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I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it. Anthony Zinni.įrom May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. But there were other enemies within, anyone who dared voice any skepticism about their grand plans, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Gen. The evil was recognized by the leadership to be resident mainly in the Middle East and articulated by Islamic clerics and radicals. It wore the clothing of counterterrorism and spoke the language of a holy war between good and evil. While the people were very much alive, I saw a dead philosophy - Cold War anti-communism and neo-imperialism - walking the corridors of the Pentagon. Night Shyamalan movie - intense, fascinating and frightening. The education I would receive there was like an M. By May, the call transmogrified into a posthaste demand for any staff officer, and I was "volunteered" to enter what would be a well-appointed den of iniquity. In April, a call for volunteers went out for the Near East South Asia directorate (NESA). In the spring of 2002, I was a cynical but willing staff officer, almost two years into my three-year tour at the office of the secretary of defense, undersecretary for policy, sub-Saharan Africa. Ben Franklin's comment that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia had delivered "a republic, madam, if you can keep it" would come to have special meaning. It ended with 10 months of duty in a strange new country, observing up close and personal a process of decision making for war not sanctioned by the Constitution we had all sworn to uphold. My career started in 1978 with the smooth seduction of a full four-year ROTC scholarship. I regarded my military vocation as interesting, rewarding and apolitical. dissertation in world politics at Catholic University. I had completed Air Command and Staff College and Navy War College seminar programs, two master's degrees, and everything but my Ph.D. I had served as a communications officer in the field and in acquisition programs, as a speechwriter for the National Security Agency director, and on the Headquarters Air Force and the office of the secretary of defense staffs covering African affairs. In July of last year, after just over 20 years of service, I retired as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S.
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