
 |
|
June 19, 2013
June 12, 2013
Stephanie Hanes: Little girls or little women? The Disney princess effect
Fred Weir: In tweak to US, Russia would 'consider' asylum for Snowden
June 10, 2013
The Kosher Gourmet by Anjali Prasertong: A tart filling so good it might not make it to the crust
June 5, 2013
John Rosemond: Mom, Dad: Talk More and listen less
Kristen Chick: Egypt court sentences 43 pro-democracy workers to prison
June 3, 2013
Molly Hennessy-Fiske: Military judge to consider letting Fort Hood shooting defendant represent himself
May 29, 2013
Andrew Connelly and Helene Bienvenu: The Little Synagogue that Refused to Die
May 24, 2013
Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb: When I didn't so 'humbly disagree'
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
|
| |
Jewish World Review
May 14, 2008
/ 9 Iyar 5768
Academic pariahs
By
Jack Kelly
| >
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Little better illustrates the sorry state of academia today than the fact that
William Ayres is a respected figure, but Douglas Feith is a pariah.
William Ayres is a professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He
is also an unrepentant domestic terrorist associated with the Weatherman group,
which was responsible for bombings, robberies and murders in the early 1970s.
In an interview with the New York Times published, ironically, on Sept. 11, 2001,
Mr. Ayres said he regretted not setting more bombs. Also that year, he stomped on
the American flag for a photo published in Chicago magazine.
About the time Mr. Ayres was wiping his feet on the Stars and Stripes, Mr. Feith
became the Undersecretary for Policy in the Defense Department. After leaving DoD
in 2005, he became a visiting professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign
Service.
Georgetown announced in April that it will not renew Mr. Feith's contract, despite
the fact that the evaluations his students gave him were "nothing short of
exemplary," according Robert Galluci, dean of the School of Foreign Service.
Many on the Georgetown faculty opposed Mr. Feith's hiring because of his role in
planning the Iraq war. One of those wasn't Mr. Galluci, a top diplomat in the
Clinton administration, who wrote a dust jacket blurb for Mr. Feith's new book, "War
and Decision."
| BUY THE BOOK … |
| 
at a discount by clicking HERE.
|
|
The memoirs of public officials tend to consist mostly of buttocks covering and
score settling, like the books by former CIA Director George Tenet, former CENTCOM
commander Gen. Tommy Franks, and Ambassador Paul Bremer, former head of the
Coalition Provisional Authority.
Mr. Feith's memoir contains very little rancor, which is remarkable, considering
what others including the three worthies mentioned above have had to say about
him.
To an extraordinary degree for books of this type, he admits errors by himself and
by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who chose him for the Pentagon's
number three job.
Most important, Mr. Feith provides an immense amount of documentation to support the
points he gently makes. There are 140 pages of notes in "War and Decision," and Mr.
Feith has posted on his Web site links to all the documents which he cites.
Professor Daniel Byman, director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at
Georgetown, joked that his Web site will strike fear into the hearts of professors
across America, because it makes it so easy to check footnotes. Mr. Feith is out to
set the record straight, not to settle scores.
That he does so effectively may explain why the Washington Post has yet to review
his book, though he is the most senior Defense department official to write about
the march to war. Books by, among others, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward
(State of Denial) and Tom Ricks (Fiasco), based in large part on self serving leaks
from opponents of administration policy, asserted that "neocons" within the
Department of Defense politicized intelligence to build a case for war to impose
democracy on Iraq.
It will come as a surprise to readers of those books to learn the most comprehensive
warning of the things that could go wrong in Iraq came not from the State Department
or the CIA, but from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and that it was the State
Department, not DoD, which favored a U.S. occupation of Iraq rather than a quick
transfer of power to Iraqis.
"The press wrote the first draft of the Bush administration and the War on Terror,
but Feith's book relegates it to the recycling bin," wrote former Pentagon official
Lawrence Di Rita.
The great failure was not the politicization of intelligence, but the absence of it,
Mr. Feith makes clear. The CIA had little information on Iraq and concealed its lack
of sources from policymakers.
The CIA's most publicized failure was its insistence that Saddam Hussein had
stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But the CIA also predicted there would
be mass defections from the Iraqi army when the U.S. invaded (there weren't); that
the army would remain intact at war's end (it didn't), and that Iraqis would not
accept political leadership from exiles (they did). The CIA also had no clue Saddam
had laid plans for an insurgency.
People who are interested in the facts about the march to war will give Mr. Feith's
book a careful read. Those who prefer to cling to a discredited narrative will,
like the Georgetown faculty, stick their fingers in their ears and chant "nyah, nyah
nyah."
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a
deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan
administration. Comment by clicking here.
Jack Kelly Archives
© 2008, Jack Kelly
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Peter Funt
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
John Kass
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Michael Reagan
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Cathy Young
Mort Zuckerman

Eric Allie
Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Nate Beeler
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
Daryl Cagle
Patrick Chappatte
John Cole
Paul Combs
J. D. Crowe
John Darkow
Bill Day
John Deering
Sean Delonas
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Randall Enos
Mallard Fillmore
David Fitzsimmons
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Mike Keefe
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Gary McCoy
Rick McKee
Jack Ohman
Jeff Parker
Milt Priggee
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Steve Sack
Bill Schorr
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
David Ray Skinner
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Christopher Weyant
Larry Wright
Dan Wasserman
Adam Zyglis

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|