Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami, who rallied support for Iraq war, dies at 68

PALO ALTO, Calif. – Fouad Ajami, a Middle East scholar who rallied support for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and advised policy makers in the Bush administration, has died. He was 68.

The Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where Ajami was a senior fellow, said in a statement that Ajami lost his battle with cancer on Sunday.

In the period leading to the Iraqi invasion, The New York Time reported that Ajami advised national security adviser Condoleeza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense. In a 2002 speech, Vice President Dick Cheney invoked Ajami as predicting that after liberation, Iraqis would greet the American military with joy.

Ajami's writings include some 400 essays on Arab and Islamic politics and US foreign policy.

He was survived by his wife.