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The Republican Rift
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Issue
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Oct 24, 2005 06:10pm |
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| Category | Opinion |
| Media | Magazine - New Yorker |
| News Date | Tuesday, October 25, 2005 12:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | AMY DAVIDSON: Why is Brent Scowcroft worth writing about now? He’s been out of government for some time.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: For one thing, he’s a leading proponent of the “realist” school of foreign-policy thinking, which stands in opposition to the “transformationalist,” or neoconservative, or liberal interventionist—pick your preference—school. He also has a great deal of experience on the Iraqi question—he managed the first Gulf War for President George H. W. Bush, so it’s interesting to hear what he thinks of the current war. (Not much, as you can see from the article.) And he’s the best friend of the father of the current President, and the mentor of the current Secretary of State, so it’s worth exploring why the Administration of George W. Bush doesn’t listen to his advice on Iraq and other subjects.
Scowcroft is a consummate diplomat and a careful man. And yet, reading the quotes in your story, it seems that he almost had to force himself not to lash out at the current Administration—and he didn’t always succeed. Is Scowcroft an angry man these days?
He’s a man in control of his emotions, and so I’m not sure how angry he is, or how far he would be willing to go to show his anger. He is upset about the course of the war, of course, and I suppose he’s upset because his advice before the war was ignored. But I don’t think he takes these things personally. I think he doesn’t want to see America do damage to itself. And, according to what he told me, he thinks America has been damaged by the intervention in Iraq: he believes, he said, that the Iraq war has made our terrorism problem worse, not better. |
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