VOICES CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS:

The Brains Behind Bush's War (TODD S. PURDUM, February 1, 2003, NY Times)

Any history of the Bush administration's march toward war with Iraq will have to take account of long years of determined advocacy by a circle of defense policy intellectuals whose view that Saddam Hussein can no longer be tolerated or contained is now ascendant.

Like the national security experts who were the intellectual architects of the Vietnam War, men like McGeorge Bundy, Walt W. Rostow and others branded "The Best and the Brightest" in David Halberstam's ironic phrase, these theorists seem certain to be remembered, for better or worse, among the authors of the most salient evolution of American foreign policy since the end of the cold war: the pre-emptive attack.

At the center of this group are longtime Iraq hawks, Republicans like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; Richard Perle, a former Reagan administration defense official who now heads the Defense Policy Board, the Pentagon's advisory panel; and William Kristol, who was chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and now edits the conservative Weekly Standard.

Mr. Purdum, for obvious reasons, chooses the least attractive group of intellectuals for comparison here, even though the Best and the Brightest weren't particularly known for any grand strategic vision. The more fruitful comparison might have been to the group of men who orbited Winston Churchill in the 1930s, including T. E. Lawrence, and who laid the groundwork for opposition to Hitler, despite being ignored by the rest of the British nation (see The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone 1932-1940 by William Manchester). Posted by Orrin Judd at February 1, 2003 7:35 AM