Giuliani names foreign policy team

by Craig Gordon of Newsday

Rudy Giuliani just announced his campaign’s foreign policy team, which includes one of the founders of the neo-conservative movement – Norman Podhoretz – a man who just weeks ago advocated bombing Iran to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons.

It’s not surprising that Giuliani would pick hawkish foreign policy advisers. But in choosing Podhoretz, he’s embracing a key proponent of what has become a largely discredited movement in Washington. It was neo-conservatives who pushed hard for the war in Iraq – think former Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith – and right now, President George Bush is paying the price politically.

And even Giuliani has never flat-out pushed for bombing Iran, though he’s certainly left open the possibility. But Podhoretz’s influence might explain Rudy’s recently stepped-up anti-Iran language, such as when he said in Jacksonville Saturday, "No way, no how should Iran be a nuclear power."

As for Podhoretz, he argues that Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons is like Hitler’s drive for conquest. "In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force--any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938," Podhoretz wrote for the Wall Street Journal on May 30.

The eight-member team also includes people involved with the Hoover Institution, a conservative think-tank, and some with direct experience in Israeli affairs. Those include chief foreign policy adviser Charles Hill of Hoover, who once served as the political counselor for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv; Martin Kramer of Harvard University, an expert on Islam who is a fellow at the pro-Israel think-tank Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Peter Berkowitz of Hoover, who co-founded the Israel Program on Constitutional Government.