US hawks now take on Condi

Neocons, State Dept. also differ on Turkey
Sunday, July 2, 2006

ÜMİT ENGİNSOY
WASHINGTON - Turkish Daily News

During U.S. President George W. Bush's first term, the neoconservatives, a group of officials and thinkers whom critics define as interventionist with hawkish views on foreign policy, viewed then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, a top Bush confidante, as a useful ally on the way to what they saw as Iraq's liberation.
Several years later Richard Perle, a former Pentagon official and a legendary neoconservative figure, on behalf of many of his fellow hawks, blasts Rice, now secretary of state, for appeasing Iran and misleading the president on the nuclear standoff with the Islamic Republic.
Perle's landmark article that appeared in The Washington Post last Sunday read, “Why Did Bush Blink on Iran? (Ask Condi).”
“Condoleezza Rice has moved from the White House to Foggy Bottom [the State Department], a mere mile or so away. What matters is not that she is further removed from the Oval Office; Rice's influence on the president is undiminished,” Perle said. “It is, rather, that she is now in the midst of -- and increasingly represents -- a diplomatic establishment that is driven to accommodate its allies even when (or, it seems, especially when) such allies counsel the appeasement of our adversaries.”
Perle took direct aim at a package of incentives and warnings the Bush administration and its European allies have offered Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give up nuclear aspirations.
That policy, Perle said, “is likely to diminish pressure on Iran and allow the mullahs more time to develop the weapons they have paid dearly to pursue.”
Perle warned the president that he fails to recognize “the perils of the course he has been persuaded to take,” by Condi.
The bottom line of Perle's criticism is that Rice exerts too much influence over the president, to the benefit of the Iranian regime.

Soviet lessons and Iran:
Perle is an extremely influential figure and an intellectual inspiration for many neoconservatives. In the 1980s he was an assistant secretary of defense in former President Ronald Reagan's administration and was known for his extremely hard-line position against the former Soviet Union. Then for 17 years he was a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, which works directly with the defense secretary. Perle's strong dislike for diplomats and the State Department also dates back to the Cold War.
“Twenty years ago,” Perle wrote in his Washington Post opinion piece, “I watched U.S. diplomats conspire with their diffident European counterparts to discourage President Reagan from a political, economic and moral assault on the Soviet Union ...”
Perle and his followers emphasize that it was Reagan's hard-line policies that brought an end to the Soviet Union. They also believe Iraq's invasion was the right decision despite tactical mistakes made since then. But many others view Perle as a chief architect of “today's mess in Iraq.”
Perle also is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington's top neoconservative think tank. His colleagues there agree with him on his criticism of Rice and the State Department.
His views are very close to those of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to some analysts. Perle has close friends in Cheney's office, including the vice president's National Security Adviser John Hannah, Chief of Staff David Addington, Elliott Abrams, David Wurmser and others, all neoconservative hawks, particularly on Iran.
Perle also has allies at Rice's State Department, including John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Robert Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control.
“The important thing is Perle's views on Rice and the State Department also are shared by Cheney, who prefers to remain quiet for now,” said one Washington analyst with good insider information on the Bush team. “Cheney, Perle and other hawks are waiting for two things: the collapse of nuclear talks with Iran and congressional elections in November. If their expectations come true and the Iranian talks fail once and for all, the neoconservatives will raise their voice in support of air attacks against Iranian facilities, and they will blame Rice.”

Turkey woes:
Many neoconservative figures and the State Department also are divided over how they view Turkey.
Although Perle mostly has refrained from vocal public criticism of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), many close to him do so.
At a June 23 panel discussion at the Hudson Institute, another neoconservative stronghold think tank in Washington, Frank Gaffney Jr., a former Perle protégé at the Pentagon and president of the Center for Security Policy, yet another neoconservative think tank, accused Erdoğan and the AKP of seeking to destroy Turkey's secular system and replace it with an Islamic regime.
Michael Rubin, Perle's colleague at the American Enterprise Institute and another former Pentagon official, also is known for his severe criticism of Erdoğan and of some AKP officials' financial dealings.
But the State Department, although many of its officials probably are not greatly fond of the AKP, either, has a much more accommodating position for the AKP government.
“The State Department wants to have good relations with Turkey and the Turkish government,” said another Washington-based analyst.
Some in Washington believe moderate Islam's success in Turkey would be a positive development for the Middle East. But neoconservative hawks long have abandoned such views.
“Many in Europe and some in the United States believe that political Islam is exhibiting its most benign characteristics in Turkey and that it should be supported,” Gaffney said at Hudson. “But evidence shows the Erdoğan movement is not benign but creeping ‘Islamofascism'.” He said the Bush administration -- read the State Department -- was involved in “wishful thinking” when dealing with the AKP government.