Michael O'Hanlon

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Michael Edward O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, specializing in defense and foreign policy issues. He began his career as a budget analyst in the defense field.[1] He is known as an unequivocal war hawk.[citation needed]

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[edit] Education and early career

Michael O'Hanlon earned an A.B. in 1982, M.S.E. in 1987, M.A. in 1988, and a Ph.D in 1991 all from Princeton University, and is now a visiting lecturer there. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kinshasa in the 1980s.

[edit] Personal life

O'Hanlon married Cathryn Ann Garland in 1994[2]. They have two daughters, one of whom has autism.[citation needed]

[edit] Thoughts on Iraq

On July 9, 2007, O'Hanlon said during a panel discussion in Washington, D.C. that a "soft partition" of Iraq is already occurring that would break the country up into three autonomous regions - Kurdistan, "Shi'astan" and "Sunnistan".

Iraq is being ethnically segregated. Ethnic cleansing is on its way, it's happening, and at least a couple million people have been displaced. It's becoming Bosnia in some ways, he added.[3]

In a July 30, 2007 op-ed piece in the New York Times O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack, just back from an 8-day DOD-scheduled itinerary in Iraq reported that:

[A]s two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily 'victory' but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with. [4]

Critics however, have called into question the veracity of O'Hanlon's claim to have been a harsh critic of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq, arguing that it was a deceitful assertion intended to lend the article increased credibility[citation needed]. In reality, according to attorney and columnist Glenn Greenwald, O'Hanlon and Pollack "were not only among the biggest cheerleaders for the war, but repeatedly praised the Pentagon's strategy in Iraq and continuously assured Americans things were going well". [5]

On August 25, 2007, he made an attempt to answer his critics in an Op-ed in Washington Post [6]. In response to the charge that he based his judgment on 'dog-on-pony shows' in Baghdad, he claimed that his assessment was also informed by years of study of the situation through a large number of knowledgeable and thorough confidential sources.

[edit] Letter to Washington Post

O'Hanlon has publicly gone on record as being skeptical of the Bush administration's approach to the war in Iraq. For instance, in a piece written for the Washington Post on March 27, 2006 about potential civil war, O'Hanlon stated:

  • ... [I]nitial indications are that American thinking is on the wrong track ... [T]his approach, which mirrors the relatively passive approach U.S. troops took to the reprisal violence after the Feb. 22 bombing [...] is akin to our decision to stand aside and allow wanton looting after Saddam Hussein fell in April 2003, and it could have comparably disastrous consequences ... [A]s a full indication of what our military plans would be for any incipient civil war, it is not the right strategy. Now is the time to reassess.

[edit] Letter by Project for the New American Century

O'Hanlon signed a letter and a statement on postwar Iraq published by the Project for the New American Century.[7][8]

[edit] Bibliography

All books published by Brookings Institution Press

  • Crisis on the Korean Peninsula: How to Deal with a Nuclear North Korea (with Mike Mochizuki; 2003)
  • Neither Star Wars nor Sanctuary: Constraining the Military Uses of Space (2004)
  • Defense Strategy for the Post-Saddam Era (2005)
  • The Future of Arms Control (with Michael A. Levi; 2005)
  • Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007 (with Michael d'Arcy, Peter Orszag, Jeremy Shapiro, and James Steinberg; 2006)
  • Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security (with Kurt Campbell; 2006)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Brookings Institute website
  2. ^ New York Times
  3. ^ UPI.com
  4. ^ New York Times opinion piece dated 07/30/2007
  5. ^ Salon.com
  6. ^ Michael O'Hanlon - The Work Behind Our Iraq Views - washingtonpost.com
  7. ^ Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces January 28, 2005, accessed 2 August 2007.
  8. ^ Second Statement on Postwar Iraq, March 28, 2003, accessed 2 August 2007.

[edit] External links

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