Richard Pearl

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Richard Norman Perle (born September 16, 1941 in New York City ) is an American neoconservative politician and intellectual. From 1987 to 2004 he worked for the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee . During the first term of US President George W. Bush from 2001 to March 2003, he was also Chairman of this advisory committee for the United States Department of Defense .

Life

family

His father was Jack Perle, his mother Martha Perle. He grew up in California . Pearl is of Jewish descent. On July 31, 1977, he married Leslie Joan Barr. With her he has the son Jonathan. Perle owns a vacation home in Provence , France, where he spends many weeks a year. In the USA he lives with his family mainly in the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase , a gated community .

Early career

Richard Perle in October 1986 (2nd from right)

After studying at the University of Southern California (BA English, 1964), the London School of Economics and Political Science and Princeton University (MA Political Science, 1967), Perle began his career in politics.

From 1969 to 1980 he worked for the Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson from Washington state . From 1981 to 1987 served pearl as Secretary of Defense ( Assistant Secretary of Defense ) for the Reagan -Regierung. In 1983 he had to defend himself against suspicion of lobbying because he had received a large amount of money from an Israeli arms manufacturer; Perle argued that there was no conflict of interest as he was acting in a private capacity between two government offices at the time the money was accepted. In 1970, during a wiretapping , the FBI discovered that Perle had spoken to a member of the Israeli embassy over the information that had been classified as confidential. There is no evidence that he was reprimanded for this.

Since he vehemently opposed arms control agreements with the then Soviet Union and emphatically endorsed the burgeoning plans for a strategic missile defense shield, the SDI program , which was revived under George W. Bush , he was named "Prince of Darkness" under the Reagan administration ( Prince of Darkness) - one of the nicknames borrowed from the Star Wars trilogy , which he has kept to this day. The model is the character Darth Vader . “I really object to being portrayed as a dark, mystical or demonic force. All I can do is sit down and talk to someone, ” Perle protested in a newspaper interview on December 4, 1977, against this assessment of his person, which was apparently much earlier.

As one of the signatories of an open letter from the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) to US President Bill Clinton, Perle campaigned for a military intervention in Iraq back in 1998 . Perle is a co-founder of the PNAC. Perle was later a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), which in turn advocated a regime change in Iraq forced by the USA.

Current activities

In July 2001 he was appointed by George W. Bush as chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee (about: Advisory Committee of the Defense Policy Committee ). a. advises the US State Department. On March 27, 2003, he resigned the chairmanship of this committee due to massive public criticism based on alleged conflicts of interest, primarily following the research by Seymour Hersh , whom he then sharply attacked as "the element most closely related to terrorism" in American journalism but remained a member of the panel.

Perle is currently a member of the neo-conservative " think tank " American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which his student Jeffrey Gedmin - 2001-2007 Director of the Aspen Institute Berlin - belonged. In addition, he has a variety of business interests: Among other things, since 1994 he has been a member of the board of directors of Hollinger International , a Chicago- based publisher that owns the Chicago Sun-Times , the Jerusalem Post and 20 local newspapers. Perle is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Hollinger Digital, Inc. subsidiary .

On July 29, 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported that Perle was negotiating with representatives of the Kurdish regional government and Turkish AK Group International about a drilling license for an oil field called K18 near Erbil.

From June 11th to 14th, 2015 he took part in the 63rd Bilderberg Conference in Telfs-Buchen , Austria .

Attitudes and attitudes

Perle is known for its negative attitude towards the United Nations and all multilateralism and is committed to the development of a sovereign foreign policy for the United States . In addition, he is one of the harshest critics of the so-called Old Europe and blatantly expresses his contempt for international institutions with often drastic words, for example in an article for the British magazine Spectator on March 22, 2003:

“Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will leave quickly, but not alone: ​​in an ironic farewell, he will bring down the United Nations.
Nice - not the entire United Nations. The 'good jobs' part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies will remain, the tumultuous Hudson gossip will continue to bleat. What will die in Iraq is the imagination of the United Nations as a basis for the new world order. "

In the course of the liberation of Iraq, the “intellectual shipwreck” of the “left conceit” had to be recorded and assessed that one could guarantee “security through international law, administered by international institutions”. Perle describes the assumption that the unilateral use of force, not sanctioned by the UN, “also as a last resort”, leads to anarchy, as “a dangerously wrong idea”. The US is referred to " coalitions of the willing ":

"Far from denigrating them as a threat to the new world order, we should recognize that they are usually the greatest hope for the desired order and the real alternative to the anarchy of pathetic failure of the United Nations."

Early on, Perle vehemently demanded renewed military intervention by the USA in Iraq with the aim of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and ostentatiously defended the results of the 2003 invasion, which Perle had repeatedly painted in rosy colors in advance, which was also increasingly controversial in the American public (Just like the invasion itself: he had spoken out in favor of carrying out it with 40,000 soldiers, while the US General Staff estimated the situation more realistically and actually deployed over 250,000). However, in an interview with BBC Radio in 2004, Perle declared it a "serious mistake" that the invasion had become a cast.

He also strongly advocates first strikes against nuclear facilities in North Korea as well as preventive strikes against Syria , Iran and other so-called rogue states .

In September 2003 he reiterated his optimistic assessment:

“And in a year from now, I would be very surprised if there wasn't some big square in Baghdad named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people affiliated with a diabolical regime, the people of Iraq are liberated and that they understand that they are. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express this feeling of liberation. "

Perle emphatically advocates the thesis that democratization is the best means of securing peace:

“The lesson of history is that democracies do not initiate wars of aggression, and if we are to live in a peaceful world, there is little that could be more effective in doing this than spreading democracy. People who live in a democratic society do not like to pay for huge war machines. Democratic societies do not empower their rulers to make unilateral (in the original: 'unilateral') decisions and to plunge countries into wars. Wars are started by tyrants who have total control and who can waste the resources of their peoples building war machines. "

- PBS interview with Ben Wattenberg, November 14, 2002

Left-wing critics in the USA suspect Perle because they see him as one of the most influential protagonists of a new militarism in foreign policy. He displeases traditionalist conservatives and right-wingers because of what they see as his unconditional commitment to Israel and, in particular, to Ariel Sharon’s Likud bloc there . Among other things, Perle was chairman of a study group which at the time also included the neocons Douglas Feith and David Wurmser . In 1996 she prepared a strategy paper for the future Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu . Representatives from both camps suspect him of "two loyalties": that to the United States and to Israel.

Quotes

  • "Who is Kofi Annan to tell us what is legal and what is illegal?"
  • "We had the best of intentions" [...]. "I would never have believed that we would screw it up so badly." (On the invasion of Iraq, in conversation with Josef Joffe )

About pearl

  • “I have known Richard Perle for years and I know that he is a man of righteousness and honor.” ( Donald Rumsfeld on Perle's resignation)
  • "Perle is not just a neoconservative - he is the personification of that philosophy." (A blogger)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Findley: They Dare To Speak Out . Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago 1989
  2. Jackson Aide Stir's Criticism In Arms Debate . In: The New York Times
  3. Controversial Deal , article from August 4, 2008 on Spiegel Online
  4. Al Kamen: Foresight Can Be 20/20, Too . In: Washington Post , June 2, 2004
  5. Turkey at a crossroads . Luncheon Keynote at the American Enterprise Institute , Washington, September 22, 2003
  6. Richard Perle in an interview with PBS
  7. He will not change the direction of his politics . In: Die Welt , January 21, 2005 Interview with Hanspeter Born (editor at the Swiss World Week ).
  8. Josef Joffe: Wasn't meant that way . In: Die Zeit , No. 44/2008
  9. Martin Kelly: Richard Perle's Nemesis . Copy of original comment for The Washington Dispatch , September 10, 2004