Permanent war

Since 1997, an obscure US organisation has been promoting a preemptive and explicitly aggressive approach to securing American dominance in the 21st century. Under cover of such terms as "benevolent hegemony" and "preventive war", they have spent the last years elaborating their plans for the use of excessive military force to intimidate the rest of the world. Many of the key supporters of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) entered the White House along with George W Bush in 2000, and have been instrumental in designing and launching the war on terror in general, and the occupation of Iraq in particular.

This week, a People's Tribunal opens in Brussels, Belgium, to try the PNAC for their part in dragging the world into a state of permanent war. The BRussells Tribunal, inspired by the hearings held in 1967 by philosopher Bertrand Russell into American war crimes in Vietnam, is just the first session in a series of citizens' forums which will be held around the world over the next year, and which seek to expose and condemn the dark face of current American foreign policy. As the Tribunal opens in Belgium, Frederick Bowie spoke to participants about what they hoped to achieve, and what the world needs to know about America's neo-conservative palace revolution.