Feith Finds a Home

After Georgetown University decided against renewing his contract, a brief stay as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and his efforts to get a post at the Brookings Institution came to naught, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have found a new home at the Hudson Institute, another predominantly neo-conservative “think tank” that tends to lie in the shadow of the much more media-prominent American Enterprise Institute (AEI). According to Hudson’s latest “News & Review,” Feith, whose self-serving memoir, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism pretty much bombed with the few credible critics who reviewed it, will be the Institute’s Director for National Security Strategies.

Hudson, of course, was the first refuge of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby after his 2005 indictment for perjury, but he apparently left after his conviction (and despite Bush’s commutation), and I’ve completely lost track of him now. (Does anyone know what he’s doing?)

Feith will join other leading Likudist lights at Hudson, including Meyrav Wurmser (wife of former Cheney aide David Wurmser), who heads the Institute’s Middle East Studies department; Hillel Fradkin; Laurent Murawiec; Anne Bayefsky; Norman Podhoretz (not in residence); and Nina Shea, among others. It’s interesting to note that the two Wurmsers, as well as Feith and another Hudson Senior Fellow, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., made up half of the eight members of the task force sponsored by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (IASPS) that produced the 1996 “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” paper for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that many analysts believe helped plant the seed for the Iraq invasion eight years later. (That alone suggests how dangerous it might be to put Feith in charge of developing any kinds of “strategies,” as Hudson seems to have done.) The other task force members included IASPS’s highly eccentric (check its website) president, Robert Loewenberg, James Colbert, then-Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) researcher Jonathan Torop; and the nominal chairman, Richard Perle, from whom not much has been heard lately — another sign that, with the exception of Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and the Kagan boys, neo-cons have been lying rather low during the election campaign.

Feith’s former boss, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, has also not been heard from recently, which in many ways is very strange, given that his last public post was president of the World Bank and his official at AEI (where he has been a Visiting Scholar since his ignominious resignation 18 months ago) stresses his interest in development and trade. You would think that, given the current financial crisis and its potentially disastrous ripple effects on emerging economies and poor countries (for which he has expressed particular sympathy in the past), he would not have been shy about offering his advice about how to protect them. But, apart from his advocacy of business and defense ties with Taiwan (he’s chairman of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council), he seems to have largely disappeared from the public sphere. In the realm of economic development and aid, Hudson has acquired a far more credible figure in the person of former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, who joined the Institute at the same time as Feith.

Jim Lobe

Jim Lobe served for some 30 years as the Washington DC bureau chief for Inter Press Service and is best known for his coverage of U.S. foreign policy and the influence of the neoconservative movement.

SHOW 5 COMMENTS

5 Comments

  1. .Archive.Org.Perspectives:

    What exactly is the connection between: IASPS and SANE US?

    Just noticed the latter has returned from a net slumber behind closed doors for insiders only it seems. It’s mission remains unwaveringly intact:

    …America is a unique people bound together through a commitment to America’s Judeo-Christian moral foundation and to an enduring faith and trust in G-d and in His Providence. America’s founding, and its greatness was neither accident nor staging ground for some better existence or world state. America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white, who ventured from Europe to create a nation in their image of a country existing as free men under G-d. This constellation of forces existed no where else in the world and resulted in a unique people and nation.

  2. Correction:

    Not: “for insiders only it seems.”

    But: for insiders only it felt (when I last checked it).

    For me–over here in old Europe–all the via Archive.org available informations around: “About us” you seem to allude to above:

    The other task force members included IASPSâ??s highly eccentric (check its website)

    are gone.

  3. Feith will certainly do less harm at Hudson than he did in government. But I am a little worried about the quiescence of the neocons. What can they be up to? If Obama wins the election, they will be reduced to carping and criticizing, it would seem. I don’t believe the movers and shakers in an Obama administration will be on the bomb Iran bandwagon. Nor do I think Obama contemplates the use of force in the Middle East and South Asia — Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas excepted.

    Scooter Libby seems to have dropped off the face of the earth since his disbarment last spring. No doubt he is waiting to see if GWB will reconsider and pardon him after the election.

  4. LOL…when did ‘Judeo’-Christian get added to Christian?

    It’s amusing the revisions to our history that certain sectors keep making in an effort to mislead about why and how America came to be.
    First, since I am a descendent of the original Americans…the ones that sailed up the James River to found Jamestown I can tell you ‘G-d’ , especially the jewish ‘G-d’ had nothing do with their motivations.
    The founding of America was a commerical enterprise by adventerous Englishmen..the mostly Dutch Pilgrams crawled into Plymouth Rock and and started buring witches some five years after that.
    And as with any new enterprise the opportunist came flooding in seeking their fortune and freedom.
    The religious propaganda about American’s founders is promoted by the G-d people for the sheeple to try and link their agenda with America.

  5. The Hudson Institute also took in Christopher Ford a couple of months ago. He was the U.S. Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation under Bush. You remember him: He thought the Nonproliferation Treaty meant the nonproliferation of treaties.

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