War's poster boy battles the labels

By MICHELE HEWITSON

The War Guy's office walls are crowded with images of Che Guevara. Dozens of images of the revolutionary, silk-screened into prettiness by Andy Warhol.

Amid this riotous example of interior decorating is one photograph of the occupant of this working space, Paul Buchanan.

It is not a pretty picture. The man in it is wearing running shorts and singlet, a veneer of sweat and the determined face of the ironman triathlete.

It's unlikely you would recognise Buchanan if he jogged past you on the street. But you may have become used to seeing The War Guy analysing events in Iraq on that box in the corner of your living room. On the TV - and the radio and in the newspapers - his analyst's considered voice rings cool and clear and dispassionate.

Buchanan, now an academic in Auckland University's Political Studies department, is a former US Defence Department analyst. And much more.

But he concedes that for the moment he is, if reluctantly, going to be tagged as The War Guy.

Oh well, he shrugs, the money he makes from being an on-call analyst, "24/7" on the Iraq crisis will pay for paint for his 120-year-old villa at Karekare. "If the war goes on for five years."

The American born, Latin America-raised Buchanan has a manner and wit as dry and gritty as a desert storm. The myriad ironies of his current situation amuse him no end. Here's one: his specialist subject these days is labour relations.

"It's almost damnation. I will never have anyone come to me and say 'hey, could you tell us about your book on labour'. I am The War Guy. But it is unfortunate."

Beyond being tickled by another little irony - that the former consultant to the CIA, the Pentagon and the US Air Force Special Command came to New Zealand in search of peace - there is internal conflict for Buchanan.

You wouldn't know this from listening to or watching his measured analysis. But it is there. He is not quite comfortable with the fact that through "warmongering activities I'm able to gain some public persona".

Despite that straight-down-the-line public persona - "I'm not cheerleading for either side" - he gets plenty of hate mail. "I've been accused of being a closet fascist, and a communist. So I must be doing something right."

Along the way he's been outspoken enough to ensure that he's unlikely to figure on the American Embassy's cocktail party list.



He's had no formal reprimand but he says embassy personnel have told him that comments he's made since September 11, 2001, did not exactly cast America in the best light. In particular, that "the restriction of civil liberties of certain people in the population was worrisome".

This concerns him not a jot. He seems to thrive on personal contradictions. Consider his CV. Then look around his office. What's with the Che pics, Mr Analyst? Sent to him from all over the world, many from mates in the military as a running joke.

The joke is that pretty boy Che "is such a commercial icon that you forget the revolutionary. Women might think he looks pretty but he was a murderous SOB."

The punchline is that Buchanan is a born contrarian. He's interested in pop culture's embrace of "a pretty despicable individual", but those images are also there, I think, to confound expectation. He likes to be thought of as "hard to read".

For the record he is politically left of centre, "sort of like a social democrat".

As part of standard security clearance for the Pentagon he was given the standard polygraph test. He was asked whether he was or had ever been a member of the Communist Party, whether he advocated the overthrow of the US Government. The answers were, obviously since he was at the Pentagon in 1993 and 1994, "no" and "no". What Buchanan wasn't asked "whether I advocated the overthrow of US allies".

The answer to that may have been different. "The allies I had in mind were dictatorships in Latin America in the 1960s through the 1980s."

Also for the record: the analyst is anti the Iraq war. Ill-considered and short-sighted, he says.

Growing up in Argentina, where his father worked for General Motors, shaped his world view, and his politics. Another photograph on his wall is of Dad with Pinochet. "I grew up under dictatorships so you learn quickly what you don't like." LATIN America was his training ground. He observed, involved himself in anti-authoritarian politics, went back to the States, got his PhD and was offered a job training military officers.

"I'd always wondered what was going on with the US and its approach to Latin America and I always seemed to be on the wrong side. I thought 'I'll get into the belly of the beast'." In the belly, he taught "not only guerrilla warfare" but Marxist theory - "you got to know your enemy."

He has a military mind and an anti-authoritarian soul. He maintains he admires "my uniformed friends for their ability to say 'yes sir' and go running off. The most righteous men I've met are all military."



He has turned down jobs with regimes he found abhorrent (in Guatemala and Chile) and with the CIA, which would have liked him in the field. If he were in the States now, and consulting to a Government agency, "this would have been a hard one to call. I probably would have resigned."

Another irony. If Buchanan were in the States now, he would not be in demand as an analyst on mainstream television because professionally "I'm morally agnostic about this venture. Something mainstream press in the US is not allowed to do."

Instead, he is in New Zealand. He arrived in 1997, a refugee from family problems. He had seen an ad for a lecturer in politics and Latin American studies; it might have been written for him.

And then there were the New Zealand ironmen he'd competed against in the States.

They were "fresh as daisies on the marathon and I'm doing a death march". Where on earth were these guys from? He found out. New Zealand, and "it's a sporting nation, mate".

"I thought: 'if you can't beat 'em you might as well join them'."

HE reckons he's considered a bit too relaxed for an ironman. Sometimes he has a glass of wine the night before a race, "a serious character flaw".

Some might regard subjecting oneself to the rigours of ironman competitions as a serious character flaw.

"Pain management is a very important part of the sport. It's a great test of what you're made of. It's all about finding out who you are."

Buchanan, according to Buchanan, is a classic Alpha male type, obsessive, "an easy guy to hate. I'm not very diplomatic."

He says his inability to compromise has led to difficulties at the university. He can analyse military campaigns; he's not very good at office politics.

He takes pride in his take-no-prisoners philosophy of life. The Buchanan family code of ethics involves a motto: "It doesn't matter if you win or lose as long as you get a few licks in."

But he later emails this:"I hope that you will be relatively sympathetic in your treatment of me, given my penchant for being 'difficult' brutally honest and undiplomatic - even with reporters."

I can't fathom why he'd care.

He's worried, he writes back, "about being portrayed as a warmonger ... or 'difficult'."

He's 48. "I have mellowed much over the years," he says, "to the point, I think, of softness."

This is what The War Guy likes to do for fun. Sit in his aviary at Karekare and "listen to the birdies chirp".

Herald Feature: Iraq