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Richard Perle is a liar
I was thinking about two former American government employees this weekend, and how the differences between them tell us a lot about why the United States is in so much trouble today.
The first person is Eugene Kranz, the legendary NASA flight director immortalized in the film Apollo 13. I watched a rerun of the film on Friday night, and was struck again by his remarkable leadership of the team that improvised the astronauts' rescue after an in-flight explosion crippled their spacecraft and placed their lives in peril. Many readers probably remember the moment in the film when Kranz tells his colleagues: "Failure is not an option." This line may have been apocryphal, but when I survey the landscape of problems we face at home and abroad, I wish we had more people like Kranz in key leadership positions.
Yes I know, it's just a movie, but Ed Harris's portrayal is consistent with what we know about Kranz himself. Above all, Kranz was a leader who took full responsibility for his actions. Here's what he told his colleagues after the tragic fire on the launching pad of Apollo 1, a fire that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee:
Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we... Not one of us stood up and said, 'Dammit, stop!'...We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. ... From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough' and 'Competent.' Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do...Competent means we will never take anything for granted...When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write 'Tough and Competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control."
That is the kind of attitude that lands men on the moon, builds a healthy economy, and when necessary, wins wars.
Now compare that frank and honest statement with the behavior of another former government employee: Richard Perle. In a recent article in The National Interest and a public appearance at the Nixon Center, Perle has tried to sell the story that neither he nor his fellow neoconservatives had any significant influence on the foreign policy of the Bush administration, and especially the decision to invade Iraq. Specifically, he denounces the supposedly "false claim that the decision to remove Saddam, and Bush policies generally, were made or significantly influenced by a few neoconservative 'ideologues.'" He suggests that no one has ever documented this claim, either conveniently ignoring the many books and articles that did exactly that, or misrepresenting what these works actually say.
Given that Iraq turned into a debacle that the United States is having trouble escaping, it is hardly surprising that Perle is denying his role now. But that's not what he said back when the war looked more promising. In an interview with journalist George Packer, recounted in the latter's book The Assassins' Gate, Perle described the key role that the neoconservatives played in making the Iraq War happen.
If Bush had staffed his administration with a group of people selected by Brent Scowcroft and Jim Baker, which might well have happened, then it could have been different, because they would not have carried into the ideas that the people who wound up in important positions brought to it."
The "people who wound up in important positions" were key neoconservatives like Douglas Feith, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and others, who had been openly calling for regime change in Iraq since the late 1990s and who used their positions in the Bush administration to make the case for war after 9/11, aided by a chorus of sympathetic pundits at places like the American Enterprise Institute, and the Weekly Standard. The neocons were hardly some secret cabal or conspiracy, as they were making their case loudly and in public, and no serious scholar claims that they "bamboozled" Bush and Cheney into a war. Rather, numerous accounts have documented that they had been openly pushing for war since 1998 and they continued to do so after 9/11. As neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan later admitted, he and his fellow neoconservatives were successful in part because they had a "ready-made approach to the world" that seemed to provide an answer to the challenges the U.S. faced after 9/11.
The bottom line is simple: Richard Perle is lying. What is disturbing about this case is is not that a former official is trying to falsify the record in such a brazen fashion; Perle is hardly the first policymaker to kick up dust about his record and he certainly won't be the last. The real cause for concern is that there are hardly any consequences for the critical role that Perle and the neoconservatives played for their pivotal role in causing one of the great foreign policy disasters in American history. If somebody can help engineer a foolish war and remain a respected Washington insider -- as is the case with Perle -- what harm is likely to befall them if they lie about it later?
Let's keep a few facts in mind. Perle and his neoconservative buddies helped develop and sell a policy that has left over 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead and more than 30,000 wounded, was directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and will end up costing the United States more than a trillion dollars. Yet instead of having the integrity and courage to acknowlege his role and admit his mistakes -- as an honest man like Gene Kranz would -- Perle now offers us a squid's ink cloud of lies and prevarications. Although his absurd claims have been promptly and properly challenged, does anyone seriously think he will pay a larger price? The National Interest was all-too-willing to publish his rewriting of the historical record, and no doubt prestigious organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations will be happy to give him a platform at future meetings. Look for him on the Lehrer Newshour and CNN too; heck, he could even end up with his own show on Fox News.
Let's face it: there is little or no accountability in Washington, where being wrong means never having to say you're sorry; indeed, you don't even have to admit responsibility for past mistakes, no matter how serious. It's just the American taxpayer who ends up footing the bill, along with the soldiers who fought and died for these blunders.
As Frank Rich and others have figured out, we are in trouble today because we have allowed a culture of corruption and dishonesty to permeate our institutions and pollute our public discourse. Until that changes -- until our public institutions contain a lot more truth-tellers like Gene Kranz and fewer liars like Richard Perle -- we are not going to know where we stand, where we are headed, or whom to trust.
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“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University.
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Wolfowitz
It seems like everyone is washing their hands of Bush's foreign policy from 2001-2006. I would like to hear Paul Wolfowitz's take on what happened and the lessons learned, if any. He has not spoken a word about any of this, yet he strikes me as someone who is more intellectually honest then Perle, Feith, Rumsfeld and Cheney.
Not surprising, coming from the Prince of Darkness
Parle has always downplayed his contribution to policy making when his ideas have been wrong, yet regularly asserts his prowess and influence when he feels he's in the right.
The link between ideologues (of all stripes) and policy preferences is well documented throughout the Political Science literature. My own small contribution-Political Power and the Influence of Think Tanks: The 1972 ABM Treaty and National Missile Defense, (ISA South Conference, 2003)-contends that Bush Administration officials were ideologically predisposed to abandon the ABM, as demonstrated in their published work for conservative think tanks (AEI, Heritage) during the 1990s. Perle was included in the ranks of those who called for the U.S. to abandon the ABM Treaty.
Given his bombastic and outright ludicrous statements over the years, I'm amazed he still gets airtime anymore...
accountability and american politics
In regards to your argument that there is no accountability in Washington, I've thought about the same thing for a few years now. I think it has at least something to do with the growing gulf between the two political parties on...virtually everything. It is now widely accepted not only that most media is somehow slanted, but that the media actually doesn't report the facts or consistently gets the facts wrong. Fox News coverage of the Iraq War vs any of the networks, for example portrayed alternate and mutually exclusive realities. Politicians and pundits on either side were able to point to a set of facts or interpretations that matched their side of the argument (winning vs losing the war, progress versus setbacks on the ground, etc). Since the two sides never even agreed on a common set of objectives or benchmarks for progress, they were each playing with goalposts that would allow allow their side to win the debate. The same goes, I think, for the economic crisis today: No matter the outcome, do you doubt that democrats will praise Obama's approach as a success and republicans will label it a failure, or that the two sides will forever disagree on the principal cause of the meltdown? I don't.
I think political accountability has been the victim of this separation. Since every politician always has a camp of media and pundit cheerleaders, no one ever has to say they were wrong, because a) the only people who want to hold you accountable are the ppl on the other side that have always wanted you to fail, and b) you will always have a group that is more interested in defending you and preventing the other side from achieving some sort 'victory' than in promoting competence, responsibility, and accountability.
We obviously saw this a lot with the Bush administration Fox news,and conservative radio on things like the Iraq War, the Plame incident, Katrina, etc., but this isn't necessarily just a republican problem, and will probably continue with the Obama administration into the future. Anyway, I think it's really sad, because without common standards for success or failure, we're never going be able to hold any national-level policymaker accountable on anything ever again. Has it always been this way?
Anyway, I think it's really
common standards
where do you think those fit in?
When you remind them the common standards the Guys get mad and start screaming;->
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
In fact he is right, the Constitution is out of date, is useless, it is a stumbling block on his way so funny but whatever he does is the standard;->
Perhaps you should consider the Constitution as a contract between the Administration and the citizens and renew it every time it is required. This is possible with todays technological facilities. You should also open Tar and Feather Bath Houses in place of Saunas in Washington. But still I think first the Monopoly should be broken down. Because the Monopoly has made sure that you have no power, you can't even carry a sword any more to defend your rights against the Monopoly, I mean you can't even play Don Quijote;->
Grand Sen~or
Kranz said
When Kranz said:
he was pointing out to the people who use intellect including himself.
When a FP policy maker leaders decide this or that way once (I assume) they are advised by knowledgeable scholars.
My question is: was there any of those Guys/Dolls who use intellect said:
'Dammit, stop!'
with an explanation why?
Anybody advised the Administration "Let's review our constitution first!"
I remember one day Bush was screaming:
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, It’s
just a goddamned piece of paper!”
Grand Sen~or
So be it
You say 10s of thousands of deaths in Iraq: is this not precisely the kind of thinking that you are criticising? Iraq very nearly reached the bootom of the failed states index for a couple of years, and we should really include the barbarous sanctions regime which was obviously a tool of the US and the UK to keep their thumbs on Iraq--this brutal and foolish handling of Iraq didn't manifest out of nowhere with the arrival of the Bush team; as a realist you should realise this. No matter, even taking the relative mortality rates before and after the invasion, using the best available metrics (those routinely used elsewhere), it take a serious act of denial to not accept that 100s of thousands perished as a result of the 2003 invasion (see for example the MediaLens analysis). Perhaps we should all properly face what we have done. It might help us to approach foreign policy with a bit more humility.
We have forgotten
The issue is that we have forgotten. We have forgotten the nature of social contract and the need to hold government accountable. We have also forgotten the role of the press, to be free of political engagement in order to inform. Last, we have forgotten that some battles are not to be fought in the realm of public opinion but by the mechanisms of civil society and political institutions to keep from enflaming the public and having mobs settle what can be settled elsewhere. This dichotomization, with the media being used to inflame tensions and define and reinforce sides, is not good for our nation.
This is actually something I
This is actually something I remember a Canadian commentator pointing out a couple years back - that one of the reasons why he had gradually lost all respect for the United States was, in part, because of what he saw as the complete and utter evasion of all moral and political responsibility in the United States political leadership. It's not really surprising, in my opinion (ass-covering is as old as agrarian societies), but it has become noticeably easier to catch in an age of widespread print and audiovisual recording.
Good luck
Good luck preaching moral and political responsibility to a group of people who feel they acted appropriately and responsibly in the post-9/11 world. Moreover, they will point to what they see as the liberation of tens of millions of people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.
The thing is, we will never know what would have happened if the Administration had chosen containment as its strategy in Iraq and focused on the restoration of Afganistan and finding Bin Laden. It will be one of the great strategic "What Ifs" of this century.
Just As They "Liberated" Russian Jews
Neocons lied right from the start of their careers.
I once asked a former Soviet mathematician about discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union.
He laughed at me. He told me that there were approximately 200 in his division at the University of Moscow in the Soviet period.
Of the 98%, who were officially non-Jewish on Soviet identity papers, only he and another colleague actually had no known Jewish ancestry.
I subsequently verified the claim. The Refusenik movement was simply a scam that Neocons used to practice the manipulation of Congress. (See The Real Origins of the Neocons.)
Thank You
Outstanding post.
Thank you Mr. Walt. Hopefully the electoral process over the next few cycles will rid us of these self-serving, lying bums. As the media and the DC establishment get the message from the voters, things will change. It's like making a 45 degree turn in the Queen Mary; it takes a while.
Hopefully not too long though.
You think that Prof. Walt is
You think that Prof. Walt is turning Mother Theresa;->
Not with such a "state" at hand Mate;->
Grand Sen~or
whom to trust.
With such a "State" perhaps you would trust this (especially the axiom 13) to feel good again:->
Salvare Apparentias Theory of FP (SATFP).
1. There exist states.
2. A State composed of a nation, a national leadership, national interests and power (economic, military, population, land, etc? ..(any others? pls feel free to add, it is the Blog's theory, not mine).
3. There exists a competitive arena where states acts as they do.
4. There exists no central authority in that arena that can enforce moral or legal constraints.
5. States commit morally dubious acts (dubious according to what? The Blog knows) (see axiom 4)(Why this is here? Didn't the Blog declare that SATFP is essencially amoral?)
6. A State's foreign and defense policy reflects national interest of the state.
7. A State can take deterrent action against other State(s) if the Leadership of the State decides so. (see axiom 11 & 12).
8. A State seeks to increase her national interests when her existence is threatened.
9. A State's power is a potential threat to other states. A state is by definition paranoid of other states.
10. States to increase their National Interests, to decrease potential threat of other States, to assimilate them and to dominate them, impose their Constitutions to other States. (But of course this degenerates all constitutions to a mono-constitution which prepares the Competetive Arena to the favour of the State whose Constitution became the one and only dominant Constitution to pave the ground for so called Globalization - Global Dominance - Ein STAAT, ein LAND (the GLOBE), ein FUERER und ein VOLK where there exists NO THREATt, NO COMPETITIVE ARENA, NO WORRIES and bsst of all NO NEED TO FP - a Paradise on Earth if you believe;->>)
11. A State talks sweet but carries her power peeping under her cloak to deterre the potential threats of other states. (McCain the Presidential Candidate 2008)
12. Powerful States to rule or protect or increase their National Interests divide less powerful states ad infinitum.
13. A State can suspend her constitution if the National Intersts dictates so. Soley the Leadership decides whether the National Intersts dictates that or not and their decision is final, cannot be challenged based on the articles of the Constitution of the State. In such cases the leadership for the sake of the National Interests is not required to disclose the reasons how they reached to a certain decision. When the National Interest of the State requires the constitution of the State becomes just a goddamned piece of paper (as Bush declared - reported by DOUG THOMPSON on Dec 9, 2005, 07:53 ).
14. A State to keep her Internal Balance of Threat and National Interest and National Unity must centralize the power and not to share it with any Identifiable National Entity(ies).
15. A State keeps the power of making and implementing the laws solely to herself and does not share this power with any Identifiable National Entity(ies).
16. Salvare Apparentias Foreign Policy is the art of keeping the threats of states in Balance besides saving the foreign policy related phenomena. (How? By shuffling, dividing and mixing nations/races/cultures?!, subjecting them to prototype secularo-fascist laws to reduce their multiplicity to singularity? the Blog knows).
Grand Sen~or
Grand Sen~or: don't know who
Grand Sen~or: don't know who you are. Just FYI: your comments are long, boring, not coherent with the discussion, and in any case, TOO MANY!
Please, stop spamming all FPblogs with your SATFP stuff. Nobody comes here to know about your funny theory: We come here to read what Prof. Walt has to write and what some smart people can post as comments.
Grand Sen~or: don't know who
Oh yes you do, I am the Grand Sen~or who is identified with 50+ messages posted to this Blog. What else you would need to know about me?
It is good that you found the SATFP funny. But it is bad attendance that you think it is my theory;->
I tell you what, if my postings boring you why do you bother reading them? I clearly identify my messages from the beginning to end stamping my name. And as far as I know there is no qouta on posting messages here. Are you jealous of my postings;->>
You may also take me as the Joker of the Blog;->>
You don't know what is spamming. I have already posted here what it means and why my postings don't fall under this label. I won't repeat it, go search the Blog and Internet to learn what it means before you accuse me.
(Prof. Walt, you're welcome to delete this message and the one it is responded to as waste of space, it is not my style to report abuse but it is your blog to tidy it up if you wish;-)
Grand Sen~or
While the term neocon used to
While the term neocon used to have real meaning, its been so polluted by overuse and misuse that it no longer denotes anything at all; its now just a slur.
To be called a neocon, someone must belive, on some level, on using force to spread democracy/liberalism/values/
Do either Cheney or Rumsfeld meet that test? Every public statement, book, or memoir in which their words have featured indicate, to me, that they cared little for democracy in Iraq. Likewise for Doug Feith who in his work War and Decision detailed the Pentagon's strategy which was more about disrupting and deterring terrorists and enemy states by demonstrating the ease with which the US could defeat an enemy. (That strategy was a failure; but that's not the point here)
It seems to me that Rumsfeld and Cheney were the two high level Bush officials most responsible for the Iraq war. Neither should be considered a neocon. At the very least, I think the war would have occured even if the neocons didn't exist. More controversially, I think neocon ideas played only a secondary or tertiary motivator (via Wolfowitz and on Bush himself).
Friedmanite Neoliberals and Jabotinskian Neoconservatives
I discuss the enmeshment of Rumsfeld and Cheney in Jabotinskian Neoconservatism in this comment.
Cheney is a member of the advisory board of JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) and therefore right in the center of Neoconservative militarist thinking.
If I am not mistaken, the Special Night Squads of Mandatory Palestine occasionally justified targeted assassinations of Palestinians as part of democratizing the Palestinian population.
Zionist thinking (including that of Neoconservatism) has not really changed since the 20s and 30s.
Two party state?
@ Kyle L
You think that having two (marginally, very marginally) divergent political parties is the cause of this lack of accountability? So...having two identical parties (which they pretty much are on many issues - not Iraq perhaps but on a lot else) would be preferable? How could you have democratic accountability with two identical parties? Frankly, the differences that do exist now make a mockery of democracy. Wheres the real choice? A two party state where the two parties are 90% aligned is effectively 90% a one party state. That's the root of the lack of accountability.
Also, Perle et al. keep getting air time because many millions of Americans think that he and his cohorts were right (and still are). Simple as that. Sad as that...
Why don't I see the words "illegal war of agression" anywhere?
The truth about everything the US really did in Iraq may never come out. But there is no doubt that the US with its lapdog Britain committed exactly the same crime as Hitler did with his invasion of Poland. They started a war of agression, described by US Supreme Court Judge at Nuremburg as the 'supreme crime'.
Apart from that, the US and the UK were responsible for the genocidal UN sanctions which resulted in over half a million children dying. There is no doubt at all that Iraq has suffered a genocide at the hands of the US/UK.
Until Prof Walt starts accepting this fact and denouncing it he will also be classed as a liar and rightly so, a liar by omission.
Perle before swine
Professor Walt:
I favor your blunt choice of title, over the partial to total beating around the bush, namby-pamby locutions many other commentators employee e.g. "Pearle presents his alternative, but ultimately unpersuasive version of events" or "Karl Rove proposes a version of events putting Fannie and Freddie at the center, but ignores much of the evidence to the contrary". These guys arent stupid, but they are liars who hold much of the audience in contempt. I wish more people would risk their future stream of cocktail party invitations and speak as you have. [Although props to Le Duc Tho as well for his great line to Super K ""Let me speak to you frankly, open-heartedly and honestly: you are a liar."].
It's amazing how much more insightful Frank Rich is compared to career political journalists.
In re: David Brooks, in your above post, among those "keeping score" on the Iraq War, the non-mainstream Radar Magazine has a nice piece from some time back:
http://www.radaronline.com/features/2007/01/betting_on_iraq_1.php
BTW, do you consider Hillary Clinton a liar or do you believe she might be suffering from some clinical condition [with respect to some of her trivially demonstrable lies, such as the Bosnian Sniper episode].
Please, do America some Justice
Mr. Walt,
following your Israel Lobby is a meteoric rise to popularity - neither you nor Mearsheimer were known to anyone beyond our IR walls - and you're showing all of our students of IR, that one can be a realist, and a left-winger at the same time...also showing us, that Chomsky isn't the only academician-come pundit.
I think you don't do our political justice. Since you spent your life studying alliances, doesn't it take some kind of assumptiousness on your part - to proclaim as you do on issues of political science?
Why do you reduce the Iraq invasion to Neocons? There is no credible nor documentary proof of the kind of influence your kind ascribes to them. Yes, they were cheerleaders for the war - but that's post factum. They were first cheerleaders, hence they latter became neocons in the popular culture.
To credit these cheerleaders with the Iraq war , is to ignore entirely how our political system works.
We have something called the media. The intelligence community, and some journalists. Not everyone answers to secretaries in the DoD and the White House.
Where, mind you, were the 90 percent other participants in the Iraq war invasion - i.e. the journalists, the share owners of media corporations, the defence industy, the arabs?
Why is it, that in your account, the Saudi desire to eliminate Saddam is never mentioned? Why don't the DoD feature?
Listening to Pearl, I think I'd much prefer trusting him, than someone like you. At least he isn't pretending to know something, which he clearly has no way of knowing.
Monsieur Perle
Perle is also a dirty, rotten, multiple passport-carrying, arms-dealing, chateau-living conspiratorial skunk who would sell our democracy to an oriental potentate if he could.
Justice? Schmustice!
Whenever Walt and Mearsheimer, or the 2006 "Lobby" paper, are mentioned, the trolls come out of the woodwork, dipping into the tired, old arsenal:
- Can't argue the issue on merits? Then try hurling personal insults at your opponents. "Nobody heard of you before this, Walt!" This is the "Playground Tantrum Option".
- Deny the Lobby exists. Neocons? What Neocons? Hey... that they dominated key departments in the Bush Administration - particulary DoD and the Pentagon - as are, as well, influential megaphones in this country's Big Media (David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, anyone at Fox, etc.) - that means nothing. Up is down, night is day and black white. Better jot that down; there'll be a pop quiz later.
- Change history to suit your position: Yep! It was the Saudis. Up down... night day... (see above).
American neoconservatives - all of them committed Zionists - wanted to station an American army in the middle of the Middle East. With that, no Arab nation could hope to counter Israel's regional hegemony (no... not Israel's security). There were others along for the ride - including the "petro-strategists" and those chafing to turn our stagnating empire into one of activist intervention, not merely largesse and sponsorship for local enforcers (now... see, "Saudis").
But neocons and the Lobby were the active, inexhaustible brain trust and shoe-leather of this blood-soaked enterprise.
Richard Perle
I look forward to the day when the angry mobs coming looking for people like Richard Perle. Stephen Walt belongs in some president's cabinet. Too bad obama is just as beholden to the Lobby as his predecessor. if the presidential election were 6 months from now, we may have had ron paul sitting in the oval office. Walt would have been a fine Secretary of state. maybe someday. Times are changing -very rapidly. I think Americans are beginning to wake up.
Donkey will be the same
Donkey will be the same Donkey even if you keep changing the saddle;->
Grand Sen~or
Lobby?
I did not see a mention of the Israel Lobby? So, what is the predatory behavior?
I think he has a point. He said:
"The "people who wound up in important positions" were key neoconservatives like Douglas Feith, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and others, who had been openly calling for regime change in Iraq since the late 1990s and who used their positions in the Bush administration to make the case for war after 9/11, aided by a chorus of sympathetic pundits at places like the American Enterprise Institute, and the Weekly Standard. The neocons were hardly some secret cabal or conspiracy, as they were making their case loudly and in public, and no serious scholar claims that they "bamboozled" Bush and Cheney into a war. Rather, numerous accounts have documented that they had been openly pushing for war since 1998 and they continued to do so after 9/11. "
That does not mean there were NO other influences. It means that if there were not already a penchant among key policy makers, the war would have been unlikely to happen. Saudis wanted Saddam gone long ago, under other administrations given that the Iraqi dictator kept an open seat for a key Saudi oil province in his parliament. His designs were well known. So, the question is what changed to allow it to become part of American policy interests such that it was acted on. In that case, the neo-conservative disposition and preferred policy mechanisms are relevant and make them culpable. {addendum: And all of us too, as we elected them and they acted in our name.}
He also said:
" Perle is hardly the first policymaker to kick up dust about his record and he certainly won't be the last. The real cause for concern is that there are hardly any consequences for the critical role that Perle and the neoconservatives played for their pivotal role in causing one of the great foreign policy disasters in American history.....Let's face it: there is little or no accountability in Washington, where being wrong means never having to say you're sorry; indeed, you don't even have to admit responsibility for past mistakes, no matter how serious. It's just the American taxpayer who ends up footing the bill, along with the soldiers who fought and died for these blunders."
No where in here did he say this is only a Conservative or one sided issue,ie... the lack of accountability and relative dishonesty.
Walt seems to be re-iterating a well known problem. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," which is what political power is when it is left unchecked by some form of accountability.
fraud
Elie Wiesel vs Encyclopaedia Britannica:
Wiesel has been a prominent spokesman for the very sizeable group of people known as Holocaust survivors. [According to Norman Finkelstein of the City University of New York in his book The Holocaust Industry published in 2000, ‘The Israeli Prime Minister’s office recently put the number of "living Holocaust survivors" at nearly a million’ (p.83)]. Wiesel has chaired the US Holocaust Memorial Council and has been the recipient of a Congressional Gold Medal and Nobel Peace Prize.
Time Magazine, March 18 1985:
‘How had he survived two of the most notorious killing fields [Auschwitz and Buchenwald] of the century? "I will never know" he says. "I was always weak. I never ate. The slightest wind would turn me over. In Buchenwald they sent 10,000 to their deaths every day. I was always in the last hundred near the gate. They stopped. Why?"
Compare this with Encyclopaedia Britannica (1993), under ‘Buchenwald’:
"In World War II it held about 20,000 prisoners.. Although there were no gas chambers, hundreds perished monthly through disease, malnutrition, exhaustion, beatings and executions."
_______________________________
"A Terrible Fraud" :
Wiesel Ignores Palestinians
To the Jerusalem Post, Oct. 9, 1998 (as submitted).
(from Prof. Daniel McGowan, Professor of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY)
In your Oct. 9 article on Elie Wiesel, the American icon of Holocaust survivors, he is paid a special tribute as a "speaker of truth." This is the same Elie Wiesel who is continually referred to by Noam Chomsky and others as "a terrible fraud." What can explain such disparity of opinion?
Perhaps it is because Wiesel, who has written literally volumes Against Silence, remains silent when it comes to such issues involving Palestinians as land expropriation, torture and abrogation of basic human rights.
Perhaps it is because Elie Wiesel proclaims with great piety that "the opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference," while he remains totally indifferent to the inequality and suffering of the Palestinians. Perhaps it is because he enjoys recognition as "one of the first opponents of apartheid" in South Africa, while he remains totally silent and indifferent to the apartheid being practiced today in Israel.
Perhaps it is because he decries terrorism, yet never apologizes for the terrorism perpetrated by the Irgun at Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. He refuses even to comment on it. He dismisses this act of terrorism in eight short words in his memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea. He remembers the Jewish victims at Kielce, Poland (July 1946) with great anguish, but ignores twice as many Palestinian victims of his own employer at Deir Yassin. The irony is breathtaking.
It is even more shocking that the world's best known Holocaust survivor can repeatedly visit Yad Vashem and yet keep silent about the victims of Deir Yassin who lie within his sight 1,400 meters to the north. He bitterly protests when Jewish graves are defaced, but has nothing to say when the cemetery of Deir Yassin is bulldozed. He refuses even to acknowledge repeated requests that he join a group of Jews and non-Jews who wish to build a memorial at Deir Yassin.
Elie Wiesel may profess modesty and claim he is "not a symbol of anything" but, unfortunately, he has become a symbol of hypocrisy.
Daniel A. McGowan, Director, Deir Yassin Remembered, Geneva, NY
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0199/9901055.html