Richard Perle gazed off into the distance, looking as profound as the seated Abraham Lincoln in the background. The message wrought by the image was clear: Sometimes a true statesman has to do things that are unpopular and difficult in the greater interest of the Republic. Like invading a sovereign country on questionable grounds. Like taking the heat when things go wrong. “You,” said a woman on the capitol mall, looking Perle in the eye, “are a weapon of mass destruction.”
The scenes were from the excellent PBS documentary, “America at a Crossroads.” The horrific pictures of carnage in other episodes had to be balanced, the producers felt, by an hour given to “the case for war.” So Perle was out front; give him that. He could have begged off, staying in the shadows like his neocon ally Douglas Feith. But there he was, squaring off with Pat Buchanan, who called the Iraq invasion “the greatest foreign policy blunder in U.S. history” and with Richard Holbrook and other foreign policy gurus, most of them severely critical of the war. The most articulate and persuasive of these was Simon Jenkins, an ex-editor of the London Times, who reminded Perle that the Soviet Union, with 300,000 troops, was unable to pacify Afghanistan. That was different, said Perle, because the Afghans didn’t like the Soviets. Oh.
Later, interviewed by Charlie Rose, Perle waved off his role as the architect of the Iraq War. Yes, he had long advocated regime change in Iraq, he said, but if he had been running things, the U.S. would have turned everything over to the Iraqis the day after Saddam was ousted. “Did you argue that position at the time?” asked Rose. Perle said he had, forcefully. At that point, one imagines, Rumsfeld, Rice, Bremer, Franks, and Powell all started throwing things at their TV sets.
Perle, like President Bush, insists that victory is attainable in Iraq. He now wants regime change in Iran just as ardently as he wanted it in Iraq, though he says he is not advocating sending the marines into Iran. (Here Charlie Rose did not ask the obvious follow-up: Why not? If a pseudo threat like Iraq justified sending in the marines, shouldn’t a real threat like Iran justify an invasion? Has Perle, despite his bravado, learned a lesson?)
Being a neocon means never having to say you’re sorry. Richard Perle sees himself as the essential patriot, with no patience for those who want to cut and run with the first casualties. He claims moral kinship with Abraham Lincoln and especially with Ronald Reagan. He is sure that he was and is right. Even if not a single other country on the face of the earth agreed with us, he says, it was right to invade Iraq.
The big three neocon hawks – Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith – are no longer in the offices they occupied when they pressed for war. Paul Wolfowitz, for his role in rationalizing the invasion, was rewarded with the presidency of the World Bank, where he is dogged by his reputation and by ethical missteps involving his girlfriend. Wolfowitz has apologized for botching the girlfriend matter, but to those who attack him for the baggage he carries, he says, “That was my old job. I’m not in my old job anymore.” But some observers, noting that the World Bank stopped funding Uzbekistan soon after that country closed a U.S. airbase in its territory, wonder whether he ever left his old job.
Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith are all survivors. The pro-war movement is strong in this country. The President will defend them, no matter what. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page idolizes them. All three are passionate advocates for Israel, and that brings more political clout. Someday they will retire comfortably and write memoirs, swapping dust-jacket blurbs with each other.
Meanwhile, they buzz around the world, meeting kings and emirs and presidents and doing their best to intimidate them, because, as Perle says, “there’s got to be some advantage in being a superpower.” The advantage includes money, which follows power. Perle was an investor in a venture capital group (Trireme Partners) specializing in defense investments, a consultant to Global Crossing, a Director of Hollinger International. Controversies swirled around all these connections, but no one laid a glove on Perle. He, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith are essentially untouchable men.
Historians 20 or 30 years from now will render their verdicts on the influence of the neocons on the course of human events. If their vision of a mid-east swept by democracy, free markets, and human rights comes to pass, they will be properly credited (along with President Bush, of course) with lighting the spark. If it does not, they will have left in their wake hundreds of thousands of wasted lives and incalculable damage to the country they served.
