Iraq War Mastermind Douglas Feith–Fired From Georgetown Law Position
April 29, 2008
Well if you were ever looking for a reason to believe in the power of karma, it doesn’t get much better then this. Douglas Feith, a primary architect responsible for setting the table of lies leading into the war in Iraq, has officially been released from his role as a full time professor, at Georgetown Law School. Apparently a sizable group of fellow ‘Hoya professors became uncomfortable with the idea of having Doug Feith, –a poster boy for horrendous policy decision making, and implementation– teaching on topics relating to the national security policy, using the Bush administration as the overriding model:
The distinguished practitioner in national security policy in the School of Foreign Service will not be returning to teach at Georgetown next semester after the university chose not to renew his two-year contract.
Technically I was appointed for two years and there was no extension of the appointment,” Feith said in an interview. My understanding is that there were some members of the faculty that didn’t want me on the faculty.”
Before coming to Georgetown in 2006, Feith served as under secretary of defense for policy from July 2001 to August 2005 under President Bush, playing a pivotal role in planning the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
When asked what he thought about subsequently being fired, in such a public, shameful manner, Feith put on his “Captain Obvious” hat, and hinted that it just may have had something to do with the fact he helped lie a country into war, and spent years figuring out ways around the Geneva Conventions “torture” mandate:
But Feith said he got the sense that the reason his contract was not extended was because of political views and past work that generated controversy among many faculty members.
I think it is the only reason,” Feith said.
When Feith was first hired in May 2006, several SFS faculty members objected to him joining the faculty. At least 35 professors signed a letter criticizing Feith’s role in planning the Iraqi invasion, saying that his actions constitute war crimes , which the most sympathetic [person] would have to think a highly dubious grounds for further employment.”
Feith more then likely saw this coming, seeing as though he clearly was not accepted by the vast majority of the Georgetown faculty from the get go, not to mention he kept running into those pesky “students” who had a tendency to protest his lectures. Dougie is now considering what to do next as he says good-bye to his alumni that for the most part wanted nothing to do with him after doing Bush’s dirty work and will head into the sunset.
As to what he planned on doing next — well, Feith just said he would probably not return to the public sector after what happened at Georgetown. And to that I say, it’s probably a good idea this slug stays as far away from impressionable youth as possible.
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[...] Ahmadinejad had a warmer reception at Columbia University in 2007 than did John McCain in 2006 or Douglas Feith at Georgetown this past [...]
And you brag about this ? What a dolt !
Ah, liberal tolerance and love of the free exchange of ideas. Burnt any witches lately?
This is an answer, or reply to the comment left by Orman
I can only speak for myself on this but the reason I am both a) glad this guy lost his job as a Professor to young mind, and b) think it is more the justified is not because I think conservative values should be silenced or pushed to the side, they deserve an equal ear.
However this man, Douglas Feith, assisted in arguably the biggest sham this country has ever fallen victim too. Furthermore, Feith consistently, after he left the white house, argued that torture was OK. When in fact IT IS NOT, under any circumstance. Hence the feeling/opinion that a “Professor” of LAW STUDENTS, who is teaching that torture is OK, while also having had a hand in the biggest foreign policy scam/lie/ whatever you want to call it, is unacceptable by any standards.
It has nothing to do with ideology sir, it does however have everything to do with the student, and molding them for a future in law. That cannot be accomplished with a a man such as Douglas Feith at the reigns.
~Matt
Doug Feith who has been demonized as a neo-con was Undersecretary of the Defense Department for Policy. His book “War and Decision‚Äù was recently published.
Two points in the book were particularly illuminating. One was that the motive for invading Iraq was NOT to take revenge, but rather to prevent further attacks — possibly but not necessarily from al Qaeda but from any one of the many groups in the network of Islamo Fascists that had since 1973 demonstrated their enmity to the United States and the West. For example, the truck bombing of the US marines at Beirut that killed 241 of them was not by al Qaeda, but by the Hezbollah. The invasion of the US Embassy grounds in Teheran was not by Sunni al Qaeda, but by Iranian Shi-ites under Khomenei. There are many terrorist groups around the world motivated by Islamic extremism.
The mainstream media has fostered the view and it is widely believed that the Bush motive was solely to “spread democracy in the MIddle East”. Feith explains this was perhaps an ancillary benefit but would not have, by itself, justified the invasion. Feith shows that what was of great concern following 9/11 was the development of WMD by a state terrorist and the use of one of the many non-state terrorist groups to carry out its use against the United States. Three or more states, e.g. Iran, Iraq, North Korea, might have filled that role but Iraq was the only one where diplomacy had been fully tried and had failed.
His second major point: Feith believed that if the US had quickly turned over governance of Iraq to Iraqis in a matter of two or three weeks following the fall of Baghdad, a policy that he had advised and Rumsfeld and President Bush had accepted, the problem of insurgency would not have developed in the strength that did occur. His policy had been followed in Afghanistan where no little insurgency occurred until recently and that is principally by foreign Arabs not Afghanis. But because of the Department of State and the CIA’s antagonism toward Chalabi, and because of Bremer’s own predilections that externals such as Chalabi would not be accepted as legitimate by internal Iraqi leaders, US governance continued for some 14 months as the insurgency developed and grew.
Feith also shows that Defense also demonstrated to the CIA that the CIA discounted many contacts between Iraq and terrorist groups the CIA had itself reported because of the CIA preconception that a secular state such as Iraq would not cooperate with religious radicals even against a common enemy. Feith suggested to the CIA that this displayed poor professionalism. This was played up in the mainstream media as an effort by Defense to get the CIA to change its “official views”. That this view is wrong is demonstrated by the Iraq under Saddam Hussein awarding a $25,000 fee to the families of suicide bombers and by Iran, a country dominated by Shi-ites financing and providing weapons and training to both the Shi-ite Hezbollah and the Sunni Hamas.
Finally Feith suggests that the President’s speechwriters failed to inform the public of the motive for invasion and did not even attempt to correct the wildly erroneous contentions raised by the left. His book is the first attempt to do so.
To date no major newspaper has published a review of the book. It is clear that his points diverge greatly from what has been printed in the mainstream media. He supports his points with contemporaneous notes and memoranda. The royalties from his book have been assigned to charities for wounded veterans of the Iraq war.
Feith has been driven from teaching at Georgetown by a faculty of left wing professors who objected to his views. Georgetown, however, gratefully received a check for $20 million from Saudi Prince Talal for its Middle Eastern center headed by John Esposito, a long time apologist for the Islamic radicals.
Doug Feith showed a committee of Congresss with contemporaneous memoranda that he had favored giving even the Taliban enemy combatants the benefit of the Geneva Convention Common Article 3 but was against providing them with the benefits of POW status which prohibits the US from interrogating them on anything beyond their name, rank and serial number. He showed that under President Reagan the US specifically objected to the insertion of a protocol that would have awarded POW status to enemy combatants who dressed like civilian noncombatants and who committed terrorism by targeting cvilian non-combatants. He said that rewarding them with POW status when they were terrorists and not lawful enemy combatants would promote more terrorism.
[...] quickly dissipated once I recalled that this is the same institution that, until last year, paid Doug Feith – Doug Feith — to teach students “national security policy” and that [...]
[...] quickly dissipated once I recalled that this is the same institution that, until last year, paid Doug Feith – Doug Feith — to teach students “national security policy” and that [...]
[...] quickly dissipated once I recalled that this is the same institution that, until last year, paid Doug Feith – Doug Feith — to teach students “national security policy” and that [...]