Let Richard Perle Eat His Own Rhetoric

Richard Perle has an opinion piece in the Washington Post. Guess what he has to say?

The failure of successive U.S. administrations, including this one, to give moral and political support to the [Iranian] regime's opponents is a tragedy.

You can email him: rperle@aei.org.

Richard Perle may still have a lot of influence with some neocons in or near the White House and the Pentagon, but American elected officials would be wise to avoid endorsing his policy statements. He continues to bellow the transparently incorrect line that intimidation by killing people and establishing a permanent war footing for the United States economy is good policy. Mr. Perle would have us believe that this is how we will be safe from our enemies and how we should promote freedom and democracy in the world.

Mr. Perle is incorrect. By associating himself with US government officials, Mr. Perle is casting the foreign policy of the United States in a dangerously bellicose tone and announcing unreasonably distorted goals.

It is the denial of his own fear--his own personal petrified terror--that belies all Mr. Perle's misstatements about imperial democracy.

Democracy means justice for all. One country hijacked by military industrialists and corporations is not justified in dictating every other country's actions.

First of all, the United States, though possessing military hardware, is rending and wearing away the social fabric woven of whatever freedom and democracy that was ever established on our shores since the founding of Jamestown. In other words, our policy is unsustainable and the rest of the world regards it as the threadbare garment of hypocrites.

Second of all, by pressuring everyone else to do what we want we are displaying an inequitable injustice that is explicitly undemocratic in character.

Thirdly, the tone of Mr. Perle's statements, and the policies he advocates, sound surprisingly like the fear-stricken utterances of one who has not honestly embraced the principles of justice and democracy, with the confident knowledge that history is moving toward the liberation of all people and the endowment of those rights enshrined in the Constitution of the United States and the American Revolution.

Some would have us believe that Perle is secretly advocating for a U.S. foreign policy that primarily serves the interests of Israel. There have been persuasive and highly-regarded (though bitterly contested) academic theories of this nature advanced recently.

However, I propose Mr. Perle be granted justice, instead of the tyranny he advocates. Let him stand trial for treason for his role in leading the United States to war in Iraq (and for any other related crimes that may surface upon investigation.) Give him a fair trial.

Let him put his rhetoric of freedom and democracy to the test--if he dare walk the walk. If he is innocent, he will be acquitted of treason in a court of law--if there is justice in American courts. In any case, let us hear how his argument stands up to opponents in an open and fair debate, for once.