT will support responsible efforts by our nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies to collect and utilize more -- and more pertinent -- information and to facilitate interagency communication. (Italics added)

The advisors to this organization (which is an offshoot of William Bennett's Empower.org, the education and research arm of Empower America) include Bennett, former Attorney General William Barr, former Ambassador-at-Large L. Paul Bremer, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security (under Richard Perle) Frank Gaffney, Lawrence Kadish (described on the website as an industrial real estate developer), assistant professor at Florida Atlantic U. Walid Phares, Harvard professor Ruth Wisse, and ex-CIA Director Woolsey.

The vision these people have is of an America pre-eminent, astride the world by virtue of military might and the power of its ideas. Apparently the idea that other parts of the world might be less than enthused about this vision is shunted aside as an unworthy belief held by foolish benighted children, in need of discipline and instruction.