Waching C-Span just now, I caught some of Richard Perle's denial of neoconservatism's influence in an event at the Nixon Center yesterday and had a few impressions.
Perle said that the reason for the Iraq war was the Bush administration's fear post-9/11 that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and they would fall into the wrong hands. He said: You have to know what it felt like after 9/11 to have to worry about this.
That was his first deception. Because, actually, we all know what it felt like. We were there too. And Bush and the neocons invaded Iraq 18 months later. Plenty of time to think things over.
Jim Lobe of Inter Press almost got Perle pinned in the last minute or two, till the moderator cut things off. Lobe read from neoconservative ads that Perle had signed (from the Project for the New American Century) calling for regime change. Lobe pointed out that one ad spoke of grand plans for the Middle East. "Israel's fight is our fight." That ad is all about remaking the Middle East, Lobe said.
Perle is tough. He tried to smooth his way past Lobe's true statement of the ad's message. Yes it is our fight, Perle said. We were "plagued" by suicide bombing. "Suicide bombing achieved prominence, became the instrument of choice, in terrorist attacks against Israel." And when Israel was being attacked, "the rest of the world didn't take it seriously."
Israel was under attack from people who "believe the way to achieve their political objectives is to blow up women and children… and that's our war too."
I was struck by Perle's smoothness and dishonesty. Many things were deceptive about his statements. His insistence that Bush had done the thinking on Iraq is deceptive; Perle knows that Bush doesn't know how to think. And if our enemy is really the people who would blow up women and children to achieve their political goals, then our enemy is Sunnis in Iraq (who are now part of the government we're supporting) and lots of other people too. Suicide bombing was used first by Hezbollah against the U.S. and France in Lebanon. Then Hezbollah spread it to Israel, and it became the weapon of choice in Sri Lanka.
But Perle focused only on Israel. This betrayed the neoconservative obsession with Israel; because the neocons are by and large Zionists.
Blaming the neocons for the Iraq war is a conspiracy theory, Perle said (per the Washington Post). And I accept that: I believe the neocons functioned in a conspiratorial manner. One hallmark of their conspiracy was their failure to be transparent about their real concerns, concerns they nonetheless have revealed in countless ways (such as when they urged war on Iraq in 2002 because Israel is "an island of liberal, democratic principles
— American principles — in a sea of tyranny, intolerance, and hatred"). Jim Lobe, a patient, thoughtful reporter, (who is Jewish), more than anyone has labored to expose that hidden agenda. That's my clearest impression of the event. Years after the Iraq disaster, an honest man asks honest questions, and Perle plays an intellectual shell game.
