Richard Perle

Richard Perle in 2009

Richard Norman Perle (born September 16, 1941) is an American political advisor who served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs under President Ronald Reagan. He began his political career as a senior staff member to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson on the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 1970s. He served on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004 where he served as chairman from 2001 to 2003 under the Bush Administration before resigning due to conflict of interests.

Quotes

• National sovereignty is an obligation as well as an entitlement. A government that will not perform the role of a government forfeits the rights of a government.
  • An End To Evil: How To Win the War on Terror, David Frum, Richard N. Perle, Ballantine (reprint,2004), Chapter 5 'The War Abroad,' p. 102 : ISBN 0345477170

• "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing." (2003)
  • Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html
  • Notes: in reference to the legality of the 2003 invasion of Iraq

• "And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation."
  • Source: http://www.aei.org/events/contentID.20031003144313426/default.asp
  • Source: http://www.catch.com/comments/34635_0_17_0_C/
  • Notes: from luncheon keynote speech, "Turkey at the Crossroads", September 22, 2003

• Sometimes the things we have to do are objectionable in the eyes of others.
• I’ve never thought much of Joe Nye’s writings on soft power.
• Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces.
  • 2005 February 17 - In a debate with DNC Chairman Howard Dean at Pacific University

• I really don't have a solution. Except to say that a precondition for any solution must be a recognition on the part of all parties on the legitimacy of all parties. That is you cannot build a political agreement on the premise that a Jewish state in Palestine is illegitimate.
  • When asked about a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a 1988 debate with Noam Chomsky at Ohio State University
    • Source: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=program-info&program_id=8409 http://chomskytorrents.org/TorrentDetails.php?TorrentID=130

• I think there is a potential civic culture in Arab countries that can lead to democratic institutions and I think Iraq is probably the best place to put that proposition to the test
• Well, you’re going to find a disproportionate number of Jews in any sort of intellectual undertaking.
  • PBS Think Tank interview by Ben Wattenberg, November 14, 2002
  • Source: http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1017.html

• The programme of the British Labour Party under Neil Kinnock is so wildly irresponsible, so separate and apart from the historic NATO strategy, that I think a Labour government that stood by its present policies—and I rather doubt that they would—would, if it didn't destroy the Alliance, at least diminish its effective ability to do the task for which it was created.
  • The Times (25 September, 1986).

• About George W. Bush: "He came ill-equipped for the job and has failed to master it."
  • Source: "Perle Turns on Bush in Harsh Terms", by Nicholas Wapshott, New York Sun, May 15, 2007 [1]
  • Notes: newspaper article reporting on Perle's statements at a meeting of the Hudson Institute on May 14, 2007.

Quotes about

• At the same time, Kissinger, Carter and détente were condemned as weakening the West by a group of conservative Democrats led by Henry (Scoop) Jackson, a critic of SALT, as well as by key Republicans who were influential in the Ford administration (1974–7), notably his Chief of Staff, Richard (Dick) Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. They drew on advice from commentators such as Richard Perle, Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz who warned about Soviet intentions. The continuity of this group, through 1990s’ opposition to Clintonian liberal internationalism, to the neo-conservative activism of the early 2000s, especially against Iraq, is notable.
  • Jeremy Black, The Cold War: A Military History (2015)

• That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstitution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent – or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought – destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position – leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that – like Chomsky – looked ridiculous. So now I was interested.
  • Christopher Hitchens, "In enemy territory? An interview with Christopher Hitchens.", Interview with Johann Hari (2004-09-23): On the Bosnian War