Raw Story
Tuesday, January 9, 2007

President Bush's new strategy for Iraq was crafted by a little known aide who is a strong advocate of escalating the troops and who alarmed Democrats over a decade ago when he proposed attacking North Korea with nuclear weapons to stop its nuclear programme, the Wall Street Journal reports.

"When President Bush addresses the nation tomorrow night, the strategies he offers for Iraq will represent months of work by J.D. Crouch, an academic turned deputy national security adviser," Yochi J. Dreazen writes.

"Diplomacy in Pyongyang without military power is appeasement plain and simple," Crouch wrote in 1995.

Then, in May of 2005, after becoming Bush's new deputy national security adviser, Crouch found himself "in a position to do something about it...but the solutions of Crouch's youth in academia look more complicated from the seat of power," The Washington Post reported.

Excerpts from WSJ article:

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Mr. Crouch, who once led graduate students on hikes, now aims to chart a new path to stabilize Iraq. He will see his belief in American military power reflected in the president's expected call to send tens of thousands of additional U.S. combat personnel to Iraq. The 48-year-old volunteer sheriff has been an advocate of the so-called surge of new troops to Iraq, administration officials said. In addition to the call for new troops, aides said tomorrow Mr. Bush also will seek a U.S.-funded effort to spur job creation and economic growth in Iraq.

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The Democrats expressed alarm over an academic article he wrote in 1995 that called for dispatching more troops to South Korea, redeploying American tactical nuclear weapons to the country, and bombing North Korea if Pyongyang refused to abandon its nuclear program. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, described Mr. Crouch's North Korea proposals as "reckless."

Mr. Van Cleave said the portrait painted by Democrats at the hearing was unfair. "J.D. has principles about national security: He recognizes that arms-control agreements haven't always worked well, that American strength depends on our military power, and that there are times when we need to use the military," Mr. Van Cleave said. "But those aren't 'radical' positions. The only thing he's fanatical about is USC football."

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