Jude weighs in

Chip Berlet cberlet at igc.org
Tue Sep 18 09:47:44 PDT 2001


Hi,

What is the cite to this statement?

Let's be careful and put the source of information in posts.

Thanks.

-Chip Berlet

----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 12:19 PM Subject: Jude weighs in


> September 18, 2001
>
> The Prince of Darkness
>
> Memo To: Henry Kissinger
> From: Jude Wanniski
> Re: Richard Perle
>
> I was surprised to see you on television last night making arguments I
> associate with the world's No. 1 hawk, Richard Perle, who has been the chief
> architect of our policy toward the Arab/Islamic world. There is no single
> American more responsible for inciting outrage among Muslims globally than
> Richard, whose maniacal prescriptions led inexorably to last week's
> cataclysm. It was no surprise to me to see Richard on CNN's Evans&Novak,
> Hunt& Shields program on Sunday, calling for all-out war against the Arab
> world with a coalition entirely composed of western Europeans. If he were
> just an ordinary maniac, we could live with him, Henry, but he is chairman
> of the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon, and which gives him
> total access to all military secrets. Do you have any doubt that he is now
> in constant communication with Ariel Sharon and Binjamin Netanyahu, the
> leaders of the coo-coo wing of the Likud Party in Israel?
>
> Over the last four decades, since I first met both you and Richard in the
> first year of the Nixon administration in 1969, I always associated you with
> the moderates, like the late Sen. Jacob Javits of New York, who would look
> for diplomatic solutions to conflict. Richard, who was then a 25-year-old
> boy wonder who worked for Sen. Henry (Scoop) Jackson, Washington Democrat,
> was a protege of Albert Wohlstetter, who played hawk to your dove in our
> dealings with the Soviet Union. Back then, I was allied with Wohlstetter, a
> Cold War hawk, although I at least had an appreciation of your views. Now I
> see you practically in lockstep with Perle, who we have always known as the
> Prince of Darkness, a master of disinformation who helped us win the Cold
> War, and who now wants to bring the Muslim world to its knees.
>
> You know how these things work, Henry. There are basically two approaches to
> solving the problem of terrorism. One is that you understand the mind of the
> terrorist in order to establish defenses against it. The other is that you
> kill all the terrorists and all the potential terrorists. Richard would
> certainly not flinch at that possibility, although I'm sure he would think
> we would only have to kill a significant fraction of the 1.25 billion
> Muslims before the rest "got the message." Before their deaths, Wohlstetter
> and former president Richard Nixon had designed our policy toward Iraq, by
> which the U.S. would allow Iraqi civilians to die of starvation and disease
> until the people were so miserable they would topple Saddam Hussein. I've
> noted a number of times in this space that 1.5 million Iraqi civilians have
> died thusfar, according to the United Nations, because of a policy designed
> by two dead men, now carried out by Wohlstetter's proteges, with Perle at
> the top of that deadly totem poll. Nixon, I'm sure, could not have imagined
> Saddam would still be in power after all these years. You know as well as I
> do that it has been criminal for our government to pretend to the American
> people that the embargo would have been lifted on Iraq if Saddam complied
> with the 1991 UN resolutions. Insofar as you have known this and done
> nothing about it, I suppose I would have to list you on the negative side of
> last week's equation.
>
> Remember when Madeleine Albright, our UN Ambassador, was asked by Lesley
> Stahl on 60 Minutes if it were worth the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children to
> keep the embargo on, and without hesitation, Madeleine said it surely was.
> Richard Perle, I'm sure, cheered her statement. So did Paul
> Wolfowitz, Perle's acolyte, who is now Deputy Defense Secretary. Our
> Defense Secretary,
> Donald Rumsfeld, probably flinched at the comment, as he still has some
> sense left, but Don still follows Perle's lead, as he has since the Ford
> Administration. When Wohlstetter was the big intellectual cheese at the Rand
> Corporation, he brought Rumsfeld in on the Rand board, where he was fully
> indoctrinated on how to end wars and how to start them. In 1996, when the
> GOP came up with the Dole/Kemp ticket, I did my best to come up with ideas
> on how Bob Dole could present a more diplomatic image to the American
> people. Alas, Dole had Perle at his side. When President Clinton bombed Iraq
> on Labor Day, to kick off his re-election campaign, he violated the War
> Powers Act. But Dole quickly praised the bombing and other Republicans,
> whose staffs include members of the Perle network on Capitol Hill,
> immediately complained that Clinton should have dropped bigger bombs.
>
> In case you did not know it, Secretary of State Colin Powell refers to Perle
> and his network as "the bombers." They include the WSJournal editorial page,
> which Perle has in his back pocket, The Weekly Standard, which he has
> in his front pocket, and Bill Safire, his mouthpiece at the NYTimes. We
> were all buddies during the Cold War, but when the Cold War ended I became a
> peacenik. I do not have any influence, just a little guy trying to figure
> out how to prevent hot wars, cold wars and terrorist wars. But you have
> influence, Henry. You could pick up the phone and advise our young President
> to weigh Colin Powell's advice a little more heavily than Rumsfeld's, which
> is in fact Perle's. I'd hate to see our country overrun with Muslim
> McVeighs, blowing up this, that and the other thing. Wouldn't you?
>
> * * * * *



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