{"id":201010,"date":"2020-01-18T07:26:43","date_gmt":"2020-01-18T07:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=201010"},"modified":"2020-01-22T07:13:33","modified_gmt":"2020-01-22T07:13:33","slug":"key-architect-of-2003-iraq-war-is-now-a-key-architect-of-trump-iran-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=201010","title":{"rendered":"Key Architect of 2003 Iraq War Is Now a Key Architect of Trump Iran Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Schwarz \u2013 The Intercept Jan 16, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

David Wurmser<\/p><\/div>\n

David Wurmser was<\/u> a longtime advocate of war with Iraq in the Bush administration. Eventually, he got what he wanted, and it was a total disaster. Now, Wurmser again has the ear of a president \u2014 this time, Donald Trump \u2014 and his sights are set firmly on Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

An influential neoconservative in President George W. Bush\u2019s White House who became a significant force behind the push for war with Iraq in 2003, Wurmser has recently been serving as an informal adviser to the Trump administration, according to new reporting<\/a><\/strong><\/span> from Bloomberg News. In that capacity, Wurmser helped make the case for the recent drone strike that assassinated<\/strong><\/span><\/a> Iranian Gen. Qassim Suleimani.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wurmser wrote several memos to then-national security adviser John Bolton in May and June of 2019. In the documents, according to Bloomberg, Wurmser argued that aggressive action by the U.S. \u2014 such as the killing of Suleimani \u2014 would, in Wurmser\u2019s words, \u201crattle the delicate internal balance of\u00a0forces and the control over them upon which the [Iranian] regime depends for stability and survival.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The significance of this is two-fold. First, while it was already clear that the neoconservative movement has powerfully influenced<\/a><\/strong><\/span> the Trump administration, Wurmser\u2019s role on Iran is further evidence of the sway that neoconservatism still holds on the U.S. right \u2014 despite the catastrophic invasion of Iraq and Trump\u2019s disavowal of the war. Second, it demonstrates that neoconservatives such as Wurmser still cherish a peculiar theory about Iranian society.<\/span><\/p>\n

After Bush\u2019s reelection in 2005, the hard-right faction of his administration turned its attention to Iran. These officials had always wanted regime change in the Islamic Republic, but now some of them believed that a full-scale invasion would not be necessary to bring this about. A 2005 article<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh quoted a government consultant who described the perspective of these officials as being that a bombing campaign against Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities would spur a revolution led by \u201csecular nationalists and reformers.\u201d The consultant summarized their view: \u201cThe minute the aura of invincibility which the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink the West, the Iranian regime will collapse.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wurmser\u2019s outlook seems not to have changed one bit. In his memos to Bolton, he wrote that the U.S. will not need \u201cboots on the ground\u201d because \u201cIranians would both be\u00a0impressed and\u00a0potentially encouraged by a targeted attack on symbols of repression.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This theory, so popular among neoconservatives, has always been bizarre: Nations generally become more right-wing when under attack. For instance, after the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, Americans did not demand that Bush be impeached and Dennis Kucinich move into the Oval Office.<\/span><\/p>\n

We should definitely consider the possibility that the neocons don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about. And yet, here we are, with those self-same neocons again helping shape our foreign policy in delusional and dangerous ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

The continued self-confidence<\/u> of neoconservatives like Wurmser is particularly odd given how all their beliefs were proven disastrously wrong in Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wurmser holds a Ph.D. in international affairs and worked for the AIPAC-spinoff Washington Institute for Near East Policy in the mid-1990s. In 1996, he was one of the main thinkers behind a policy document<\/strong><\/span><\/a> titled \u201cA Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm\u201d that was prepared by an Israeli think tank for then-incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government in 1996. The paper called for Israel to engage in preemptive attacks on its perceived foes and a \u201cfocus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1999, Wurmser wrote a book titled \u201cTyranny\u2019s Ally: America\u2019s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein,\u201d which was pretty much what it sounds like. \u201cChemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons are the pillars of Saddam\u2019s regime,\u201d Wurmser said, adding that \u201cthe menace from Saddam\u2019s Iraq will continue to grow\u201d if the U.S. did not remove him from power.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the September 11 attacks, Wurmser was appointed to a two-man intelligence unit by then-Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith. (Feith is perhaps best known for being referred<\/strong> to<\/strong><\/span><\/a> as \u201cthe fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth\u201d by Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq.) Among Wurmser\u2019s ideas was for the U.S. to respond to Al Qaeda by, as the 9\/11 Commission later put it, hitting a \u201cnon-Al Qaeda target like Iraq.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wurmser then became a senior adviser to Bolton, who at that point was an undersecretary at the State Department and one of the most vociferous champions of a regime change war with Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually, Wurmser and company got what they wanted, and the U.S. led an invasion of Iraq in March 2003. At that point, the purported wishes of the neoconservatives collided with reality, and reality won. Hundreds of thousands of people died, the lives of millions have been blighted, and the entire region will be in flames for the indefinite future.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a 2007 interview, however, Wurmser continued to defend the decision to go to war, though he did question the Bush administration\u2019s rhetorical emphasis on democracy in Iraq. \u201cI\u2019m not a big fan of democracy per se,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m a fan of freedom and one has to remember the difference. Freedom must precede democracy by a long, long time.\u201d In the same interview, he stated that if the U.S. failed to \u201ctrigger a fundamental change in behavior\u201d by Iran\u2019s leaders that America might \u201chave to think seriously about going directly into Iran.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In any case, nothing in the past 17 years seems to have made much of an impression on Wurmser; he still maintains a belief in his own skill at precisely calibrated global strategy. Nor has this past calamitous decade and a half prevented him from having the ear of the people who operate America\u2019s killer drones. Notably, the article about Wurmser\u2019s current accomplishments, by neoconservative Bloomberg journalist Eli Lake, does not mention any of Wurmser\u2019s unfortunate history.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wurmser did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is history about to repeat itself? If the warmongers think we are going to see a replay of the Iraq War with Iran they are in for a very rude awakening<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,41,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Behind_The_News","category-Inside_the_White_House_and_Washingtons_Beltway","category-Iran"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=201010"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201019,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201010\/revisions\/201019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=201010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=201010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=201010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}