After Georgetown University decided against renewing his contract, a brief stay as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and his efforts to get a post at the Brookings Institution came to naught, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have found a new home at the Hudson Institute, another predominantly neo-conservative “think tank†that tends to lie in the shadow of the much more media-prominent American Enterprise Institute (AEI). According to Hudson’s latest News & Review, Feith, whose self-serving memoir, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism pretty much bombed with the few credible critics who reviewed it, will be the Institute’s Director for National Security Strategies.
Hudson, of course, was the first refuge of I. Lewis “Scooter†Libby after his 2005 indictment for perjury, but he apparently left after his conviction (and despite Bush’s commutation), and I’ve completely lost track of him now. (Does anyone know what he’s doing?)
Feith will join other leading Likudist lights at Hudson, including Meyrav Wurmser (wife of former Cheney aide David Wurmser), who heads the Institute’s Middle East Studies department; Hillel Fradkin; Laurent Murawiec; Anne Bayefsky; Norman Podhoretz (not in residence); and Nina Shea, among others. It’s interesting to note that the two Wurmsers, as well as Feith and another Hudson Senior Fellow, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., made up half of the eight members of the task force sponsored by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (IASPS) that produced the 1996 “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm†paper for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that many analysts believe helped plant the seed for the Iraq invasion eight years later. (That alone suggests how dangerous it might be to put Feith in charge of developing any kinds of “strategies,†as Hudson seems to have done.) The other task force members included IASPS’s highly eccentric (check its website) president, Robert Loewenberg, James Colbert, then-Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) researcher Jonathan Torop; and the nominal chairman, Richard Perle, from whom not much has been heard lately — another sign that, with the exception of Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and the Kagan boys, neo-cons have been lying rather low during the election campaign.
Feith’s former boss, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, has also not been heard from recently, which in many ways is very strange, given that his last public post was president of the World Bank and his official at AEI (where he has been a Visiting Scholar since his ignominious resignation 18 months ago) stresses his interest in development and trade. You would think that, given the current financial crisis and its potentially disastrous ripple effects on emerging economies and poor countries (for which he has expressed particular sympathy in the past), he would not have been shy about offering his advice about how to protect them. But, apart from his advocacy of business and defense ties with Taiwan (he’s chairman of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council), he seems to have largely disappeared from the public sphere. In the realm of economic development and aid, Hudson has acquired a far more credible figure in the person of former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, who joined the Institute at the same time as Feith.
Instead of calling the chair "Director for National Security Strategies", I think a more more appropriate name would be "the Alcibiades chair for National Security Strategies". Anyone who has spent time reviewing OIF would note the similarities between it and the Athenian Expedition to Syracuse, promoted by Alcibiades, during the Peloponnesian War, the exception being V.D. Hanson.
Those who survive nuclear exchange will make much wiser choices, INMHO.
Why doesn’t the MSM ever tell us how many of these “wonks” have duel citizenship? And a question: how can one have American citizenship and citizenship in another country when the American oath for citizenship requires one to renounce all other allegiances? How many duelies in AEI?
Almost all of them who have dual citizenship have Israel as their second country of citizenship. Their true loyalty is to Israel, not America. The neoconservatives have used and manipulated the USA (which largely has a very gullible and uninformed populace) into serving Israel’s interests. It is the biggest con in history. Think of the attack on Iraq because of 9/11 as a monstrous ‘bait and switch’. I have never liked dual citizenship by the way. It should be banned.
These same people are the ones who are shaping the Americans people views and thinkings when it comes the middle east.They are also th ones who formulate the American polcies in the middle east.
I believe the term “Think Tank” should be changed to “Stink Tank” for these places of vileness and evil.
Huckabee now has his own show on Fox network!?
Feith’s existence has produced negative results. He should get a real job–pressing license plates.
He wouldn’t last 5 minutes in the Big House.
I. Lewis “Scooter†Libby now scrubs my toilets clean every Tuesday. He’s not very good at it.
How can that be, given that he spent his whole life preparing for the job?
Thanks Jim for posting this. It helps bring closure to traumatized minds.
I used to badger this guy whose name i can’t remeber now at a bllog called talisman gate who was a hudson fellow. I don’t know if the blog is still there but the guy was a iraqi national congress member and was i think ahmed chalabis pool boy.
Neocons have power mostly because they flatter End-times lunatics like John Haggee and Pat Robertson.
Lester Ness
Kunm
China
Nothing shows the dysfunctionality of America’s political process better then the rise to power of the neocons. I honestly don’t think something like this could have happened in any other western democratic country. Too bizarre not to be true. There is a good book waiting to be written about how all of this happened.
Their tentacles are wide spread all over.They control many editorial boards of many news papers in Europe.
Piss on Feith, Wurmser, Podhoretz, and the other warmongering neocon swine.
Hopefully, Feith’s future home will be a jail cell, perhaps shared with GW Bush.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
The neoconservatives were the worst thing to happen to America in a long, long time. They have done immense damage.
We blame the neoconservatives because we want to absolve ourselves. Who voted Bush into office the second time? For sure there aren’t that many neocons. How can people like him find job at Georgetown and Harvard? Harvard is conservative but is it neocon too?
I guess for Iraq war we have to go beyond neocons to find the actual reason (frankly, I cannot think of any.)
Thank goodness the neocons had the foresight to confront terrorism, especially after 9-11.
Bush kept our country safe, which is pretty much all you can ask of the federal government.
All-in-all, it doesn’t matter who the presidentis: Obama, McCain, Ron Paul, or Alfred E. Neumann, we are going to have to deal with state sponsors of Islamic fundamentalism even if Israel gets thrown under the bus like many here would like. Iran is more at war with Sunni-Islam than she is with Israel…