Operation Surge is brought to you by….
Updated below
The fine folks at the American Enterprise Institute. It’s a pro-business, right-wing think tank that promotes free-enterprise capitalism and is the home of many of the prominent neo-conservatives that currently influence our nation’s actions.
It is the landlord for the Project for the New American Century, the group co-founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in 1997 that pushed so hard for a war in Iraq with regime change as a goal. The PNAC seems to be the war-mongering arm of the AEI, with a policy document entitled, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, that advocates for global military domination. Project co-chairman for this document? Donald Kagan, father of the aforementioned Robert Kagan, and also the father of the yet-to-be-mentioned Frederick Kagan.
Josh Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo pointed me towards this article from the Times of London. In the closing paragraphs, reporter Sarah Baxter highlights the degree of influence that this Kagan family has had on the Iraq war.
“Frederick Kagan, 36, is the author of Choosing Victory, a blueprint for the surge adopted by President George W Bush. Just as everybody had begun writing off the influence of the neocons at the White House, genial, chubby-faced Frederick gave the muscular intellectuals a lease of life.
It was at Camp David last June that Kagan, a military historian and fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, outlined his plans for pouring more troops into Iraq to Bush and his war cabinet.
Donald Rumsfeld, the then defence secretary, was unimpressed, but Kagan’s views got another hearing when Bush was searching for ways to ditch the seemingly defeatist recommendations of James Baker’s Iraq Study Group. “Wow, you mean we can still win this war?” a grateful Bush reportedly said.”