George Casey Makes Case to Showbiz Crowd for U.S. Engagement

The latest crisis in Syria has brought to the fore a new calls for American isolationism, but earlier this week a prominent D.C. organization brought Gen. George Casey to a gathering of entertainment executives to make the case that a weary U.S. should not just ignore the region, particularly in diplomacy.

Casey, the former U.S. Army chief of staff and commander of armed forces in Iraq, earlier this week was the latest featured speaker before the Foreign Policy Roundtable at the home of MGM’s Jonathan Glickman and his wife, Christy Callahan. Glickman’s father, Dan, the former chairman of the MPAA, is the chair of the U.S. Global Leadership Council, which promotes diplomatic engagement and foreign assistance.

The roundtable, run by executive director Donna Bojarsky, is an organization of entertainment industry executives who hold quarterly briefings and Q&As on major foreign policy issues. Many of the Q&As are off the record, including Casey’s, but among those who attended were producer Lawrence Bender, MGM’s Gary Barber, New Line’s Toby Emmerich, attorney Cliff Gilbert-Lurie, producer Roger Birnbaum, producer Donald DeLine, Conaco president David Kissinger, former city controller Wendy Greuel and film consultant Ruth Vitale.

From a stage set up in the Glickmans’ backyard, moderator Miguel Marquez of CNN quipped that when he was an ABC News war correspondent in Baghdad, he would have swam across the Tigris River to land an interview with Casey as he was leading forces there. Casey quipped back that this time, he’d have to settle for the Glickmans’ pool.

Photo by Joel Lipton: Gen. George Casey with Dan Glickman and Jon Glickman.

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