TMCnet News
Missourian has president's ear on matters of war(St. Louis Post-Dispatch (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WASHINGTON _ J.D. Crouch's office is unpretentious, even hard to spot unless you know where to look. Much like the public persona of the man himself. A Missourian who has worked for the administration since its first days in positions of rising influence, Crouch has remained virtually invisible. His West Wing office may be modest, but it's close to everyone he needs to talk to regularly, including the president of the United States. Crouch, 47, is deputy national security adviser to President Bush. With a deep background in national security and international affairs, Crouch is a key White House adviser to Bush on the war on terror. March 1 marked his first year on the job. So what does he tell Bush? Crouch won't discuss his advice to the president, but those familiar with him paint a picture of a man who will seek clashing views and reach a decision, even if there isn't consensus. And, they say, he's someone who is willing to use American military power to achieve aims but who is practical about its limits. "A difference between J.D. and some others on Iraq and Iran is that he was not responsible for those matters in the first administration, so he has less invested in earlier decisions and is potentially more objective in assessing the situation," says Richard Perle, a former senior Pentagon official who knows Crouch well. He is now with the American Enterprise Institute. "He's very much a team player, but he's probably got more perspective than people who've made those decisions. He is more likely to see the deficiencies in a policy he didn't have a hand in shaping, than the people who did in fact shape the policy." At the same time, Crouch is a foreign-policy conservative who believes that American power makes the world a better place. When Crouch was nominated for a Pentagon job in 2001, critics said he was too hard-line on North Korea, Cuba, nuclear testing and international treaties. As a private citizen, Crouch had, for example, criticized the first President Bush for removing tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea. "He had extreme right-wing positions on issues compared to the previous Republican administration," says John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, an arms control group in Washington. "But once he entered the administration (of George W. Bush) he was right within the mainstream of this very conservative and neo-conservative crew." (EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM) Frank Gaffney is a past Pentagon official who now runs the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank in Washington. "Knowing him as I do," Gaffney said, "I'm almost certain that he is exercising influence, and influence that is reinforcing the most robust policies and positions of this administration" on Iraq, Iran and other foreign-policy hot spots. (END OPTIONAL TRIM) One area where Crouch is likely taking a stand, given his background and recent trips he's undertaken, is the need to strengthen relationships with U.S. allies. "Coalition management and NATO and global missile defense, on those things I'm sure he has not just input but weight," says Mira Ricardel, who worked with Crouch at the Pentagon in Bush's first term. As assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, Crouch worked to restructure NATO and forge ties with former Soviet republics after Sept. 11, 2001. When he was named ambassador to Romania in 2004, Ricardel replaced him. Crouch's experience as a college professor in Missouri "propels him to look very deeply into every issue, not to prejudge it," she says. "Unfortunately, the reputation a lot of us conservatives have is we just prejudge things, that it's all ideology. ... His approach is intellectually honest. He will never seek to package things in a way that is against where the evidence leads." (EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM) Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, has grown increasingly disenchanted with the Iraq war. He has spoken about the war frequently with Crouch. "He's always available," Skelton said. "I find him very open. He doesn't give me the party line. He gives me straight facts. He doesn't try to spin things at all, at least he doesn't to me. He just tries to tell me what's happening, or what I should know, or what's about to happen." (END OPTIONAL TRIM) The National Security Council is the president's staff for foreign policy and security issues. Crouch has three principal roles: to manage the 200-member NSC on a daily basis; fill in as top man for Stephen Hadley; and oversee the coordination of policy among the State Department, Pentagon, Joint Chiefs of Staff and director of national intelligence, as well as the departments of energy, commerce or treasury. Crouch has been deeply involved in policy toward Iran and in the president's recent trip to Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. He also chairs a weekly meeting about policy on Iraq, with a focus on counter-insurgency efforts, reconstruction and political stability. Acknowledging that the administration has done a poor job explaining the war in Iraq, Crouch says the president is now trying to "engage in a very consistent dialogue with the American people on Iraq." "I think everybody around here could agree we need to be better about communicating the strategy than we've been over the past two years," Crouch says. Despite flagging public confidence in the administration, Crouch says he's confident it's helping to chart a solid course for the nation in "what's going to be a long struggle." Crouch compares this period to the early Cold War days after World War II, and terms Bush's effort to promote democracy in the Muslim world an idea "in some ways ahead of its time." (EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM) Loren Thompson, chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute, calls Crouch "a longstanding member of the Republican Party's foreign policy intelligentsia." "In every administration there are a handful of people who are carried over from a party's past administrations, because they provide the intellectual foundation for that party's philosophy. J.D. Crouch is one of those people," Thompson says. "I am amazed at the frequency with which he pops up in Republican administrations. He obviously is a trusted player." (END OPTIONAL TRIM) Michael O'Hanlon, military expert at the Brookings Institute and an adviser during Al Gore's 2000 presidential bid, says Crouch is "generally thought of as one of the more intellectual of the Bush administration loyalists." Perle says the White House should be using him more. "Absolutely, because they sure aren't doing a good job making the case. Instead, they send out the flacks, so you get an entirely different level of discourse. It's one of the serious deficiencies of this administration. Someone like J.D., who's on top of the issues and is quite persuasive, should be meeting with reporters far more often, making the case." ___ (c) 2006, St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Visit the Post-Dispatch on the World Wide Web at http://www.stltoday.com/ Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail [email protected]. |