Corporate-Funded Think Tanks to Host GOP Debate; Seeking best rep. for debate’s corporate sponsors

Tony Cartalucci, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

It’s no secret, at least to those who bothered to check, that GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry share identical foreign policies because they share identical, corporate-funded policy makers. A Foreign Policy Magazine article recently revealed that notorious “Neo-Cons” including Douglas Feith, William Luti, Andrew McCarthy, Charles Stimson, and Daniel Fata, with the help of certified warmonger Donald Rumsfeld, had been introduced to Rick Perry to help him “brush up” on foreign policy. Also meeting with Perry was Dan Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Peter Brookes of the Fortune 500-funded Heritage Foundation (page 35), and Zalmay Khalizad, a PNAC signatory and a member of the extraterritorial meddling National Endowment for Democracy’s board of directors, to help Perry define his “hawk internationalist” foreign policy stance.

By “hawk internationalist,” Foreign Policy indicates that it means, “embracing American exceptionalism and the unique role we must play in confronting the many threats we face.” This of course is the same “American exceptionalism” promoted by the corporate-financier funded American Enterprise Institute (AEI) along with the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Foreign Policy Initiative, which is nothing more than a misleading way to describe modern-day imperialism pursued by these organizations’ various corporate sponsors. It is also verbatim the policy spelled out in the Bush era “Project for a New American Century” whose signatories are all members of the various organizations mentioned above.

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Foreign Policy would then announce Mitt Romney’s promised “American Century,” in their article aptly titled, “Mitt Romney promises an ‘American Century’,” where it states that Romney, in an upcoming speech, will accuse President Barack Obama of, “sacrificing America’s strength and leadership in the world, and will promise to restore American preeminence through increased defense spending and a more aggressive international stance.”

In other words, “American exceptionalism and American preeminence as envisioned by the now notorious Neo-Con “Project for a New American Century.”

That Obama is already conducting war on over 8 different fronts begs one to wonder what Romney means by “more aggressive.” Who exactly is Romney’s foreign policy team? See if any of these names seem familiar, as reported in another Foreign Policy article:

Michael Chertoff
Eliot Cohen
Paula Dobriansky
Eric Edelman
Robert Kagan

If these names seem familiar, it is because these are the same names that pushed America into war with Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, a covert proxy war in Pakistan, and perhaps soon with Iran. An excellent article covering this more in depth can be found on ThinkProgress.org. Many of these same names were just in fact, recently covered in “Corporate-Fascists Clamor for Iran War.”

Interestingly enough, Obama’s foreign policy advisers and his most avid supporters also lead back to the same corporate-funded organizations shaping Perry and Romney’s campaign. No example could make this clearer than an open letter to US House Republicans calling on them to support more vigorously the current US military campaign in Libya. The signatories were plucked directly from the AEI, Heritage Foundation, Foreign Policy Initiative, the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations, and most notably, the semi-defunct Project for a New American Century.

Herman Cain literally worked for Wall Street during his stint in the disingenuously labeled “Federal Reserve,” which in reality is nothing more than a criminal syndicate consisting of the world’s biggest private banks masquerading as a government institution — a crime nearly a century in the making. Cain’s foreign policy has also been drudged up from the foulest depths of America’s corporate-fascist oligarchy, embodied by his cheif foreign policy adviser and campaign spokesman, Jeffrey Gordon.

Gordon served in the Navy, under Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, and was a Pentagon spokesman. After leaving his government post, Gordon became a consultant/lobbyist for several Washington-based “think-tanks” including the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Americas Forum, the now defunct Atlantic Bridge, Neo-Con Frank Gaffney’s PNAC enclave Center for Security Policy, and the Liberty & Freedom Foundation. Each of these “think tanks” in turn represent the collective interests of their political and corporate sponsors. An immense conflict of interest exists, and clearly Cain’s foreign policy adviser gravitates around the same unsavory agenda that his GOP opponent’s do. That Cain himself cites warmongering PNAC card-carrying John Bolton as an influence on his foreign policy stance should give us all pause for thought, wondering just why exactly they are even debating — aside from providing absolute utter theater to the public to ensure them they still live in a “democracy.”

As ridiculous as this may seem, it becomes all the more ludicrous when considering the corporate-media works for these very same interests, and shamelessly skews the presidential campaign in favor of the most accomplished sycophant, with secondary considerations given to how well they are able to convince the people they are not the eager establishment footstools they really are.

But perhaps to illustrate just how absolutely obtuse “democracy” is in America, and perhaps to also illustrate how such a bankrupted, corrupt, elitist system is impossible to “export” worldwide as anything other than empire, we should consider the upcoming GOP foreign policy debate.

At face value — for the average American — they will probably never even question the mechanics of the debate, who is hosting it, or the interests attempting to be subtle as they orchestrate the results. For the somewhat more observant, they may gloss over the Washington Post’s article, “GOP debate: Heritage, AEI and CNN to host foreign policy debate,” perhaps recognizing the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute as “good Conservative” organizations.

In reality, they are looking at the real oligarchical rulers of the United States, running potential puppets through their paces while sabotaging potential threats. Surely for the corporate-financier interests running America, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, or Herman Cain would be all equally ideal, so would another four years of Obama — that is, if the people’s gullibility was able to hold out that long. The only real factor that distinguishes these candidates from each other is how well they are accepted by the unsuspecting public.

The Heritage Foundation and AEI have both supplied advisers to Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. While Cain’s foreign policy is fairly nebulous, it clearly accepts the narrative of the “War on Terror,” a necessity to engage militarily around the world to counter the reemergence of Russia and the rise of China (i.e. American preeminence), and has outright stated that he favors a unilateral, unprovoked strike on Iran.

Such a foreign policy, while bleeding America’s troops dry, literally, and American taxpayers financially, despoiling nation after nation based on false pretenses to expand American economic, financial, and military hegemony, would be a goldrush for the military industrial complex, big oil, banks, and other multinational corporations that thrive on exploiting newly opened markets previously protected by the vestiges of national sovereignty that exist outside the ever expanding Wall Street-London “international order.” Would one be surprised then, to learn that it is exactly the military industrial complex, big oil, banks, and other multinational corporations that fund and dominate the leadership of both the Heritage Foundation and AEI?

The Heritage Foundation

The Heritage Foundation claims to be a think tank “whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.” While this sounds great in principle, in practice it is nothing more than lip service to mask the corporate-financier interests that both steer and fund its agenda.

The Heritage Foundation’s 2009 Annual Report is clear enough. Its “associates” include Boeing, Exxon Mobil, Google, Dole, Philip Morris, UPS, 3m, and Chevron. It’s directed by an array of individuals with ties both current and former to the US government and Fortune 500 banking and corporate interests. Whatever it is they claim to be, the vector sum of their efforts and associations over the years has been decidedly in favor of the failed direction America is headed. A recent report titled, “5 Steps to Save Americas Defense Industrial Base” proposes somehow that America’s arms industry is not big or unhindered enough and that further restrictions be taken from its path, including regulations restricting weapon exports.

AEI

The AEI makes the Heritage Foundation look tame in comparison. The Heritage Foundation is more of a “moderate” institution used to lure in genuine conservatives to support non-conservative policies. AEI literally engineers, promotes, and oversees America’s wars. Frederick Kagan, along with other “resident scholars” at AEI, had developed the Iraq “troop surge,” the current strategies being employed in Afghanistan, and a blueprint for future war with Pakistan.

AEI’s board of trustees represents a wide variety of corporate-financier interests including those of the notorious Carlyle Group, State Farm, American Express, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (also of the CFR). Dick Cheney also acts as a trustee. AEI’s “research staff” includes notorious warmongers Frederick Kagan, Newt Gingrich, John Bolton (who has influenced Herman Cain’s foreign policy stance), Richard Perle, John Yoo, and Paul Wolfowitz. AEI’s work is done entirely with the concept of “American exceptionalism” in mind, or in other words, American global hegemony. The AEI’s own annual report is rife with talk of US strategic preeminence and its assertion over the sovereignty of foreign nations in the form of sanctions, military operations, invasions, and occupations. The AEI, in tandem with the Heritage Foundation, Foreign Policy Initiative, and many others, all with interconnecting memberships and corporate-financier sponsors, are literally the “Project for a New American Century (PNAC)” in motion.

Conclusion

It is quite clear that America’s agenda is already predetermined by these unelected, unaccountable corporate-financier interests. That they exercise such sweeping control over the media, and even both sides of America’s political aisle, makes their “hosting” of the GOP debate a mockery out of the alleged “democracy” we are constantly reminded we live in. These two “think tanks” in particular have provided or influenced the foreign policy of at least three of the GOP’s current candidates for 2012, and yet they will disingenuously preside over a debate most viewers will assume is being conducted impartially.

It is essential that we understand who these corporate interests are and how badly they’ve compromised our nation. We need to stop fooling ourselves into believing that Perry, Romney, or Cain are prepared to do anything at all for America’s best interests. They aren’t. They do not serve the American people, nor do they promote policies that serve our best interests. They, like all of their predecessors, both Republican and Democrat, will even betray many of the already wayward policies they are proposing to the public during their respective campaigns.

Search for the candidate who the Fortune 500 corporate-financier interests aren’t putting the spotlight on; the candidate that is being stifled, attacked, ignored, dismissed, and otherwise misrepresented and sabotaged. Search for the candidate who has not been peddling the typical left/right agenda clearly controlled by the same corporations, for the corporations, by the corporations. Quite clearly, that candidate for 2012 is Ron Paul of Texas, who possesses a solid voting record and stance on issues that spans decades, not soundbites.

Additionally, realize that people like Ron Paul want America to pursue principles, not personalities, solutions not solicitors. We know who these corporations are, we see the effects their unchecked, unwarranted influence has had on our Republic, we see that it is we the people who feed it on a daily basis growing it ever stronger, bolder, and more difficult to constrain. Boycott and replace these corporations and start looking inward at ourselves as the solutions to our problems, and our elected representatives as merely one of many means to implement these solutions.

Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at 
Land Destroyer Report.