[Peace-discuss] Neo-conned again

[C. G. Estabrook]

[1] FROM WSJ, JULY 22, 2010:

...Gen. Petraeus has called on some of the outside advisers who helped him 
develop the surge strategy in Iraq to make recommendations on a renewed campaign 
in Afghanistan, according to military officials.

Those advisers include Stephen Biddle, a national-security expert at the Council 
on Foreign Relations, and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute 
in Washington, and Kimberly Kagan, who heads the Institute for the Study of War 
in Washington...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954804575381223866697214.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories


[2] FROM PHILIP GERALDI, AUGUST 3, 2009:

...What is most curious about the McChrystal solution, which threatens to 
involve the US in Central Asia until 2020, is how the decision was made to add 
more soldiers. In true Washington fashion, McChrystal convened a sixty day 
review to look at the problem. Some members of the commission like Anthony 
Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Stephen Biddle 
of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Andrew Exum of the Center for a New 
American Security are highly respectable independent thinkers, but some of the 
other choices are the same people who advised George Bush, drawn from places 
like The American Enterprise Institute. It is important to note that the 
advisory group was selected to reflect a certain diversity of opinion in 
tactical terms, but no one was selected to represent an alternative viewpoint, 
i.e. that the US should leave Afghanistan as soon as possible. It was a group 
designed to say "yes." Not a single board member was opposed to the Iraq War 
before it began, has spoken out publicly against plans to fight Iran, or has 
recommended that withdrawal from Afghanistan might be in the US national 
interest. Not one. So what kind of result did McChrystal expect? The result he 
got, which is to increase troop levels and deepen America’s commitment to a war 
that is likely being lost.

Two of the commission members are particularly odd choices, the ubiquitous 
Kagans, husband Fred and wife Kimberly. Fred is a fellow at the neoconservative 
American Enterprise Institute who claims to have been a co-creator of the surge 
policy that was applied in Iraq. His wife Kimberly is a classic neocon 
entrepreneur who relied on nepotism to work her way through the system. She 
studied ancient history at Yale under Donald Kagan and then married his son who 
later claimed to be the co-author of the "surge." She is now billed as a 
"military expert" by the neocon media, and apparently also by General 
McChrystal, in spite of her lack of any actual military experience. For the 
neocon "Weekly Standard" she wrote a hagiography of the plodding General Raymond 
Odierno called "The Patton of Counterinsurgency" which might well be considered 
a comedy piece but for the fact that it was serious. She writes mostly about the 
Middle East, but does not appear to have working knowledge of either Farsi or 
Arabic like many of the other so-called experts, and is president of the 
curiously named Institute for the Study of War...

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=155