The Neocons' Last Hurrah

[Purveyor]

By Laura Rozen

February 8, 2008


There was perhaps no better vantage point from which to chronicle the twilight months of the Bush administration and its national security policy than the Israeli resort town of Herzliya, where in January the Interdisciplinary Center, a private college and research institute, convened its annual international security confab. The four-day conference, organized by Uzi Arad, a former national security advisor to onetime Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, brought together Israeli policymakers and thought leaders with their American and European counterparts. Attending the event, dubbed "Israel at Sixty: Tests of Endurance," were a host of prominent Washington hawks, among them, former United States ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, neoconservative and former Rudy Giuliani advisor Norman "World War IV" Podhoretz, Vice President Dick Cheney's national security advisor Samantha Ravich, and former Middle East advisor David Wurmser. Given the D.C.-centric crowd, it was at times easy to forget that the conference was taking place on the Mediterranean coast and not inside the Beltway.

While their numbers were strong, the hawks this year appeared less confident about their influence on Washington's foreign policy, and resentful of an American bureaucracy perceived by many attendees as having hijacked Iran policy from the weakening grasp of the White House. "It's close to zero percent chance that the Bush administration will authorize military action against Iran before leaving office," Bolton told the conference. "No one should be under any illusions about the United States' part in the Iranian situation in the coming year."

Podhoretz, for his part, agreed: "Unless Bush realizes or fulfills my fading hope of air strikes, it is undoubtedly up to Israel to prevent" Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Bolton, like Podhoretz, urged Israeli policymakers to prepare to take matters into their own hands, saying "Israel should be willing to see themselves as a possible last resort." Though his call for Israel to prepare to strike Iran on its own–as well as his outspoken exasperation with the administration he until recently served–were met with chuckles from the Herzliya audience, the prospect of Israel ultimately choosing to act unilaterally came up again and again.

---EOE---

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/02/neocons-last-hurrah.html