‘Our Responsibility and Privilege to Fight Freedom’s Fight’: Neoconservatism, the Project for the New American Century, and the Making of the Invasion of Iraq in 2003

• Main Author: McCoy, Daniel D.
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UNO 2016
• Subjects: The Project for the New American Century; Iraq War; Saddam Hussein; The Weekly Standard; The Vulcans; weapons of mass destruction; Intellectual History
• Online Access: http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2177; http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3254&context=td

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservative Washington, D.C. foreign policy think tank, comprised of seasoned foreign policy stalwarts who had served multiple presidential administrations as well as outside-the-beltway defense contractors, that was founded in 1997 by William Kristol, editor of the conservative political magazine The Weekly Standard, and Robert Kagan, a foreign policy analyst and political commentator currently at the Brookings Institution. The PNAC would shut down its operations in 2006. Using The Weekly Standard as its mouthpiece, the PNAC helped foment support for the removal of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein beginning in 1998, citing Iraq’s noncooperation with UN weapons inspections. The PNAC became further emboldened in its urgency and rhetoric to quell the geopolitical risk posed by Hussein after the 9/11 terror attacks. The only justifiable response the George W. Bush Administration could play in thwarting Hussein, the PNAC argued, involved a military action. Keywords: The Project for the New American Century; Iraq War; Saddam Hussein; The Weekly Standard; The Vulcans; weapons of mass destruction