Brent Scowcroft

Brent Scowcroft gave an interview with the New York Observer that was published today. Scowcroft worked for the first President Bush. As he notes, he's a friend of this administration. He also has some insightful criticism of their foreign policy direction. This is a highly recommended read.

"From these "things," a distinct picture emerged of the Presidency of George W. Bush according to Mr. Scowcroft: one which is equally indebted to the advice of a shadow cabinet of neoconservatives, the President’s evangelical brand of Christianity—which has given him a feeling of manifest destiny about conquering terrorism in the Middle East—or the father whose one-term Presidential destiny he is at pains not to live out himself.

It’s because of the influence of these forces on the President that Mr. Bush may have "overreacted" to the threat of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, said Mr. Scowcroft, and that the "preoccupation with terrorism" meant that "we are maybe not paying enough attention to other problems in the world that have nothing to do with terrorism, but are really significant." Mr. Bush had squandered opportunities to avoid war in Iraq, said Mr. Scowcroft, who also speculated that the Bush administration had exaggerated the threat of weapons of mass destruction because it provided "the only reason which you could use to propel a war [in] a particular time frame."