Elliott Abrams: The Neocon’s Neocon

Quotes:

Elliott Abrams embodies neoconservatism. Perhaps more than any other neoconservative, Abrams has integrated the various influences that have shaped today’s neoconservative agenda. A creature of the neoconservative incubator, Abrams is a political intellectual and operative who has advanced the neoconservative agenda with chutzpah and considerable success. As a government official, Abrams organized front groups to provide private and clandestine official support for the Nicaraguan Contras; served as the president of an ethics institute despite his own record of lying to Congress and managing illegal operations; rose to high positions in the National Security Council to oversee U.S. foreign policy in regions where he had no professional experience, only ideological positions; proved himself as a political intellectual in books and essays that explore the interface between orthodox Judaism, American culture, and political philosophy; and demonstrated his considerable talents in public diplomacy as a political art in the use of misinformation and propaganda to ensure public and policy support for foreign relations agendas that would otherwise be soundly rejected... The U.S.-backed and organized Contras were spearheading a counterrevolution against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Congress had prohibited U.S. government military support for the Contras because of their pattern of human rights abuses. Abrams pleaded guilty to two lesser offenses (including withholding information from Congress) to avoid a trial and a possible jail term. Abrams and five other Iran-Contra figures were pardoned by President George H.W. Bush on Christmas Eve 1992, shortly before the senior Bush left office. By pardoning Abrams, John Poindexter, and other former Reagan officials, Bush was in effect protecting himself. At that time media and congressional investigations of Iran-Contra scandal were threatening to expose the role of Bush himself, who was Reagan’s vice president during the executive branch’s program of illegal support to the Nicaraguan Contras... Regarding Abrams’s biased stance on Middle East affairs, Dr. Laila al-Marayati, a former member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, wrote: “From the vantage point of the [U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom], as an American and as a Muslim, I had the unfortunate opportunity of witnessing­clearly and unequivocally­the deep bias that Abrams brings to his new position. …As chairman of the commission at the time, Abrams led the delegation to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but did not go to Jerusalem with three of us as he was of the opinion that there are no problems with religious freedom in Israel that would warrant the attention of the commission. …Bypassing Israel was not the only way Abrams undermined the Commission’s visit to the Middle East. …Abrams managed to snub the leading Islamic cleric in Egypt… which nearly created a diplomatic nightmare that was only narrowly averted by the intervention of the U.S. ambassador.” ...Since Bush’s reelection in early November, Abrams has become one of the administration’s most high-profile officials. He has acted as Bush’s envoy to Europe and Israel as part of the administration’s new attention to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Abrams participated in an hour-plus meeting in the Oval Office with the president and Natan Sharansky, Israel’s minister for Jerusalem and diaspora affairs. Sharansky, the author of The Case for Democracy, subsequently met with Rice. Both Bush and Rice have repeatedly referred to Sharansky’s book in their pronouncements about the U.S. government’s new commitment to ending tyranny and spreading democracy, frequently using the same phrasing as Abransky. Also in November, Abrams arranged conference calls with the leaders of the major national Jewish American organizations in advance of formal meetings with Rice. Last week, Abrams traveled to Israel and met with Ariel Sharon’s top adviser Dov Weisglass to smooth the way for Secretary of State’s visit with Prime Minister Sharon. After the scandals involving neoconservatives in the late 1980s and the end of the cold war, many foreign policy observers wrote off the neoconservatives as a spent force. The same dismissal of the enduring influence of the neoconservative camp became widespread among pundits and analysts when the Iraq invasion proved a quagmire rather than a liberation “cakewalk.” It’s likely that Elliott Abrams, who has established a close working relationship with Condoleezza Rice, will become the leading administration architect of Middle East policy during the second Bush administration. Like the Middle East policy of the first administration, the regional initiatives of the new administration will continue to be guided by neocon notions about the centrality of Israel, the U.S. mission to restructure the Arab world, and the use of public diplomacy gloss of spreading freedom and democracy to advance U.S. national security strategy.