Is Richard Perle Really Fagan from Oliver Twist?

Two commentaries on Pat Buchanan's book Where the Right Went Wrong (which I haven't read) have called him anti-Semitic for comparing Richard Perle to Fagan in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. The first was in an editorial in the L.A. Times by Jacob Heilbrunn. The second was in a review of the book in the New York Times Book Review by Michael Kazin.

I hadn't read Oliver Twist in a long time, and Fagan is a very unflattering portrait of a Jew. But if there is anybody who deserves an unflattering portrait, it is Richard Perle.

Dickens describes Fagan as, "a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair." Later Bill Sikes says to Fagan, "What are you up to? Ill-treating the boys, you covetous, avaricious, in-sa-ti-a-ble old fence?... I wonder they don't murder you! I would if I was them. If'd been your 'prentice, I have done it long ago, and -- no I couldn't have sold you afterwards, for you're fit for nothing but keeping as a curiosity of ugliness in a glass bottle, and I suppose they don't blow glass bottles large enough."

So, let's hear what Richard Perle's benefactor had to say about him. Lord Conrad Black, the CEO of Hollinger International Inc., was the subject of a study by his company of his misdeeds during his reign. The Washington Post headline for its report of the Hollinger study was "Report Details 'Kleptocracy' at Newspaper Firm." The article went on to say, "A report by a special board committee singled out director Richard N. Perle, a former Defense Department official, who received $5.4 million in bonuses and compensation. The report said Perle should return the money to the Chicago company."

Even more damning is an article in MSNBC's Slate about Conrad Black's personal comments about Perle:

Unchastened by the [previous] losses, Perle started his own private equity firm, Trireme Partners, which he founded in 2001 along with Gerald Hillman, a fellow member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. Perle tried to hit up Hollinger for a $25 million commitment, with $2.5 million up front. Black resisted, in part because Black, a world-class chiseler himself, felt he was getting chiseled by Perle. On Feb. 1, 2002, Black wrote a memo questioning Perle's habit of submitting personal bills for reimbursement: "I have been consulted about your American Express account which has been sent to us for settlement. It varies from $1,000 to $6,000 per month and there is no substantiation of any of the items which include a great many restaurants, groceries and other matters."

In late 2002 and early 2003, negotiations between Black and Perle grew heated. Ultimately, Black seems to have concluded that $2.5 million was a small price to pay to get rid of Perle. In a Dec. 28, 2002, e-mail, he told colleagues the Trireme investment was, in the report's words, "a means to remove Perle from Digital's payroll."

And while the report documents how Black spent company cash on himself, he resented it when Perle did the same. The report, again: Black "told [Hollinger executive Peter] Atkinson in an e-mail dated [Dec. 29, 2002] that he was 'well aware of what a trimmer and a sharper Richard is at times.' " Black wrote about Trireme. "As I suspected, there is a good deal of nest-feathering being conducted by Richard which I don't object to other than that there was some attempt to disguise it behind a good deal of dissembling and obfuscation." (In Black's book, it was OK to feather your nest but not OK to lie about it.)

Black admired—in a grudging way—how Perle worked on him. Black explained in a Jan. 7, 2003, e-mail to a colleague: "I have been exposed to Richard's full repertoire of histrionics, cajolery, and utilization of fine print. He hasn't been disingenuous exactly, but I understand how he finessed the Russians out of deployed missiles in exchange for non-eventual-deployment of half the number of missiles of unproven design." After discussing compensation with Perle, he wrote: "My feeling is that we are finally dealing with Richard Perle of Reykjavik and the Zero Option, who realizes that mental agility must be applied to bringing us into the coalition and not straight-arming us like a bunch of NATO-ninny psuedo-allies."

In the end, Hollinger did invest $2.5 million in February 2003 in Trireme Partners. True to its name, Perle's venture firm has set about to try to ream its partners. According to the Breeden report, Hollinger's $2.5 million investment in the fund is worth only $1.5 million—a loss of 40 percent in one year.

Lord Black is no anti-Semite; he owned the Jerusalem Post and put Perle on its editorial board. While Richard Perle may not have red hair, according to Lord Black he was "covetous" and "avaricious." He is certainly close enough to a Fagan to warrant Pat Buchanan's comparison.

Marine General Opposed Fallouja Attack

In fairness to the Marines regarding my previous posting, the Marine general in charge of Fallouja says he opposed the original Marine attack, in which the Marines were defeated. The description by Marine General Conway in the L.A. Times of what happened in Fallouja, after the killing of American private security guards and the desecration of their corpses, tracks with what I thought probably happened. The draft dodgers in Washington gave the Marines the order to attack Fallouja, and then when the fighting got tough and Arabs around the world began to protest the deaths, the draft dodgers told the Marines to stop fighting, making them take the rap as cowards, when in fact the cowards were in Washington, or at least in the safety of the Green Zone in Baghdad.

First, the Marines did not refuse to fight when told to do so, and secondly, they were not the ones who decided to run from the fight when the fighting got tough. To me the key quotation in the L.A. Times article from the general is this: "I would simply say that when you order elements of a Marine division to attack a city, that you really need to understand what the consequences are, and not perhaps vacillate in the middle of something like that," Conway said. "Once you commit, you've got to stay committed."

What about Bush's promises to stay the course, challenging the forces fighting the US in Iraq (whoever they are) to "bring it on." They brought it on, and we ran like cowards. But the Marines were not the cowards.

Why Do Republicans Hate Veterans, Especially Marines?

Apparently the Swift Boat Veterans have another commercial out. As a Vietnam veteran, I have had enough attacks on my patriotism. I don't like Kerry because he attacked veterans in the 1970s, but now I don't like Bush because he is attacking veterans vehemently today. An attack on Kerry because he is a veteran is an attack on all veterans. Claiming that it is an attack on him because of how he got his medals or what he did during some particular 15 minutes in country does not make it any less an attack on him because he is a veteran. Veterans deserve support from their country. I pity the poor soldiers in Iraq who have to come back as veterans reviled by Bush.

In particular, I pity the Marines, whose courage has been called into question by their tours in Iraq. The Marines were the main troops in Fallouja and Najaf, where the US ran into serious resistance and chickened out. It makes the Marines look like cowards, but I doubt that they are. The decision to retreat was probably made by somebody else, but, nevertheless, the Marine Corps' valor is called into question by their conduct in Iraq. An article in the L.A. Times says the whole Marine approach to Fallouja has turned out to be a "fiasco," quoting a Marine colonel. The article says that the Iraqi force that replaced the Marines was created "to avoid a bloodbath," which of course I don't wish on the Marines, but it looks like when they were faced with a bloody battle, the Marines chickened out. The Marines should not allow themselves to appear as cowards because of decisions made by others, who are probably civilian policy makers who have never seen combat and probably avoided service in Vietnam like Bush and Cheney, if they were old enough to face that prospect.

Although the Marines in the field may not be to blame, their senior commanders in Washington certainly are for knuckling under to their cowardly political overseers. The current Marine Corps commandant should resign. The only senior military commander who displayed the courage to stand up to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and company was former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, who was viciously attacked by them for standing up for his troops.

Why Do Some Christians Put Israel's Interests Ahead of America's?

Following up on the previous posting, I don't understand the position of many fundamentalist Christians who believe that Israel's future is more important than America's. One of these is apparently House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

According to his own Congressional website, "DeLay has increasingly taken a leadership role in foreign affairs through his work to expand freedom and his articulation of democratic principles. He was a forceful advocate of President Bush's decision to confront Saddam Hussein's aggression and received the Friend of Israel award this April from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews."

According to MSNBC, during the Republican Convention, DeLay staked "the Republican appeal to Jews on Bush’s removal of Saddam Hussein, his commitment to Israel and his ongoing crusade against Islamic fanatics. 'My friends, there is no Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There is only the global war on terrorism,' DeLay told the crowd at the Plaza Hotel Monday." The report continued, "'If Israel falls to the terrorists, the entire free world will tremble. To forsake Israel now would be tantamount to forsaking Great Britain in 1940,' DeLay declared Monday. 'It is unthinkable, and it is unthinkable because the world wants to know if we believe freedom is worth fighting for.'"

As a Christian, I don't see why the the US should tie itself so tightly to a country that is based on non-Christian ideas. Certainly Christianity includes a lot of Jewish ideas, e.g., the Ten Commandments, but it also goes beyond these ideas, e.g., Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Why do fundamentalist Christian Americans reject Jesus' teachings, like the Sermon on the Mount? I don't get it. These uniquely Christian ideas go to the heart of what America is about, or used to be about. Maybe that's why torture upsets me, but not the majority of Americans, who seem to have forsaken Christianity for Judaism, with its eye-for-an-eye morality, unlike the Christian turn-the-other-cheek morality.