Oh! Look! Iraqis voted this weekend!
So look long and hard at Iraq’s elections — President Bush’s Middle East democracy project’s front door — and you just might miss Douglas J. Feith, Bush’s undersecretary of defense for planning, who Time Magazine calls “the most overripe of neocons,” sneaking out the back.
“Gotta resign from my Pentagon post to go home and check on the wife and kids,” Feith calls cheerily over his shoulder as he now exits as he first entered.
Don’t let the door hit your backside on your way out, Mr. Feith, you may reply.
But it just might.
No fewer than three separate investigations involving Feith — one FBI and two Congressional committees — are underway. Heading for home or even the hills might be a smart move for a man US Army Gen. Tommy Franks once called, in Cheneyesque fashion, “the dumbest ... guy on the planet” and “master of off-the-wall questions that rarely had relevance to operational problems.”
“Operational problems.” What might those be?
The ongoing, ill-conceived American Iraqi occupation is one. And those never-materialized weapons of mass destruction present another. Just like suspected wife-murderer O.J. Simpson’s insistence his wife’s “real” killer’s still at large, under Feith’s direction through the notoriously discredited and disbanded Office of Strategic Influence, the Pentagon continued to search for those elusive weapons of mass destruction long after the rest of the world concluded it could rest easy. And then there’s that wholly-unanticipated and unprepared-for murderous Iraqi insurgency, which Feith assured Bush wouldn’t occur. US troops welcomed with roses and chocolates? That’s a Feith idea, articulated by Paul Wolfowitz. Iraqi insurgents being no more dangerous than a disgruntled handful of Nazi-like loyalist “Werewolves,” articulated by Condoleezza Rice, originated with Feith. And what about those unproved alleged “ties” between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda? Feith’s conjecture, articulated by US Vice President Richard Cheney and by President Bush himself, many, many times. Oh, Mr. Feith! Watch your backside as you slip out through that swinging door....
Last week, The New Yorker Magazine accused Feith, whose 1,500-man “planning” staff formulates the Pentagon’s policies for the war on terror, of conspiring with Israeli officials to select possible targets for a pre-emptive strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
The Pentagon immediately denied it. At the same time, it quickly wished Feith “bon voyage” and declared he “will be missed.” But what could be more unfortunate, a Pentagon spokesman explained to the press, than Feith having to get “up before the kids and go to work,” and then come “home after they go to bed routine?”
Gosh. Who’d imagine that after helping enact policies killing so many of other people’s children, all Richard Perle’s princeling of darkness now wants is to be “Mr. Mom?”
Feith’s low-keyed departure “may be a sign of wisdom at the Pentagon,” Time reported, implying that neocon extremism will wane in Bush’s second term, and true conservatism’s star will again ascend. That would be welcome news. And there’s some evidence it’s true. The Economist describes Feith as “one of the few neocons with real power” and observed that if Rumsfeld truly fought to keep him but failed, neoconism is becoming a discredited political ideology promoted by increasingly powerless political appointees “no longer capable of protecting their own.”
Speculation that the Bush administration, having won four more years, is now unloading neocon ideologues “one by one” is rife. But few neocons inspire the same level of loathing as Feith, whose political extremism and close ties to Israel and the notorious Ahmed Chalabi prompted complaints from the US Congress, uniformed military officers, and even coalition partners. Great Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair reportedly insisted Bush transfer or sack Feith over a year ago. And Bush favorite Condi Rice is rumored to have silenced Feith in meetings by saying that when she wanted to know Israel’s position on US Mideast policy, she’d call the Israeli ambassador rather than Feith.
But before Feith whips off his flack jacket, dons that starchy apron, and gathers his chicks around him, there’s one last task — a trip to Germany’s eminent Munich Conference on Security Policy. Rumsfeld has already sent his regrets. So prominent is the conference, and so fresh Bush’s victory at the polls that “it’s a funny year to choose not to go,” observed a Brookings Institute think-tanker. Some speculate Rumsfeld’s avoiding a criminal complaint recently filed with the German federal prosecutor’s office accusing him of committing war crimes, including Abu Ghraib’s mistreatment of prisoners.
But wait... wasn’t Feith in charge of that, too?
Maybe that’s why Rumsfeld is sending Feith to Munich in his stead.
Watch that door on your way out, Mr. Feith. It just might hit your backside.
