Richard Perle's Ineffectiveness

While the WSJ on Wednesday was publishing the op-ed bashing Amb. Chas Freeman for not being Jewish, another columnist was ridiculing Richard Perle in the WSJ for an article in The National Interest claiming that the neo-cons had no influence on George Bush. Thomas Frank says Perle claims he cannot be "held responsible for the Bush administration's failures." Perle has had few rivals within the US government as a Jew who was one of the most hawkish defenders of Israel. Perle's article and his defense of it prompted the Washington Post headline, "Prince of Darkness Denies Own Existence." It's remarkable that men who were so powerful in George Bush's and previous administrations are now so thoroughly discredited. William Kristol, who was VP Dan Quayle's chief of staff, but who has now lost his column at the NYT, shares this distinction with Perle.

Richard Perle was at the pinnacle of power when he was Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan, where he and his minions were my nemeses, pursuing some kind of America-only foreign policy that abhorred any kind of treaty. There is a lot of schadenfreude felt here. Poor Richard! May you endure many more days of ridicule!

Russia, Neo-Cons and Jews

Chrystia Freeland writes in the Financial Times today that Russia needs the neo-cons, because it needs someone to help fight for its liberty, but that the neo-cons have been reigned in by their failures in Iraq. Then she goes on to say, "Most damaging [in Russia] was the creation of the oligarchs - an act based partly on an extreme, Chicago-school-inspired faith in the power of private ownership, no matter who the owner was or how the property was acquired." What she doesn't say is that most of the neo-cons were Jews, and that most of the Russian oligarchs were Jews. Furthermore, many of the neo-cons came out of the University of Chicago, where they studied politics under Leo Strauss, rather than economics under Milton Friedman. I think it's a good thing for the US and Russia that the neo-cons' wings have been clipped. Democracy is in much better shape in Europe than in America, where George Bush is following some sort of Stalinist model embracing torture, restrictions on civil liberties, and other un-American attacks on the Constitution; let Europe help the Russians.