The Neocon Whispering into Trump's Ear

David Wurmser

Jon Schwarz writes at The Intercept:

An influential neoconservative in President George W. Bush’s White House who became a significant force behind the push for war with Iraq in 2003, [David] Wurmser has recently been serving as an informal adviser to the Trump administration, according to new reporting from Bloomberg News. In that capacity, Wurmser helped make the case for the recent drone strike that assassinated Iranian Gen. Qassim Suleimani...

Wurmser wrote several memos to then-national security adviser John Bolton in May and June of 2019. In the documents, according to Bloomberg, Wurmser argued that aggressive action by the U.S. — such as the killing of Suleimani — would, in Wurmser’s words, “rattle the delicate internal balance of forces and the control over them upon which the [Iranian] regime depends for stability and survival.”

The significance of this is two-fold. First, while it was already clear that the neoconservative movement has powerfully influenced the Trump administration, Wurmser’s role on Iran is further evidence of the sway that neoconservatism still holds on the U.S. right — despite the catastrophic invasion of Iraq and Trump’s disavowal of the war. Second, it demonstrates that neoconservatives such as Wurmser still cherish a peculiar theory about Iranian society...

In his memos to Bolton, he wrote that the U.S. will not need “boots on the ground” because “Iranians would both be impressed and potentially encouraged by a targeted attack on symbols of repression.”

This theory, so popular among neoconservatives, has always been bizarre: Nations generally become more right-wing when under attack. For instance, after the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, Americans did not demand that Bush be impeached and Dennis Kucinich move into the Oval Office.

We should definitely consider the possibility that the neocons don’t know what they’re talking about. And yet, here we are, with those self-same neocons again helping shape our foreign policy in delusional and dangerous ways.

Some background on Wurmser:

He served as Middle East Adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney and was special assistant to John R. Bolton at the State Department.

He has been credited as being one of the main authors of the 1996 report "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," a paper prepared for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. -RW