The Forward carriesa profile,"The Operator: The Double-Life of a Military Strategist,"by Laura Rozenof Edward Luttwak, the man who agitated us so much a few weeks back. He's more than a scholar and public intellectual--a bit of Indiana Jones in the man.In passing there's a reference to his NYTimes op ed piece: "Iran is also central to Luttwaks thinking about Americas own political landscape and the current presidential race. When we met in February, a day after Marylands Democratic primary, Luttwak said that he was supporting Hillary Clinton because he thought she would be most inclined to order air strikes on Iran. Contrary to conventional wisdom, as always, Luttwak said that direct conversations he had had with a certain leading Republican presidential candidate convinced him that this person, under the influence of war-weary Pentagon brass, would be disinclined to order such military action. As for his opinion about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, Luttwak took a preemptive swipe at the candidates elite American supporters who might be under the delusion, according to Luttwak, that Obama would improve Americas image in the world, arguing in a May 13 New York Times op-ed the exact opposite: that the Muslim world would see Obama as a heretic. "But much, much more here:http://www.forward.com/articles/13515/

Margaret O’Brien Steinfels is a former editor of Commonweal. 

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