Neocons and the Carlyle Group

There has been a new buzz word sprayed around by media and political pundits in the post September 11 era – Neoconservative. The new conservatives (neocons for short) have been able to change dramatically the landscape of American Foreign Policy. From a philosophical perspective, this wing of GOP formalist believes that all US foreign policy should be engineered so that America is placed in the situated to reconstruct the world to serve its own interests.

The reticular formation of the neocons is varied and ranges to include folks the like Rupert Murdoch, who owns and runs the Fox media empire. Mainly occupying the Department of Defense under the current administration, they also include members of think tanks like the Heritage foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, financial institutions like the Bradley foundation and news commentators. My concern regards the hawkish manner I which these individuals place their beliefs on others without scrutiny.

Neocons believe that policies that are preemptive and unilateral are best for the American populous. This has been more than apparent with the Iraqi war. Now this group of zealots is moving toward another thorny position – privatization of US nuclear facilities. Touted as being one of the largest defense contractors in the United States, the Carlyle group is going all out to implement plans that will allow the current administration to make it easy for private contractors to run US nuclear facilities. Its Directors include Frank Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary of Defense and James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State. With the assistance of the Defense Departments top brass, the Carlyle Group will accept a management contract to run the nuclear weapons laboratories at Berkeley, Livermore and Los Alamos. The contract is supposed to be transferred in one year to the University of Texas, where the military and the Carlyle Group will have control.

The Carlyle group is already making big sums of loot from the India-Pakistan conflict, due to its connection with the companies (aerospace giant BAE Systems North America) and the CIA which supply both countries. I’m troubled by any effort to place nuclear weapons in the hands of private citizens. Aren’t you?