Is Condi One of the Good Guys?

This article in the NYT gives the impression that Condi Rice and SecDef Rumsfeld were not able to work together, but maybe she and Defense nominee Bob Gates can. I think that's a false interpretation of history, although one that Condi would certainly like. As National Security Adviser she almost always took Rumsfeld's side against SecState Colin Powell. Now that she is all dovey at State, she would like everyone to think that she has always been one. But she was a vicious hawk at the NSC. Iraq is her baby as much as Rumsfeld's.

I'm pleased she has had a change of heart, but I worry that it's not genuine. She can tell which way the wind is blowing, and she's going along with it. When a little wisdom and backbone would have been important, two or three years ago, she didn't have it. It would be interesting to know what role she played in stabbing Rummy in the back. She certainly has turned out to be the survivor of the various Vulcans (named for her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama) in the administration. It's not because of how well she ran the foreign and defense policy of the US at the NSC, but rather how well she played the game of bureaucratic infighting. She has the blood of more than 100,000 dead Iraqis on her hands, not to mention that of more than 2,000 US troops.

Jews Not Monolithic

Because of my concern about Jews role in instigating the Iraq war, I may have been too hard on Jews in general. My main concern is for Republican Jews, e.g., William Kristol, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz. I worry that they are more loyal to Israel than to the US. They think they are loyal to the US, because they think that Israel's interests and America's interests are identical, but I don't think they are.

Democratic Jews, Robert Rubin, George Soros, for example, have been a force for good. So, maybe it's more important whether they are Democrats or Republicans, rather than whether they are Jews or Gentiles. Rubin did a good job as Treasury Secretary under Clinton. I expect that Henry Paulson, a Gentile, will also do a good job, but he takes over after a poor job by Snow, and in the face of poor economic policies, e.g., huge deficits and unwarranted tax cuts for the very rich, carried out for years by this administration.

Rumsfeld Defender Is Prominent Jew

The PBS Newshour had a discussion of Rumsfeld's tenure as Defense Secretary on Thursday night. The two discussants were Dov Zakheim and Lawrence Korb. Dov Zakheim, who was comptroller of the Pentagon, is also a Jewish rabbi. Interestingly, when you search for Rabbi Zakheim on Yahoo or Google, links come up to his Wikipedia entry, so that at some time the entry contained the word "rabbi," but when you look at the entry now, it no longer contains the word. So, somebody has taken "rabbi" out. But Aljazeera and some other web sites devoted to worrying about Jews in government, like me I suppose, also have it. According to the latter web site, he is a dual Israeli-American citizen; so, how did he get the security clearances necessary to work at such a high level in the Pentagon?

Anyway, my point is that the Rumsfeld Pentagon has been so dominated by Jews that the best person PBS could find to defend him was Zakheim, an Israeli rabbi. Couldn't they find a Protestant American to defend him, since Rumsfeld is, as far as I know, a Protestant American? I am concerned that Rumsfeld just turned the Pentagon over to Israeli interests (Perle, Wolfowitz and company), who started the war in Iraq to help secure Israel and sent a bunch of Christian soldiers to fight it. Now that it may have actually decreased Israeli security, Perle, Adelman and company are distancing themselves from the war in the upcoming Vanity Fair.

MTCR White Paper

This is a background paper on the MTCR, which interests me since I used to work on the MTCR, and was one of the creators of it (maybe in the same sense that Al Gore created the Internet). Anyway, when you go back to the 1980s and the early 90s, I was there, for better or worse. It would have been a better agreement if not for the opposition of Richard Perle's offices. But since it is about the only non-proliferation agreement around covering missiles, it's still in use.