Douglas J. Feith - Views and Publications

Views and Publications

Feith is a Republican, and has contributed money to various party candidates over the years. Sympathetic to the neoconservative wing of the party, he has over the last 30 years published many works on U.S. national security policy. His work on US–Soviet détente, arms control and Arab–Israeli issues generated considerable debate. One of Feith's controversial views was his argument that increasing the number of political appointees equated to more democracy. Given that democracy involves those being represented choosing their representatives, this view seems to be self-contradictory.

Feith's writings on international law and on foreign and defense policy have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The New Republic and elsewhere. He has contributed chapters to a number of books, including James W. Muller's Churchill as Peacemaker, Raphael Israeli's The Dangers of a Palestinian State and Uri Ra'anan's Hydra of Carnage: International Linkages of Terrorism, as well as serving as co-editor for Israel's Legitimacy in Law and History.

Feith has long advocated a policy of "peace through strength". He was an outspoken skeptic of U.S.-Soviet détente and of the Oslo, Hebron and Wye Processes on Palestinian-Israeli peace. In particular, he criticized the Oslo Accords and the Camp David peace agreement mediated by former President Carter between Egypt and Israel. In 1997, he published a lengthy article in Commentary, titled "A Strategy for Israel". In it, Feith argued that the Oslo Accords were being undermined by Yasser Arafat's failure to fulfill peace pledges and Israel's failure to uphold the integrity of the accords it had concluded with Arafat. Furthermore, he was an opponent of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the International Criminal Court and the Chemical Weapons Convention which he criticized as ineffective and dangerous to U.S. interests.

In 1998, Feith was one of a number of U.S. officials who signed an open letter to President Bill Clinton calling for the United States to oust Saddam Hussein. Feith was part of a group of former national security officials in the 1990s who supported Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress and encouraged the U.S. Congress to pass the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Congress approved the Act, and Clinton signed it into law.

Feith generally favors US support for Israel and has promoted US-Israeli cooperation. Along with Richard Perle and David Wurmser, he was a member of the study group which authored a controversial report entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, a set of policy recommendations for the newly elected Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The report was published by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies without an individual author being named. According to the report, Feith was one of the people who participated in roundtable discussions that produced ideas that the report reflects. Feith pointed out in a September 16, 2004 letter to the editor of the Washington Post that he was not the co-author and did not clear the report's final text. He wrote, "There is no warrant for attributing any particular idea, let alone all of them, to any one participant."

Feith also served on the board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a think tank that promotes a military and strategic alliance between the United States and Israel. Feith was one of the eighteen founding members of the organization One Jerusalem to oppose the Oslo peace agreement. Its purpose is "saving a united Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel." He is also Director of Foundation for Jewish Studies, which "offers in-depth study programs for the adult Washington Jewish community that cross denominational lines."

Feith was interviewed by the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes in a segment that was aired on April 6, 2008. During this interview he promoted his newly released memoir, War and Decision and defended the decision making that led to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.