Right Web

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John F. “Jack” Keane, a 37-year U.S. army veteran, former four-star general, and former vice chief of staff of the Army, has become an increasingly visible advocate of hawkish U.S. military policies in the Middle East and a stalwart advocate of maintaining U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has served as a board member at the Institute for the Study of War, a hawkish military policy institute directed by Kimberly Kagan and chaired by Liz Cheney.

Keane is perhaps best known for his co-authorship, with AEI’s Frederick Kagan, of “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq,” a 2007 policy paper that many observers—including Gen. Davis Petraeus[1]—have credited with laying the political groundwork for President Bush’s troop surge in Iraq. Since then, Keane has become a vocal public proponent of U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, warning about the alleged impact of “failure” in Iraq on regional security issues, including in Iran. In an October 2011 interview with Fox News, for example. Keane suggested that the Iraq drawdown was “a disaster” that would reverse the supposed U.S. gains in the country during the Bush administration and weaken U.S. “influence” against Iran.[2]

Shortly after the Fox interview, on 26 October 2011, Keane appeared at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on “Iranian Terror Operations on American Soil” to discuss the alleged plot by Iran to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Discussing the alleged conspirators, Keane said: “We’ve got to put our hand around their throat now. …  Why don’t we kill them? We kill other people who kill others.” Keane described Iran is “our number-one strategic enemy in the world,” declaring the alleged plot to be a “stunning rebuke to the Obama administration’s policy of negotiation and isolation with the Iranians.” He then recommended undertaking “covert operations led by the CIA” and giving “money, information and encouragement to the dissident leaders inside Iran to use their population to put pressure on the regime.” Joining Keane at the hearing were Reuel Marc Gerecht of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.[3]

Investigative journalist Gareth Porter has credited Keane with quietly working behind the scenes to curry both active and retired military opinion in favor of a protracted U.S. presence in Iraq. In a 2009 interview with the Real News Network, Porter called Keane “the mafia don of this network of retired and active-duty generals who are now quietly at work trying to figure out how they can really turn this [Iraq] storyline … against Obama, making sure that anybody in the Pentagon who meets with a reporter is going to give the same line that … [Obama]'s threatening stability in Iraq.”[4]

Since leaving the military, Keane has also enjoyed a successful private-sector career that has appeared to dovetail at times with his political advocacy. In addition to serving on the corporate boards of MetLife, General Dynamics, and Allied Barton Security, Keane is also a co-founder of Keane Advisors, LLC, a financial consulting firm that specializes in working with military contractors.[5] Because prolonging U.S. conflicts abroad would presumably benefit his business with military contractors, Real News Network reporter Jesse Freeston has called Keane “a textbook example of the military-industrial complex in action.”[6]

Keane has also worked as national security analyst for both ABC and Fox News.

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.