http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-diplo13jun13,1,1142936.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Retired Officials Say Bush Must Go
The 26 ex-diplomats and military leaders say his foreign policy has harmed
national security. Several served under Republicans.
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer
June 13, 2004
WASHINGTON - A group of 26 former senior diplomats and military officials,
several appointed to key positions by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan
and George H.W. Bush, plans to issue a joint statement this week arguing
that President George W. Bush has damaged America's national security and
should be defeated in November.
The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change,
will explicitly condemn Bush's foreign policy, according to several of those
who signed the document.
"It is clear that the statement calls for the defeat of the administration,"
said William C. Harrop, the ambassador to Israel under President Bush's
father and one of the group's principal organizers.
Those signing the document, which will be released in Washington on
Wednesday, include 20 former U.S. ambassadors, appointed by presidents of
both parties, to countries including Israel, the former Soviet Union and
Saudi Arabia.
Others are senior State Department officials from the Carter, Reagan and
Clinton administrations and former military leaders, including retired
Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, the former commander of U.S. forces in the
Middle East under President Bush's father. Hoar is a prominent critic of the
war in Iraq.
Some of those signing the document - such as Hoar and former Air Force Chief
of Staff Merrill A. McPeak - have identified themselves as supporters of
Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. But
most have not endorsed any candidate, members of the group said.
It is unusual for so many former high-level military officials and career
diplomats to issue such an overtly political message during a presidential
campaign.
A senior official at the Bush reelection campaign said he did not wish to
comment on the statement until it was released.
But in the past, administration officials have rejected charges that Bush
has isolated America in the world, pointing to countries contributing troops
to the coalition in Iraq and the unanimous passage last week of the U.N.
resolution authorizing the interim Iraqi government.
One senior Republican strategist familiar with White House thinking said he
did not think the group was sufficiently well-known to create significant
political problems for the president.
The strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also said the
signatories were making an argument growing increasingly obsolete as Bush
leans more on the international community for help in Iraq.
"Their timing is a little off, particularly in the aftermath of the most
recent U.N. resolution," the strategist said. "It seems to me this is a
collection of resentments that have built up, but it would have been much
more powerful months ago than now when even the president's most
disinterested critics would say we have taken a much more multilateral
approach" in Iraq.
But those signing the document say the recent signs of cooperation do not
reverse a basic trend toward increasing isolation for the U.S.
"We just felt things were so serious, that America's leadership role in the
world has been attenuated to such a terrible degree by both the style and
the substance of the administration's approach," said Harrop, who served as
ambassador to four African countries under Carter and Reagan.
"A lot of people felt the work they had done over their lifetime in trying
to build a situation in which the United States was respected and could lead
the rest of the world was now undermined by this administration - by the
arrogance, by the refusal to listen to others, the scorn for multilateral
organizations," Harrop said.
Jack F. Matlock Jr., who was appointed by Reagan as ambassador to the Soviet
Union and retained in the post by President Bush's father during the final
years of the Cold War, expressed similar views.
"Ever since Franklin Roosevelt, the U.S. has built up alliances in order to
amplify its own power," he said. "But now we have alienated many of our
closest allies, we have alienated their populations. We've all been
increasingly appalled at how the relationships that we worked so hard to
build up have simply been shattered by the current administration in the
method it has gone about things."
The GOP strategist noted that many of those involved in the document claimed
their primary expertise in the Middle East and suggested a principal
motivation for the statement might be frustration over Bush's effort to
fundamentally reorient policy toward the region.
"For 60 years we believed in quote-unquote stability at the price of
liberty, and what we got is neither liberty nor stability," the strategist
said. "So we are taking a fundamentally different approach toward the Middle
East. That is a huge doctrinal shift, and the people who have given their
lives, careers to building the previous foreign policy consensus, see this
as a direct intellectual assault on what they have devoted their lives to.
And it is. We think what a lot of people came up with was a failure - or at
least, in the present world in which we live, it is no longer sustainable."
Sponsors of the effort counter that several in the group have been involved
in developing policy affecting almost all regions of the globe.
The document will echo a statement released in April by a group of
high-level former British diplomats condemning Prime Minister Tony Blair for
being too closely aligned to U.S. policy in Iraq and Israel. Those involved
with the new group said their effort was already underway when the British
statement was released.
The signatories said Kerry's campaign played no role in the formation of
their group. Phyllis E. Oakley, the deputy State Department spokesman during
Reagan's second term and an assistant secretary of state under Clinton, said
she suspected "some of them [in the Kerry campaign] may have been aware of
it," but that "the campaign had no role" in organizing the group.
Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's communications director, also said that the Kerry
campaign had not been involved in devising the group's statement.
The document does not explicitly endorse Kerry, according to those familiar
with it. But some individual signers plan to back the Democrat, and others
acknowledge that by calling for Bush's removal, the group effectively is
urging Americans to elect Kerry.
"The core of the message is that we are so deeply concerned about the
current direction of American foreign policy . that we think it is essential
for the future security of the United States that a new foreign policy team
come in," said Oakley.
Much of the debate over the document in the days ahead may pivot on the
extent to which it is seen as a partisan document.
A Bush administration ally said that the group failed to recognize how the
Sept. 11 attacks required significant changes in American foreign policy.
"There's no question those who were responsible for policies pre-9/11 are
denying what seems as the obvious - that those policies were inadequate,"
said Cliff May, president of the conservative advocacy group Foundation for
the Defense of Democracies.
"This seems like a statement from 9/10 people [who don't see] the importance
of 9/11 and the way that should have changed our thinking."
Along with Hoar and McPeak, others who have signed it are identified with
the Democratic Party.
Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., though named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff under Reagan, supported Clinton in 1992. Crowe has endorsed Kerry.
Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner served as Carter's director of central
intelligence and has also endorsed Kerry. Matlock said he was a registered
Democrat during most of his foreign service career, though he voted for
Reagan in 1984 and the elder Bush twice and now is registered as an
independent.
Several on the group's list were appointed to their most important posts
under Reagan and the elder Bush. These include Matlock and Harrop, as well
as Arthur A. Hartman, who served as Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet Union
from 1981 through 1987; H. Allen Holmes, an assistant secretary of state
under Reagan; and Charles Freeman, ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the
elder Bush.
Many on the list have not been previously identified with any political
cause or party. Several "are the kind who have never spoken out before,"
said James Daniel Phillips, former ambassador to Burundi and the Congo.
Oakley, Harrop and Matlock said the effort began this year. Matlock said it
was sparked by conversations among "colleagues who had served in senior
positions around the same time, most of them for the Reagan administration
and for the first Bush administration."
Oakley said frustration over the Iraq war was "a large part" of the impetus
for the statement, but the criticism of President Bush "goes much deeper."
The group's complaint about Bush's approach largely tracks Kerry's
contention that the administration has weakened American security by
straining traditional alliances and shifting resources from the war against
Al Qaeda to the invasion of Iraq.
Oakley said the statement would argue that, "Unfortunately the tough stands
[Bush] has taken have made us less secure. He has neglected the war on
terrorism for the war in Iraq. And while we agree that we are in
unprecedented times and we face challenges we didn't even know about before,
these challenges require the cooperation of other countries. We cannot do it
by ourselves."
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
The signatories
Although not explicitly endorsing Sen. John F. Kerry for president, 26
former diplomats and military officials, including many who served in
Republican administrations, have signed a statement calling for the defeat
of President Bush in November. Their names and some of the posts they have
held are:
Avis T. Bohlen - assistant secretary of State for arms control, 1999-2002;
deputy assistant secretary of State for European affairs, 1989-1991.
Retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. - chairman, President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Committee, 1993-94; ambassador to Britain, 1993-97;
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1985-89.
Jeffrey S. Davidow - ambassador to Mexico, 1998-2002; assistant secretary of
State for inter-American affairs, 1996.
William A. DePree - ambassador to Bangladesh, 1987-1990.
Donald B. Easum - ambassador to Nigeria, 1975-79.
Charles W. Freeman Jr. - assistant secretary of Defense for international
security affairs, 1993-94; ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 1989-1992.
William C. Harrop - ambassador to Israel, 1991-93; ambassador to Zaire,
1987-1991.
Arthur A. Hartman - ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1981-87; ambassador to
France, 1977-1981.
Retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar - commander in chief of U.S. Central
Command, overseeing forces in the Middle East, 1991-94; deputy chief of
staff, Marine Corps, 1990-94.
H. Allen Holmes - assistant secretary of Defense for special operations,
1993-99; assistant secretary of State for politico-military affairs,
1986-89.
Robert V. Keeley - ambassador to Greece, 1985-89; ambassador to Zimbabwe,
1980-84.
Samuel W. Lewis - director of State Department policy and planning, 1993-94;
ambassador to Israel, 1977-1985.
Princeton N. Lyman - assistant secretary of State for international
organization affairs, 1995-98; ambassador to South Africa, 1992-95.
Jack F. Matlock Jr. - ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1987-1991; director
for European and Soviet affairs, National Security Council, 1983-86;
ambassador to Czechoslovakia, 1981-83.
Donald F. McHenry - ambassador to the United Nations, 1979-1981.
Retired Air Force Gen. Merrill A. McPeak - chief of staff, U.S. Air Force,
1990-94.
George E. Moose - assistant secretary of State for African affairs, 1993-97;
ambassador to Senegal, 1988-91.
David D. Newsom - acting secretary of State, 1980; undersecretary of State
for political affairs, 1978-1981; ambassador to Indonesia, 1973-77.
Phyllis E. Oakley - assistant secretary of State for intelligence and
research, 1997-99.
James Daniel Phillips - ambassador to the Republic of Congo, 1990-93;
ambassador to Burundi, 1986-1990.
John E. Reinhardt - ambassador to Nigeria, 1971-75.
Retired Air Force Gen. William Y. Smith - deputy commander in chief, U.S.
European Command, 1981-83.
Ronald I. Spiers - undersecretary-general of the United Nations for
political affairs, 1989-1992; ambassador to Pakistan, 1981-83.
Michael Sterner - deputy assistant secretary of State for Near East affairs,
1977-1981; ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, 1974-76.
Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner - director of the Central Intelligence
Agency, 1977-1981.
Alexander F. Watson - assistant secretary of State for inter-American
affairs, 1993-96; deputy permanent representative to the U.N., 1989-1993.
--
"From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory
after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would
have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit - we would still be there,
and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of
the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered
American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on."
- Norman Schwarzkopf, from his 1993 autobiography, "It Doesn't
Take a Hero."
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