Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change

In the 2004 U.S. presidential election, a group of retired U.S. officials, both civilian and military, criticized the foreign policies of the George W. Bush Administration. While some of them did endorse his opponent, John Kerry, the group claims to have excluded people that were long-term Bush critics, and tried to focus on the policies rather than the man. Still, the obvious attempt was to replace him as President, or at least force major changes. This effort complements other critical groups by "53 former diplomats who accused the administration of undermining US credibility in the Arab world with its strong support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon" and "52 former [British]] officials attacking Prime Minister Tony Blair's support for Washington over Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The purpose of this article is as much to bring these dissidents into the linkages of Related Articles, showing networks of policy relationships, as it is to discuss the specific organization. This will help document patterns of foreign policy beliefs, going into the Obama administration. Note that this criticism precedes the successes or failures of the Iraq War, Surge.

While the group's own webpage is down, the list was preserved by Sourcewatch, produced by the Center for Media and Democracy, citing a list printed by the Los Angeles Times.

A critic, Cliff May, president of the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the BBC. "Largely, they are people who were in senior official capacities before 9/11. They are people who are responsible for the policies prior to 9/11. Those policies I think, failed spectacularly on 9/11...It seems that these folks feel that those policies in place before 9/11 were perfectly fine. Nevertheless, these are what some people might describe as 9/10 people, they want to continue with the failed policies and they don't want to change those policies despite their failures."