Richard Melson
January 2005
Juan Cole
Informed Comment
Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is Professor of History
at the University of Michigan
http://www.juancole.com/
jricole@yahoo.com
Friday, January 28, 2005
Feith Resigns Under Pressure of Investigations
Douglas
Feith, the number three man at the Pentagon who went there from the pro-Likud Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Project
for a New American Century, will leave the Pentagon as of this summer. Feith's office is the
subject of an FBI investigation as well as two Congressional investigations, one by
the Senate Intelligence Committee. Feith helped set up an Office of
Special Plans in the Near East and South Asia desk of the Pentagon to cherry-pick Iraq
intelligence and create a case for Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and having
operational links with al-Qaeda. At one point, contrary to Federal law, Feith's people
actually briefed officials in the Executive on
intelligence. Feith sent David Wurmser from
the Office of Special Plans, once its work was well under way, over to the staff of Vice
President Dick Cheney, so that he could stove pipe OSP analyses into the VP's office and
thence directly to the president, doing an end run around the CIA and the State Department
Intelligence and Research division.
Having a Likudnik as the number three man in the Pentagon is a nightmare for American
national security, since Feith could never be trusted to put US interests over those of
Ariel Sharon. In the build-up to the Iraq War, Feith had a phalanx of Israeli generals
visiting him in the Pentagon and ignored post-9/11 requirements that they sign in. Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was a vocal advocate of a US war
against Iraq, who "put pressure" on Washington about it. (If Sharon wanted a
war against Iraq, why didn't he fight it himself instead of pushing it off on American
boys?)
Feith has been questioned by the FBI in relation to the passing by one of his employees of
confidential Pentagon documents to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which in
turn passed them to the Israeli embassy. The Senate Intelligence Committee is also
investigating Feith. There seems little doubt that he operated in the Pentagon in such a
way as to produce false and misleading "intelligence," that he created an
entirely false impression of Iraqi weapons capabilities and ties to al-Qaeda, and that he
is among the chief facilitators of the US war in Iraq.
Feith is clearly resigning ahead of the possible breaking of major scandals concerning his
tenure at the Department of Defense, which is among the more disgraceful cases of the
misleading of the American people in American history.
There are several downsides to Feith's departure, as welcome as it is for anyone who cares
about US security in particular. The first is that now we probably have to see him forever
on cable news channels as one of those dreary neocon talking heads flogged by the American
Enterprise Institute, a far rightwing "think tank" funded by cranky rich people
to obscure the truth. Another is that his departure now may help keep Bush from being
blamed for his shady dealings in intelligence "analysis."
It is important to note that what is objectionable about Feith is a) his playing fast and
loose with the truth, producing poor intelligence analysis that has been shown to be
completely false and b) his doing so on behalf of not only American nationalist
aspirations but also on behalf of a non-American political party, the Likud coalition of
Israel, which desired to destroy the Oslo peace process initiated by Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin (and which was therefore on the same side of this issue as the fanatic who
assassinated Rabin). There is no objection to Americans having multiple identities or love
for more than one country. Someone of Serbian heritage would make a perfectly good
Pentagon administrator. But you wouldn't want a vehement supporter of Slobodon Milosevic
as the number three man in the Pentagon. It is ideological dual loyalty that is dangerous.
Mere sentiment based on multiple ethnic identities is not dual loyalty, and hyphenated
Americans mostly have other countries they wish well (and rightly so).
It is also important to underline that only a small minority of American Jews support the
Likud Party or its policies, and that a majority of Jewish Americans opposed the Iraq war.
In short, the problematic nature of Feith's tenure at the Department of Defense must not
be made an excuse for any kind of bigotry.
posted by Juan @
1/28/2005
06:29:58 AM