The War on Dissent Widens

A powerful group of neo-conservatives is launching a new public relations campaign in support of President George W. Bush's war on terrorism.

At a Tuesday gathering of the National Press Club, members of the new Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT) declared their intention to "take to task those groups and individuals who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the war we are facing."

Those groups and individuals, AVOT claims, need to be resisted both here and abroad. A full-page AVOT advertisement carried in the March 10 Sunday New York Times pointed to radical Islam as "an enemy no less dangerous and no less determined than the twin menaces of fascism and communism we faced in the 20th century." At the same time, the $128,000 ad lambasted those at home "who are attempting to use this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of 'blame America first.'"

"Both [internal and external] threats," the ad continues, "stem from either a hatred for the American ideals of freedom and equality or a misunderstanding of those ideals and their practice."

To expose the internal "threats," AVOT has compiled a sample list of statements by professors, legislators, authors and columnists that it finds objectionable. The strategy appears similar to an earlier, much-criticized effort to monitor war dissidents by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), a group founded by Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, and neo-conservative Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman.

AVOT's list of speakers it considers threatening include:

- Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who said, "Some of us, maybe foolishly, gave this president the authority to go after terrorists. We didn't know that he, too, was going to go crazy with it."

- President Jimmy Carter, who assailed Bush's use of the phrase "axis of evil," arguing that it was "overly simplistic and counter-productive."

- Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who accused the president of "canceling, in effect, the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments" and called the war "the patriot games, the lying games, the war games of an unelected president."

- American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner criticizing "Bush's dismal domestic policies" and his "dubious notion of a permanent war."

- Lewis Lapham, the editor of "Harper's Magazine," who in a recent editorial said that Washington itself has used terrorist tactics during the 1990s, including the bombing of civilian targets in Baghdad and the Balkans.

Who exactly is behind AVOT's efforts? The newly-formed organization is headed by a formidable array of right-wing luminaries. At the top of the list is former Secretary of Education and drug czar William Bennett, AVOT's chairman. The group's Senior Advisors include former CIA director R. James Woolsey; former Reagan Pentagon official Frank Gaffney; William P. Barr, attorney general under George Bush, Sr; and mega-political donor Lawrence Kadish. AVOT is a project of Empower America -- also co-chaired by Bennett -- whose principal members include conservative political operatives Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp, Vin Weber and William Cohen.

During the press conference, Bennett insisted that, "We do not wish to silence people," adding that for now, AVOT plans to hold teach-ins and public education events, particularly on college campuses.

In response to AVOT's criticism, Harper's Lewis Lapham said Bennett is a "wrong-headed jingo and an intolerant scold." He added that AVOT appeared to be a new "front organization for the hard neo-con (neo-conservative) right," which has gained unprecedented influence in the Bush administration, particularly among the top political appointees in the Pentagon and Dick Cheney's office. "This is the war-monger crowd," he said.

Indeed, AVOT is being initially funded primarily by Lawrence Kadish, chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and a top donor to the Republican Party. Kadish, a real estate investor in New York and Florida, was cited by Mother Jones Magazine as one of the country's top individual donors, having given $532,000 to the GOP. His RJC has long tried to build links between the Republican Party, including its Christian Right component, and American Jews.