WHAT A CROCK

by JAN HERMAN

First he resigned as chairman of the Defense Policy Board. Now he has resigned from the board altogether. The right-wing ideologue Richard Perle, who advocates what might be termed a holy crusade in the Middle East and elsewhere, wrote to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his letter of resignation:

We are now approaching a long presidential election campaign, in the course of which issues on which I have strong views will be widely discussed and debated. I would not wish those views to be attributed to you or the President at any time, and especially not during a presidential campaign.

Read the entire letter. It’s so disingenuous it can’t be taken seriously. Does Perle, who’s been called “the intellectual guru of the hard-line neoconservative movement in foreign policy,” really believe that because he has resigned from the board his views won’t be associated with the administration’s or the Defense Department’s.

If nothing else, his letter takes a patronizing view of the American public with a condescending attitude toward its capacity to understand the workings of government: “A television viewer or newspaper reader, accustomed to zoning boards, school boards and appeal boards, is likely to think that the Defense Policy Board actually makes decisions, and that a member of it must be in a position to speak authoritatively about administration policy.”

Perle has not only played a major role in that policy as a key advocate of the invasion of Iraq; he has been accused of a conflict of interest for working as a consultant to a company seeking favors from the Pentagon. And he has just published “An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror,” co-written with David Frum, the former presidential speechwriter who coined the term “axis of evil” for our Maximum Leader.

In the book, Perle and Frum call for the United States “to overthrow the government of Iran, abandon support of a Palestinian state, blockade North Korea, use strong-arm tactics with Syria and China, disregard much of Europe as allies, and sever ties with Saudi Arabia,” amazon.com reviewer Charlie Williams writes.

Perle notes in his letter, “Many of the ideas in that book are controversial and I wish to be free to argue them without those views or my arguments getting caught up in the campaign.” Does he really believe his views won’t be caught up in the campaign? If he’s so concerned, why doesn’t he just shut up?

Postscript: Then you read this: Bush Tightens Rules on Travel to Cuba, and you see again that the “war on terror” is being exploited for political gain — in this instance for south Florida votes — by an administration too corrupt at the top to permit transparency. As Alexander Pope once put it in “The Dunciad”:

Morality, by her false guardians drawn,
Chicane, in furs, and
Casuistry in lawn,
Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord,
And dies
…