Senator Joe Lieberman, the Democrat from Connecticut, and Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican of Arizona, have announced the third incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), an organization founded in 1950 with the primary objective of tripling American defense spending.  The commies were coming, after all.  The committee was “reinvented” in 1976 to oppose any and all negotiation of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with Moscow.  We needed to keep our nukes, damn it!

And here we go again.   Oh, and by the way, Peter D. Hannaford is the managing director of the new incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD).  Who’s he?  A few years ago he was a Washington lobbyist for the fellow some call Austria's crypto-Nazi wunderkind Jorg Haider.

Jorg Haider – the man who said Hitler was misunderstood and those brown-shirted guys weren’t so bad at all.  Jorg Haider – a sort of Arnold Shwarzenegger who stayed home.  For a while he was a rising star in Austria, working to bring back discipline and order - in the 1943 style of things.  But in the end no one wanted to play with him. 

You know, it’s a funny thing - except for Silvio Berlusconi, folks who say the fascists had it right just do not get any respect these days. 

And so this Hannaford fellow was cut loose.  Now he’s helping the Jewish fellow from Connecticut fight the bad Islamic people.  Well, unemployment sucks and Hannaford landed on his feet.  Bully for him.

Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl, by the way, explained what they were up to this week.

The Present Danger
Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl, The Washington Post, Tuesday, July 20, 2004; Page A17

It’s long, but the gist is this –

The liberation of Iraq has important implications for the region and for the broader war on terrorism. The leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties have so far stood firm in their commitment to finish the job in Iraq and to fight to victory the war on terrorism. But that bipartisan consensus is coming under growing public pressure and could fray in the months ahead. Although the tide is turning in the war on terrorism, a political undertow in this country could wash out our recent gains. We must not let this happen.

To make sure it doesn't, we are relaunching today the Committee on the Present Danger, a group of citizens of diverse political persuasions who will work to sustain and strengthen bipartisan support for the war on terrorism in Iraq and beyond.

The Committee on the Present Danger was first formed at the dawn of the Cold War in 1950 to educate Americans about the growing threat of Soviet communism. Democratic senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson of Washington state revitalized the group in the mid-'70s; this time it was focused on working for a stronger stance toward the Soviets and the increased defense spending necessary to carry out that policy.

In this third incarnation, we intend to focus the committee on the present danger our generation faces: international terrorism from Islamic extremists and the outlaw states that either harbor or support them. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks awoke all Americans to the capabilities and brutality of our new enemy, but today too many people are insufficiently aware of our enemy's evil worldwide designs, which include waging jihad against all Americans and reestablishing a totalitarian religious empire in the Middle East. The past struggle against communism was, in some ways, different from the current war against Islamist terrorism. But America's freedom and security, which each has aimed to undermine, are exactly the same. The national and international solidarity needed to prevail over both enemies is also the same. In fact, the world war against Islamic terrorism is the test of our time.