Brent Scowcroft, RIP.

A truly great American, Brent Scowcroft, died on Thursday at the age of 95.  Mr. Scowcroft was National Security Adviser to two Presidents, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.  Mr. Scowcroft initially did not want to be National Security Adviser to President Bush, saying he had already done that job.  But President Bush persisted and Mr. Scowcroft took the job, helping President Bush achieve one of greatest foreign policy records in the post-World War II era, including peaceful reunification of Germany while remaining in NATO, creation of a large coalition of nations to oust Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait – and stopping when the job was done, and working to ensure the dissolution of the Soviet Union was peaceful, the only time in history such an empire ended without war.

While some of the articles on Mr. Scowcroft like to focus on the op-ed he wrote in 2002 urging that the United States not invade Iraq, they fail to mention that he wrote another op-ed in August of 2003 saying that, once we were in Iraq, we now had to succeed and that he testified before Congress in early 2007 in favor of President George W. Bush’s “surge” of troops .

Mr. Scowcroft co-wrote, with President George H.W. Bush, A World Transformed, which is one of the six books in the “Books Worth Reading” list in the left column.  It is a fascinating book on the good that a competent president helped by competent aides can accomplish.

Finally, a personal note.  The obituaries note Mr. Scowcroft had one daughter, Karen.  In the early or mid-1990s, I was helping one of the subsidiaries of the company I worked for with a financing.  Karen Scowcroft was the lawyer for the other side, the company providing the financing.  I wish I had told her how much I admired her father.
----------
¹ George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (1998), pp. 19-20.