[NYTr] Chickenhawk Rumsfeld Finds New Home at Rightwing Stanford Hoover Inst

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Chickenhawk Rummy will fit right in at Condi's old stomping grounds at
Stanford. They seem to love arrogant self-promoters with second-rate
intellects there. -NY Transfer]


IPS News - Sep 13, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39249

POLITICS-US:  Rumsfeld Redeploys to Right-Wing Think Tank

By Bill Berkowitz

OAKLAND, California, Sep 13 (IPS) - While General David Petraeus and
Ambassador Ryan Crocker were giving the U.S. Congress an upbeat
assessment of the situation on the ground in Iraq this week, one of the
chief architects of the war was preparing to redeploy to a West Coast
conservative think tank.

Once he was the "it" guy; everything he said was treated as the gospel
truth. He took on celebrity-like status: The Wall Street Journal's
editorial board member, Claudia Rosett, described his press briefings
on the war in Afghanistan as "the best new show on television." CNN
called him a "virtual rock star" and the Fox News Channel described him
as "a babe magnet for the 70-year old set". President George W. Bush
dubbed him a "matinee idol".

His star turn reached its zenith during the period he guided the U.S.
military to a triumph over the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Although he once declared that he didn't "do quagmires", the quagmire
that became Iraq was his ultimate undoing. And it was the Republican
Party's crushing electoral defeat in November 2006 that sealed his fate.

Now, he's heading down the familiar path well trod before him by other
Bush officials, aides and advisors, defeated Republican candidates, and
retired military officers; he's headed for a secure and well-funded
post at a major right wing think tank.

In early September, Stanford University's Hoover Institution announced
that former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld would become a
visiting fellow at the Institution.

According to a statement issued on Sep. 7 by Hoover's director John
Raisan, Rumsfeld will participate in the institution's new task force
of scholars and experts studying post-Sep. 11 ideology and terror.

"I have asked Don to join the distinguished group of scholars that will
pursue new insights on the direction of thinking that the United States
might consider going forward," Raisian said.

Not everyone on the Stanford University campus was as upbeat about
Rumsfeld as Raisan. "It is a moral disgrace," said Stanford American
history Professor Bart Bernstein, an opponent of the war in Iraq. "He
is not a person of intellectual merit; he is not an academic. As a
policy-maker, his only claim to fame was, at best, flawed and morally
corrupt.

"On the grounds of intellectual judgment and moral character, he would
seem to be a markedly inappropriate choice," Bernstein said. "This
should be treated as a collective embarrassment." Earlier this year,
retired Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, former commander of the U.S. Central
Command (CENTCOM), began service as the first Annenberg Distinguished
Visiting Fellow at the Institution. Senator Rick Santorum, a
Pennsylvania Republican defeated in his bid for re-election, signed on
to head up a new programme called "America's Enemies", which will be
located at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre, a Washington-based
think tank formerly headed by neoconservative hawk Elliott Abrams.

Paul Wolfowitz, another neocon architect of the Iraq war, returned to
the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, one of the premier
conservative think-tanks. And former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth
Blackwell, defeated in the race of governor of that state, signed on
with the Family Research Council, a prominent Washington-based
Christian conservative lobbying group.

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford
University, has a 25-million-dollar annual budget, possesses a
250-million-dollar endowment, and employs some 250 people. Its website
describes it as a "public policy research centre devoted to advanced
study of politics, economics, and political economy -- both domestic
and foreign -- as well as international affairs."

The Institution was founded at his alma mater, Stanford University, in
1919 by Herbert Hoover, who later became the thirty-first president of
the United States. What started as a collection of documents on World
War I later grew to "became one of the largest archives and most
complete libraries in the world devoted to political, economic, and
social change in the twentieth century."

According to Media Transparency, a website tracking the money behind
the conservative movement, between 1985 and 2005, Hoover received
nearly 24 million dollars in grants from a host of conservative
foundations, including the John M. Olin Foundation, Inc., the Smith
Richardson Foundation, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc.,
the Walton Family Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.

There is no denying that Rumsfeld has had an extraordinary career both
inside and outside of government. A congressional staffer during the
Eisenhower administration, a four-term elected congressman from
Illinois, Rumsfeld resigned to serve in the Richard Nixon
administration as the director of the United States Office of Economic
Opportunity, assistant to the president, and a member of the Cabinet.

In 1971, President Nixon was recorded saying about Rumsfeld "at least
Rummy is tough enough" and "He's a ruthless little bastard. You can be
sure of that."

After Nixon resigned due to pending impeachment over Watergate,
Rumsfeld joined the Ford Administration as White House Chief of Staff
and later as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defence.

Although Rumsfeld left government for the private sector during the
Ronald Reagan administration, he continued public service in various
posts.

While acting as Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East in late 1983
through May 1984, Rumsfeld was the main conduit for crucial U.S.
military intelligence, hardware and strategic advice to Saddam Hussein,
then fighting Iran in the Iran-Iraq war.

Rumsfeld was a founder and active member of the Project for the New
American Century, a neoconservative organisation determined to
overthrow Saddam Hussein with military force. He was a signatory to the
1998 letter PNAC sent to President Bill Clinton urging "regime change"
in Iraq.

After being confirmed as defence secretary in 2001, Rumsfeld set about
transforming the military into a leaner, lighter fighting force. After
the 9/11 attacks, he turned his attention to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Rumsfeld Doctrine -- high technology combat systems, reliance on
air forces, small, nimble ground forces -- proved successful in
Afghanistan. Ultimately, however, it was ineffectual in Iraq,
particularly after the insurgency launched its operations.

However else he served, Rumsfeld will be best remembered for the
disaster in Iraq where he failed to provide enough U.S. troops from the
beginning; where torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo became
commonplace; where extended tours of duty and stopgap orders
overextended the U.S., military and wore out reservists and the
National Guard; and hubris worthy of the serial conquerors of the
Peloponnesus.

There were the Rumsfeldian comments; Even the usually demure BBC
featured Rumsfeld's remarks in a regular slot called "The Donald
Rumsfeld Sound Bite of the Week" in which they played his most amusing
comment from that week.

What began as cutesy linguistic flourishes charming the media and
neoconservative pundits turned into bitter denunciations of anti-war
critics and a media grown ever more impatient.

Rumsfeld compared Iraq war critics to Hitler appeasers and Stalinists,
calling them "quitters" who "blame America first" and "cannot stomach a
tough fight"; he said they "trying to appease a new type of fascism,"
and they were being manipulated by Osama bin Laden's "media
committees". He also warned that terrorists were carrying out violence
because they wanted a change in leadership in the U.S.

In his first public interview since leaving the Pentagon, Rumsfeld says
in the October issue of GQ magazine that Afghanistan has been "a big
success".

"In Afghanistan, 28 million people are free. They have their own
president, they have their own parliament. Improved a lot on the
streets," he claims.

In addition to shopping a memoir and giving interviews, Rumsfeld will
now sort out his ideas from the comfort of Stanford University. Do not
be surprised if Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joins him there in
2009.

[Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement.
His column "Conservative Watch" documents the strategies, players,
institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.]