PBS Special: Richard Perle Justifies His Existence

Richard Perle hosted and absolutely bizarre one hour special on PBS last night, an autobiographical apology for the neo-conservative case for the slow moving disaster in Mesopotamia as part of their "America at the Crossroads" series. In it, he blathered on about how the war in Iraq is a noble undertaking, and how the events in Afghanistan and Iraq represent the best intentions of a nation with only the purest motives. He dismisses any criticism of the Iraq war as the illogic of the "liberal left" who feel that George Bush is worse than Saddam ever was. He rants on about Hollywood liberals who oppose the President and equates them with the Soviet sympathizers who supported Stalin.

After creating this straw man, he goes on to state that our presence in Afghanistan is far different than the Soviets in the 1980s, because we are not an imperial power, and therefore our presence is not resented by the general populace. One straw man after another is created by Perle to wash his hands of the human suffering that he is responsible for.

Even more bizarrely, he interviews "old friends" like Richard Holbrooke and Simon Jenkins of the Times of London, who react to Perle like he's a stark raving lunatic when he presses his case that the war in Iraq is completely justified. Leave aside that he has backpedaled on this case in Vanity Fair in November, Jenkins and Holbrooke call his views patently ahistorical and flat out wrong as Perle smiles strangely back. Later, when he interviews an Iranian dissident who feels that we need to send the marines into Tehran toot sweet, Perle's eyes light up like some demonic fiend as he nods in assent. The entire show made my blood run cold.

Some people may indeed think that Bush is worse than Saddam ever was, however, the majority of the people in this country feel that the adventure in Iraq is wrong, was entered into based upon flawed information, and has been prosecuted so incompetently that we need to change course. Perle's reading of history is so un-nuanced, so elementary, that he fails to even consider that the neo-conservative case has led us into a situation that we can barely understand, and simply cannot control. We've become bystanders in Iraq, and that is not a fair situation to put our troops into. There is nothing that we can do to alter the reality on the ground there. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is resurgent. We're rushing towards failure there again. Perle may say that we are not an imperial power, but to the a villager in Kabul who is caught between the US and the resurgent Taliban, the distinction is certainly academic.

People oppose this administration because they are incompetent. The majority of Americans believe that the White House willfully ignored intelligence that did not fit into their elementary school world view. That world view was Richard Perle's. PBS has been under a great deal of pressure from the White House to show "both sides" of the debate over foreign policy in this administration, and last night's presentation represented the neo-con world view. It was a sad sight for PBS and a sad sight for Richard Perle.