The move is significant, not only because Cheney is seen increasingly as the
dominant foreign-policy influence on President George W. Bush, but also
because it adds to the notion that neo-conservatives remain a formidable force under
Bush despite the sharp plunge in public confidence in Bush's handling of
post-war Iraq resulting from the faulty assumptions propagated by the "neo-cons"
before the war.
Given the recent intensification of tensions between Washington and Damascus touched off by this month's U.S. veto of a United Nations Security Council
resolution deploring an Israeli air attack on an alleged Palestinian camp
outside Damascus Wurmser's rise takes on added significance.
The move also follows House of Representatives' approval of a bill that would
impose new economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria.
Wurmser's status as a favoured protege of arch-hawk and former Defence Policy
Board chairman Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) also
speaks loudly to Middle East specialists, who note Perle's long-time close
association with Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld's chief
deputy Paul Wolfowitz.
Wolfowitz was the first senior administration official to suggest that
Washington might take action against Syria amid reports last April that Damascus was
sheltering senior Iraqi leaders and weapons of mass destruction in the wake
of the U.S. invasion.
"There's got to be a change in Syria," Wolfowitz said, accusing the
government of President Bashar Assad of "extreme ruthlessness." Rumsfeld subsequently
accused Syria of permitting Islamic "jihadis" to infiltrate Iraq to fight U.S.
troops.
Perle, who last week was in Israel to receive a special award from the
"Jerusalem Summit," an international group of right wing Jews and Christian Zionists
who describe themselves as defenders of "civilisation" against "Islamic
fundamentalism," has made no secret of his own desire to confront Damascus.
...Damascus has been in Wurmser's sights at least since he began working with
Perle at AEI in the mid-1990s.
For the latter part of the decade, he wrote frequently to support a joint
U.S.-Israeli effort to undermine then-President Hafez Assad in hopes of
destroying Baathist rule and hastening the creation of a new order in the Levant to be
dominated by "tribal, familial and clan unions under limited governments."
Indeed, it was precisely because of the strategic importance of the Levant
that Wurmser advocated overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in favour of
an Iraqi National Congress (INC) closely tied to the Hashemite monarchy in
Jordan.
"Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically," he wrote
in one 1996 paper for the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and
Political Studies (IASPS).
Wurmser, whose Israeli-born spouse Meyrav Wurmser heads Middle East studies
at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, was the main author of a 1996 report
by a task force convened by the IASPS and headed by Perle, called the 'Study
Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000'.
The paper, called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm', was
directed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
It featured a series of recommendations designed to end the process of Israel
trading "land for peace" by transforming the "balance of power" in the Middle
East in favour of an axis consisting of Israel, Turkey and Jordan.
To do so, it called for ousting Saddam Hussein and installing a Hashemite
leader in Baghdad. From that point, the strategy would be largely focused on
Syria and, at the least, to reducing its influence in Lebanon.
America Attacked- Interview with David Wurmser (Sept. 24, 2001)
Washington Post
...Israel, of course, is willing to jump in the trenches right next to us, as is India and probably Turkey if they thought we were serious.
...Syria, Iran, Iraq, the PLO and Sudan are playing a skillful game, but have consistenlty worked to undermine US interests and influence in the region for years, and certainly will continue to do so now...
...how much help do we really need from places like Syria, Iran, Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon or the PLO, or even Syria?
...perhaps we should rethink our entire Middle East policy to focus more on nations that do seem to have greater respect for human rights, like Turkey, Israel, and moderate Arab monarchies such as Kuwait and Jordan. This would involve a retooling of our entire Middle East strategy in the last 75 years, but then again, that may be just what is needed.
