|
Kenneth Michael "Ken" Pollack, PhD (born 1966), is a noted former CIA intelligence analyst and expert on Middle East politics and military affairs. He has served on the National Security Council staff and has written several articles and books on international relations. Pollack obtained a BA from Yale University, in 1988, and went on to earn a PhD from MIT in 1996. He has served in a variety of roles in government. From 1988 until 1995, he was analyst on Iraqi and Iranian military issues for the Central Intelligence Agency. He spent a year as Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs with the United States National Security Council. In 1999, he rejoined the NSC as the Director for Persian Gulf Affairs. He also served two stints as a professor with the National Defense University. Outside of government, he worked for the Brookings Institution as the director of research at its Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He previously worked for the Council of Foreign Relations as their director of national security studies. He has also written four books, the first two of which were published in 2002. His first monograph, ''Arabs at War'', examined the foreign policy of six Arab nations in the years between World War II and the Persian Gulf War. Pollack is married to the well-known television journalist Andrea Koppel, the daughter of Ted Koppel. ==Advocacy of Iraq invasion== In his second book, ''The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq'' (pub. 2002), Pollack details the history of United States actions against Iraq since the Persian Gulf War of 1991. He says that the United States should invade Iraq, and describes ways of going about it. Pollack argued that Saddam Hussein was simply too volatile and aggressive in his policies to be trusted not to begin another conflict in a volatile region. In ''The Threatening Storm'', Pollack argued "the only prudent and realistic course of action left to the United States is to mount a full-scale invasion of Iraq to smash the Iraqi armed forces, depose Saddam’s regime, and rid the country of weapons of mass destruction.” Pollack predicted, “It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars.” Likewise, he wrote, “we should not exaggerate the danger of casualties among American troops. U.S. forces in Bosnia have not suffered a single casualty from hostile action because they have become so attentive and skillful at force protection.”〔''Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq'', Random House, 2002〕 Pollack is credited with persuading liberals of the case for the Iraq war. New York Times columnist Bill Keller, in supporting the Iraq war in 2003, wrote “Kenneth Pollack, the Clinton National Security Council expert whose argument for invading Iraq is surely the most influential book of this season, has provided intellectual cover for every liberal who finds himself inclining toward war but uneasy about Mr. Bush.”〔 (The War Expert ), Colombia Journalism Review, November/December 2007〕 Liberal writer Matthew Yglesias in the LA Times also attested to Pollack’s influence: Many have criticized his support for the Invasion of Iraq, including Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, who called ''The Threatening Storm'' the "most meretricious contribution" to the pre-war "debate" on military action and included it in the select bibliography section of his 2005 book ''The Great War for Civilisation'' in order to "show just how specific – and misleading – were the efforts to persuade Americans to invade."〔Fisk, Robert (2006). ''The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 922, 1062.〕 Many critics, as well as many of those who used the book to justify their support of the invasion, overlooked the more balanced presentation on the pros and cons of war to be found in The Threatening Storm. As Chris Suellentrop of Slate pointed out before the invasion on March 5, 2003: Pollack responded to the Suellentrop article by saying that he was unhappy that many people seemed to have read only the subtitle of his book, which had not been his choice. He also said: Pollack later was a strong supporter of the Iraq War troop surge of 2007 advocated by General David Petraeus, which entailed a buildup of US ground forces to improve the security of the Iraqi population and help Iraq increase its governmental capacity, develop employment programs, and improve daily life for its citizens. He laid out some of his arguments in support of the surge in the June 2007 NY Times article "A War We Just Might Win," which was co-authored with Michael E. O'Hanlon of Brookings. 〔(), Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack, "A War We Just Might Win," 30 July 2007〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kenneth M. Pollack」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|