Author:
MATTHEW WENSLEY per jfh
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Date Posted: 13:40:50 03/24/03 Mon
Author Host/IP: d150-99-156.home.cgocable.net/24.150.99.156
FRONT PAGE - FIRST SECTION: Ideologues reshape world over breakfast
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Financial Times; Mar 22, 2003
Billed as a "black coffee briefing on the war on Iraq", yesterday's
breakfast for the influential hawks of the American Enterprise Institute
was more of a victory celebration.
With a few words of caution - that the war to oust Saddam Hussein was
not
yet over - the panel of speakers, part of the Bush administration's
ideological vanguard, set out their bold vision of the postwar agenda:
radical reform of the UN, regime change in Iran and Syria, and
"containment" of France and Germany.
The failure of the first Bush administration to finish the job in 1991,
according to William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, the US
magazine, had resulted in "a lack of awe for the US" in the Middle East,
an absence of respect that fostered contempt of the US among Arabs and
encouraged the rise of the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.
This war would redress those mistakes, Mr Kristol declared, opening up
the prospect for real democratic change in the region.
The war was going well, said Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's
Defence Advisory Board. There were more anti-war demonstrators in San
Francisco than Iraqis willing to defend their leader. The "coalition of
the willing" was growing.
The fall of Mr Hussein would be an "inspiration" for Iranians seeking to
be free of their dictatorial mullahs, Mr Perle said.
While not speaking for the administration, such voices reflect the views
of the hawkish faction in the government - including Dick Cheney, vice-
president, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz, his
deputy - now in the ascendancy.
Michael Ledeen, a former Reagan administration official and author of
The
War Against the Terror Masters, said this conflict was part of a "longer
war" and such terrorist-sponsors as Iran and Syria knew that. France and
Germany insisted on "shoring up tyrannical regimes". Anti-war
demonstrators had reached "new lows of disgustingness".
Mr Kristol said the US should distinguish between France and Germany.
Splitting Germany away would be "intelligent American diplomacy - maybe
too much to hope for from the state department".
"Americans are not vindictive," Mr Perle asserted. Mr Ledeen said, in
the
context of France, that he hoped they were.
Mr Kristol said that the UN did not matter much. Mr Perle suggested that
as a security institution "its time has passed" though it might still be
of some use in health matters and peacekeeping.
Find this article at:
http://search.ft.com/search/article.h
tml?id=030322001128&query=American+En
terprise+Institute&vsc_appId=totalSearch&state=Form
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