Philip Gold

Philip Gold "served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps before joining the faculty of Georgetown University in 1982. Since 1992, he has served as a senior fellow at Seattle's Discovery Institute, specializing in national security." 2002

"After declaring his split with conservatives and the administration's war policy in Seattle Weekly, Philip Gold, an old-line right-wing intellectual, has resigned his post as a defense analyst at Seattle's conservative Discovery Institute, Seattle Times reports. Gold, who has also been on talk radio debating Dan Savage, editor of The Stranger, says, 'Conservatives have lost their soul,' but he can't join the 'blame-America-first-crowd' either." [Posted January 14, 2003] Source: Seattle Times. 

War in Iraq

 * "So what's Iraq about? In the end, it's not about that nasty man or the nasty things he's collecting. It's about what the policy wonks call 'destabilization'. It's about taking the next step into a regional and a global chaos that could wreck this planet.


 * "So what do we do when the government's careening toward disaster, the anti-war movement's comatose, and the media keep us on perpetual spin? For starters, we dare to risk unilateral rationality. Which tells us that we've yet to begin to develop an effective strategy for coping with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, let alone the imminent fracturing of dozens of nations.


 * "Iraq?


 * "Not now." Week of September 12-19, 2002


 * "The victors of World War I insisted on reparations from Germany's most valuable economic asset, its manufacturing plant. The effort backfired. The French occupied the Ruhr in 1922 to collect the money, and were frustrated by disobedience. It may be easier to pump Iraq's petroleum and commandeer it, but the political price would be huge.


 * "'Anything that smells like taking Iraqi oil to pay for the war will backfire,' says Gold.


 * "Even if we don't steal their oil, our military occupation will be hated. Iraq is not a country to be won over with candy bars and baseball. We will not be there, as in South Korea or West Germany, to protect Iraqis from foreign enemies.


 * "The Iraqis are going to want us out -- and a lot sooner than we will be planning to get out." January 15, 2003

See Operation Iraqi Freedom: Military and Political Dissent.

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