Prospects for Peace

My friend and colleague at the New America Foundation, Steve Clemons, has posted on his Washington Note blog that Neocon stalwart David Wurmser is about to leave the office of the Vice President.

David Wurmser has been VP Dick Cheney's Mideast adviser since 2003.  Prior to that he worked with John Bolton at the State Department, and with the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.  In 1996, Wurmser co-authored "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Security in the Realm," with Richard Perle and Douglas Feith among others.  The report, intended for then incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, outlined a strategy for ending the peace process and regime change in Iraq and Syria.

I prefer to avoid attacking people by familial association, but David Wurmser and his wife, Meyrav, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, are one of those couples who are professionally very much singing from the same hymn sheet (so to speak). 

Last December, Meyrav bragged to Ynet that she and her neoconservatives had encouraged Israel to attack Syria during last summer's war, and that they were the ones who prevented early diplomacy to stop the war.  In response to the question "Did the administration expect Israel to attack Syria?" she said:

They hoped Israel would do it. You cannot come to another country and order it to launch a war, but there was hope, and more than hope, that Israel would do the right thing. It would have served both the American and Israeli interests.

The neocons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and space… They believed that Israel should be allowed to win. A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hizbullah. It was obvious that it is impossible to fight directly against Iran, but the thought was that its strategic and important ally should be hit.

Earlier this year Meyrav and I were scheduled for to debate at the Washington Institute for International Studies at Brown University, but she ducked (or chickened) out at the last minute.  Seeing as David might have some free time in the future, I should say that I would happily challenge any Wurmser to a debate on Middle East policy.