Intifada
14th October 2004, 15:32
More than 650 foreign affairs experts from the United States and abroad have signed an open letter condemning Bushs foreign policy generally and his decision to go to war on Iraq specifically, saying that Iraq war is the most misguided since Vietnam.
"We're advising the administration, which is already in a deep hole, to stop digging," said Professor Richard Samuels of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The letter was released by "Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy," a nonpartisan group.
"The current American policy centered around the war in Iraq is the most misguided one since the Vietnam period", the letter said.
The experts have denounced Iraq war, saying that it has distorted "public debate on foreign and national security policy (with) an emphasis on speculation instead of facts, on mythology instead of calculation and on misplaced moralizing over considerations of national interest."
"You have folks who are conservative, folks who take very different approaches to understanding world politics," said Stuart Kaufman, the University of Delaware professor who organised the letter.
"Not only is it a substantial fraction of the entire field, but it reflects the entire spectrum of intellectual opinion, all agreeing on this when they agree on barely anything else."
"Many of the justifications offered by the Bush administration for the war in Iraq have been proven untrue by credible studies, including by US government agencies," the experts said.
"Even on moral grounds, the case for war was dubious: The war itself has killed over a thousand Americans and unknown thousands of Iraqis, and if the threat of civil war becomes reality, ordinary Iraqis could be even worse off than they were under Saddam Hussein.
"The administration knew most of these facts and risks before the war, and could have discovered the others, but instead it played down, concealed or misrepresented them," experts added.
Scholars from 150 different colleges and universities in 40 states signed the letter. They include former Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council staff, as well as six of the last seven presidents of the American Political Science Association.
"I think it is telling that so many specialists on international relations, who rarely agree on anything, are unified in their position on the high costs that the U.S. is incurring from this war," said Professor Robert Keohane of Duke University.
Source (http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_ID=5141)
"We're advising the administration, which is already in a deep hole, to stop digging," said Professor Richard Samuels of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The letter was released by "Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy," a nonpartisan group.
"The current American policy centered around the war in Iraq is the most misguided one since the Vietnam period", the letter said.
The experts have denounced Iraq war, saying that it has distorted "public debate on foreign and national security policy (with) an emphasis on speculation instead of facts, on mythology instead of calculation and on misplaced moralizing over considerations of national interest."
"You have folks who are conservative, folks who take very different approaches to understanding world politics," said Stuart Kaufman, the University of Delaware professor who organised the letter.
"Not only is it a substantial fraction of the entire field, but it reflects the entire spectrum of intellectual opinion, all agreeing on this when they agree on barely anything else."
"Many of the justifications offered by the Bush administration for the war in Iraq have been proven untrue by credible studies, including by US government agencies," the experts said.
"Even on moral grounds, the case for war was dubious: The war itself has killed over a thousand Americans and unknown thousands of Iraqis, and if the threat of civil war becomes reality, ordinary Iraqis could be even worse off than they were under Saddam Hussein.
"The administration knew most of these facts and risks before the war, and could have discovered the others, but instead it played down, concealed or misrepresented them," experts added.
Scholars from 150 different colleges and universities in 40 states signed the letter. They include former Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council staff, as well as six of the last seven presidents of the American Political Science Association.
"I think it is telling that so many specialists on international relations, who rarely agree on anything, are unified in their position on the high costs that the U.S. is incurring from this war," said Professor Robert Keohane of Duke University.
Source (http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_ID=5141)