In the early 1950's, a committee dedicated to fighting communism was established, and gained notoriety during the infamous McCarthyism period. Founded to combat the "red menace" of communism, it was called the Committee on Present Danger, CPD, but was soon abandoned through detent and the balance of powers.

It again re-formed in 1976 to push for larger defence budgets and arms buildups, to counter the Soviet Union, only to recede into the shadows after the scandals of Iran Contra.

Now a group of lawmakers, academics, and business people has relaunched the CPD, specifically to fight "Islamic terrorism." Honorary chairmen are Democratic Senator and pro-Israeli hawk Joseph Lieberman, and Republican Senator Jon Kyl who is closely tied to the Christian Right. Along with former CIA director James Woolsey, they announced the reorganisation of the group at a press conference this week.

Woolsey is chairman of the group, which he says aims to combat "a totalitarian movement masquerading as a religion."

Woolsey said, "We understand very well that this time, the danger that we must address is a danger to the United States but also a danger to democracy and civil society throughout the world, and it is very much our hope to be of support and assistance to those who seek to bring democracy and civil society to the part of the world, the Middle East extended, to which this Islamist terror is now resonant in and generated from."

Echoing Woolsey, Lieberman and Kyl, jointly wrote an article titled The Present Danger, published in this space yesterday, in which the two men say "Islamic terrorism had become the greatest danger to American freedom."

They write, "today too many people are insufficiently aware of our enemy's evil worldwide designs, which include waging jihad against all Americans and re-establishing a totalitarian religious empire in the Middle East. The past struggle against communism differed in some ways from the current war against Islamist terrorism. But America's freedom and security, which each has aimed to undermine, are exactly the same."

Championed the idea

Woolsey, who in 2002 championed the idea that the US was in World War IV with Islamic terrorism, along with Lieberman and Kyle, with the alleged mentoring of Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, considered the most prominent neoconservative currently serving in the Bush administration, helped lead the drive to war in Iraq, and also support broadening Bush's "war on terrorism" to include Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, as well.

One reason the committee may have re-emerged could be the current struggle between Neoconservatives and conservative "realists" over the future of Republican foreign policy.

Although the neoconservative star has diminished somewhat in Washington recently because of problems in Iraq, and the neocons' perceived role in taking the US into that war, neoconservative influence remains powerful. Any change in Republican foreign policy, especially toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will not occur without an internal fight between the traditional conservatives and the neocons.

At a recent Washington conference, columnist Robert Novak, a traditional conservative, said a Bush loss could lead to a "volcanic moment" in US politics, with Republicans deciding what to do, for example, with the neocon influence - whose failure in Iraq will be blamed for the party's loss. Debate would also grow, he says, over the place of the Christian Right, which has championed the neocons' foreign policy.

Novak said "The other key issue that often draws fire down on the Neoconservatives is what their critics describe as support for Israel and in particular the Likud government."

Some critics charge that Neoconservatives promoted the war in Iraq in order to help Israel, and point to statements made in recent months by former Bush advisers like Philip Zelikow who sat on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board that seem to confirm this.

Neoconservative supporters often answer this charge with charges of anti-Semitism, or that such accusations of ties between Israel's Likud party and the Neoconservatives are a myth.

The writer is an Arab journalist based in Washington, DC.