Perle Speaks

November 01, 2004

Richard Perle, the so-called “prince of darkness” and leader of the neoconservative national security team, hasn’t been much heard from lately.

So here’s a piece from the Prague Post—yes, that Prague, in the Czech republic—in which Perle speaks his pre-election mind. (Just in case you needed another reason to vote for Kerry.) In it, Perle says that a Kerry victory will be “a very great encouragement to the terrorists.”

A defeat for George W. Bush in the race for the White House would spur on terrorists who have America in their sights, according to Richard Perle. A former Cold War hawk and until recently an adviser to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Perle is not a man to mince his words. Or to hold back from voicing the kind of views that make left-wingers and opponents of war wince.

For instance, he believes a "surgical strike" against North Korea is one way of ensuring that it is not pursuing a nuclear-weapons program that is a threat to the United States.

"I think it will be dangerous for America" if Democratic contender John Kerry becomes president, said Perle, a leading light among a band of U.S. neoconservatives who are considered by some to have had a major role in shaping Bush's policies.

"I fear that if he [Kerry] were elected, without any scientific basis for it, people would say it that it was President Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq and the war on terror that led to his defeat," Perle said. "And if that becomes believed -- and it certainly doesn't have to be true to be believed, particularly in the Arab world -- I think this would be a very great encouragement to the terrorists."