Academics slam Bush policy

2004-10-13 11:35

Washington - The Iraq war is the most misguided since Vietnam, benefits terrorists and is justified by false claims, said more than 650 foreign-policy specialists in a letter to President George W Bush.

"We're advising the administration, which is already in a deep hole, to stop digging," said Professor Richard Samuels of Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Tuesday.

The letter was released by "Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy," a non-partisan group.

"The current American policy centred around the war in Iraq is the most misguided one since the Vietnam period, one which harms the cause of the struggle against extreme Islamist terrorists," the letter said.

The experts said the war 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 moralising over considerations of national interest."

Bush applauded for destroying al-Qaeda

The letter applauded Bush for destroying al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, but called the inability to capture or kill most al-Qaeda fighters a "blunder," and said finding terrorists in Afghanistan was pre-empted by the war in Iraq.

"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," they said.

The scholars signing the letter are from more than 150 colleges and universities in 40 states. 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 US is incurring from this war," said Professor Robert Keohane of Duke University.

- AFP