Endangering America
George Bush got it partially right yesterday (Thursday, September 22) when he said that mistakes made by three of his predecessors, including the Reagan administration, had emboldened terrorists and helped set the stage for the Sept. 11 attacks. Unfortunately he ignored the role his own actions have played in making terrorism worse and pushing the Middle East to the brink of a new war. Instead, the President blindly insisted that he is taking America on the right path in Iraq to confront the threat of terrorism. On that point he is wrong; dead wrong.
Why is he wrong? The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is doing the exact opposite of what Bush says U.S. policy was supposed to achieve:
- Instead of reducing terrorism, Islamic terrorism is spreading dramatically.
- Instead of winning new supporters for democracy, the war in Iraq is spurring the recruitment and training radical jihadists.
- Instead of creating a "City on the Hill" that other nations in the Middle East will emulate, Iraq is fissuring and setting the stage for a regional ethnic and religious civil war.
Rising Terrorism
The American-led invasion of Iraq has produced unprecedented surge in terrorist attacks that kill and wound people. Data collected by the Central Intelligence Agency, which goes back to 1985, shows that the number of international terrorist attacks declined steadily from 1987 until 2002. 2003, however, was a watershed moment. The total number of attacks (208) increased slightly over the previous year. However, 80% of those attacks involved someone being killed or wounded. The perpetrators of most of those violent attacks were radical Islamists.
In 2004 the terrorist numbers went thru the roof (and the Bush Administration tried to cover this up). The number of significant terrorist attacks (i.e., an attack in which someone is killed, wounded or kidnapped or there is damage in excess of $10,000) surged from 175 to almost 700. These numbers are without historical precedent. In other words, we have never had a time (since the CIA started keeping the statistics in 1968) that was this high. While a large number of these attacks occurred in Iraq, Iraq did not account for the majority of the deadly events.
Building the Next Generation of Terrorists
The insurgency is a complicated mix of groups foreign and domestic, but foreigners do not make up the bulk. Nonetheless, the foreign influence is growing and the U.S. presence in Iraq is serving to radicalize Islamic youth that previously were willing to spend their time playing soccer and listen to Western music.
How do I know? Foreign officials with the job of tracking and fighting aspiring terrorists tell me so. During the last year I have provided briefings on terrorist trends to senior leaders from Pakistan, Kuwait, Yemen, Tunisia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and Mali. Although they come from different countries they convey the same message--what the hell are you doing?
Our friends and allies naively believe that we have a plan and know what we are doing. Nonetheless, they also tell me that just as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 created Bin Laden and his ilk that our invasion of Iraq is creating the next generation of terrorists. They see that their societies are becoming more anti-U.S. than pro. They see a new generation of idealistic youth falling under the conviction that God (Allah) is calling them to fight the infidel. They are genuinely afraid that we have lit a fuze on a bomb that will detonate in the next few years unless we demonstrate we are in control.
A cultural side note. The countries in the Middle East genuinely believe that we are encouraging and cultivating the suicide bombers and the break up of Iraq. Why? Because they cannot conceive that a country as large and powerful as the United States could be impotent to deal with this threat. Instead, they are convinced that we have a secret plan we are not sharing with them. They believe that our sincere goal is to create chaos and control the oil resources. They look at me with disbelief and bewilderment when I tell them there is no secret plan and we are as incompetent as they fear.
Yugoslavia on Crack
Today's New York Times reported that Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said Thursday that he had been warning the Bush administration in recent days that Iraq was hurtling toward disintegration, a development that he said could drag the region into war. This is not the wild ravings of a crazy man. This is a cold, honest assessment from someone who really believes he is still a friend of the United States.
Our actions are confusing the hell out of our friends. They look at Iran, who has been the largest most prolific sponsor of terrorism since 1980, expand its influence among the Iraqi shia with our help. The Iranians attacked us, Saddam didn't, yet we are helping the Iranians (at least from our friends' perspective). The Saudis (and others) scratch their heads as they watch us give the shia militia carte blanche to establish their power. The Saudis understand that the Shia are keen on solidifying their power. They wonder why we don't see this.
What the Saudis and the Kuwaitis and the Omanis and the Abu Dhabis understand is that the Sunni tribes will go to any length to defend themselves and their families from the corruption represented by Shia rule. Think for a moment what a small town in Texas, habitually under the control of Southern Baptists, would do if a group of Catholics or Hasidic Jews moved into town and took control of the political process. While an incomplete analogy, this scenario offers a taste of what is in store for Iraq.
Unlike the international intervention in Yugoslavia, there is not a firm international consensus to fight against the fragmentation of the Iraqi society. Prince Faisal, I fear, is a prophet. In the coming years the United States may face the unsavory prospect of actually having to invade Saudi Arabia to secure and protect its access to oil. In the meantime, the U.S. presence in Iraq is provoking terrorism and becoming a rallying point for our enemies.
Before George Bush tries to pick the splinter out of the eyes of his father, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan, he may want to spend some time removing the huge beam lodged in his iris.
Comments (41)
Which is why we need to increase the pressure to get our troops out now. Our continued presence is making the Iraq disaster worse. Bush's nonexistent credibility would be crushed, of course. However, the credibility of the USA as a rational actor on the world stage would be restored. Impeach Bush and Cheney (and Hastert and whoever the presidet pro temporare of the Senate, so on down the succession line until we get to a rational human - are there any in this Cabinet?). Pressure the Republicans and the Weasel-crats whose leaders will not be joining me at tomorrow's mass rally in Washington, D.C.
September 23, 2005 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Once more Bush is trying the trick of repeating a lie over and over hoping that will somehow convert the lie into a truth. Of course it doesn't and never will. Our invasion of Iraq was not in any way a rational response to either 9/11 or terrorism in general. Our continues presence in Iraq has to be one of the most counter productive policies ever perpetrated on this country. Our country should bow its collective head in shame for not grasping these simple facts before the invasion ever took place.
September 23, 2005 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post, but I disagree that we should bow our collective heads. The largest day of worldwide protest ever took place on 2/15/2003. Plenty of us marched that day and the next month in Washington, D.C. Many of the people who supported Bush in March 2003 had been traumatized by 9/11. Bush, Rove, Cheney, and company took advantage of our traumatized people, terrifying them with talk of mushroom clouds and lieing to them about links to bin-Laden. Bush and his co-conspirators are the people who have acted shamefully and must be held accountable by the American legal system.
September 23, 2005 7:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Our invasion of Iraq was not in any way a rational response to either 9/11 or terrorism in general. Our continues presence in Iraq has to be one of the most counter productive policies ever perpetrated on this country. Our country should bow its collective head in shame for not grasping these simple facts before the invasion ever took place.
I totally disagree. The acquiescence of the people in the invasion of Iraq was the direct consequence of three things, two rational and one irrational:
1. The reasonable threat of WMDs. It's a standard leftist rant that Bush "lied" about WMDs, as if he knew they weren't there, but told people they were anyway. In fact, what he did was take the intelligence that existed, which was sparse, and infer that WMDs existed. He then greatly exaggerated the true threat. Given the fact that every other country on the Security Council agreed the weapons were probably there and the fact that the sanctions regime was breaking down, it was not unreasonable to propose neutralizing Iraq.
2. The quick victory in Afghanistan. By the spring of 2002, the military's prestige was riding high and peoples' confidence in the competence and management skills of both civilian and military commanders was also high. It was logical to assume a quick victory would be possible in Iraq as well.
The irrational bit was the thinking, encouraged by the Administration, that we invaded Iraq because it had a hand in 9/11. I'll never forget the time I was having breakfast in a diner with a TV going on in the background. They were showing those famous pictures of Saddam after he'd been captured being checked for lice. One waitress turned to me and said, "I think they should take him down to Ground Zero and hold him there." Suddenly it became clear to me how widespread the feeling that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11 must be.
The point here is that while in retrospect the invasion was a terrible mistake, it was not irrational for people to have supported it at the time. What was totally irrational was the cavalier postwar planning, the inadequate resources and the unaccountable decision making. Maybe one of these days someone will figure out why the war was (and is) so manifestly incompetently run. But I can't figure it out now.
September 23, 2005 7:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is lots of credit and anticipatory action to stem someone from ratting on the abuses of the power elite, and nothing done to hold these abuses accountable when they are exposed -- but on the other hand, no effort was made anticipatorily to prevent the terrorist goose from laying its golden egg for imperialism, and everything has been done to exploit it to further militarism.
It all boils down to the agenda of those with the power, and nothing to the supposed 'community' or 'facts of life' or any of the other BS put forward from various sources to justify the lying.
C'est imperialism!
September 23, 2005 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
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"The Iranians attacked us, Saddam didn't"
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Well no it wasn't the Iranians, by the usual count of 9-11 hijackers the people that attacked America were .. oh golly gee .. Saudis. Yeah. Saudis. By a big margin. Not Iranians. Nope. Saudis. Sunni Saudis.
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"What the Saudis and the Kuwaitis and the Omanis and the Abu Dhabis understand is that the Sunni tribes will go to any length to defend themselves and their families from the corruption represented by Shia rule. Think for a moment what a small town in Texas, habitually under the control of Southern Baptists, would do if a group of Catholics or Hasidic Jews moved into town and took control of the political process. While an incomplete analogy, this scenario offers a taste of what is in store for Iraq."
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Another gross misrepresentation. The corrupt rulers of Iraq were the followers and supporters of Saddam. Golly gee again. The Sunnis. Not the Shia. Gee I remember Bush I telling the Shia to rise up and revolt against Saddam and the Sunni oppressors. Bush I fucked those Shia but good didn't he. Left them to be slaughtered by those darling Sunnis. Why in the world should the Shia want to continue to be ruled by an abusive minority of Sunni? Why should we view that desire to get out from under murderous oppressors as something bad?
Oh I remember now. Democracy. But what about those Iraqis that actually wanted democracy? The Iraqi middle class. The technocrats, engineers, doctors and business class. Hey, they've been targeted throughout Iraq since U.S. troops entered. The U.S. did SFA to help the only group in Iraq that would have welcomed a democratic nation. What's happening in Basra with Brits being targeted and anyone that doesn't follow the Shia militia line has been happening throughout Iraq with the Iraqi middle class since the start of the invasion.
The only reason the Saudis are now concerned is that they see that Bush's support at home is dropping like a stone and Americans will be leaving and letting the shit hit the fan there and that shit's gonna fly at the Saudis. Hell, there might even be a war between the Shia and the Sunnis and guess what? American troops aren't likely to be rushin' to protect those fat cat sheiks and even if the Americans did, that'd only piss off the Bin Laden types even more. Heck, Americans on sacred Saudi soil got Bin Laden in his murderous snit fit to begin with.
The situation in Iraq is completely fucked up (FUBAR as I described it to Wesley Clark) and most of what you've written seems to be right but the bit of dishonesty I see concerns me. Why be dishonest? Iran's aggressive hostility is a danger to America and the world without portraying the Sunni as angels and the Shia and Iranians as devils.
What's your angle?
September 23, 2005 9:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Larry,
Thanks for the great post. It brings to mind a hair-brained idea I heard discussed at the beginning of the Iraq invasion which was we were creating a “fly-paper” effect in Iraq which is to say that by having a military presence in Iraq we could attract and fight the terrorists on open ground where presumably we had the tactical advantage. Well there is no doubt we are attracting and creating new terrorists but the tactical advantage seems to be with the terrorists.
Considering what a loose cannon Bush is, there is no way, for me at least, to predict when and if we pull out of Iraq. But it certainly raises a question which is what happens after and if we pull out? I am not thinking about civil war which I do not doubt but what about another alternative? If and when we pull out it is clear that Iraq will be in weakened state so what is to prevent an invasion or perhaps several invasions of Iraq by Iran or Turkey? Do you think this is a real possibility? Is this perhaps what Prince Saud al-Faisal had in mind when he said the disintegration of Iraq could draw the region into war?
September 24, 2005 1:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
The analytical failure along with the political and personal agenda of this administration stand as a testament to the most dramatic failure of leadership this country has ever known. And we continue to suffer at the hand of a government that bases each and every decision on the political consequence. American lives, democracy, freedom and individual rights are mere subscripts in the equation. And forget the idea of a cooperative effort. The opposition party, our allies and anyone else who is in disagreement has been sent with their bags packing. So much for democracy.
This administration is about the primacy of power above all else.
thepeoplechoose
September 24, 2005 3:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Well no it wasn't the Iranians, by the usual count of 9-11 hijackers the people that attacked America were .. oh golly gee .. Saudis."
Well, no, the Iranians DID attack us--back in 1980, as you may recall on reflection.
Saudi citizens made up most of the 9/11 attackers, but they weren't representatives of the Saudi government--they represent an extremist faction that the Saudi government fears, hates and occasionally accommodates.
September 24, 2005 5:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, I'm just glad y'all are finally talking about fighting someone (well besides the Republicans)!
September 24, 2005 5:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
The "Afghanistan Effect" that Mr. Johnson talks about is what I find most troubling, because we will be dealing with this legacy regardless of whatever success we may have in Iraq. Even if the US were to go in tomorrow and crush every aspect of the insurgency, many of the foreign jihadis have already come and gone, after gaining valuable hands-on experience in urban warfare and terrorism.
In fact, the hackneyed phrase about the significance of the Iraq War has it exactly backwards: Fighting them in the streets of Baghdad makes it MORE likely we'll have to fight them in the streets of Boston.
September 24, 2005 6:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
The reasonable threat of WMDs. It's a standard leftist rant that Bush "lied" about WMDs, as if he knew they weren't there, but told people they were anyway. In fact, what he did was take the intelligence that existed, which was sparse, and infer that WMDs existed.
In March, before the invasion, the UN inspectors reported that
The president announced the planned invasion within a week of this report.
This is what is in the public record. There is no shortage of evidence in memoirs and other perhaps self-serving sources that the administration purposely constructed a story that was not borne out by reliable evidence, by consensus intelligence opinion, by confirmed sources and by at least one entire intelligence operation of the US, the State Department.
The only hypothesis that you can offer other than the administration lying is that they were so committed to this course of action that they didn't ever look at the evidence itself. They simply harvested whatever material they could find that would support the thesis of a threat to the US and the region. I don't know what you call that--willful blindness??--but to my mind it is worse than lying. Lying in a good cause has been done by diplomats and politicians for a long time. Doing so, lying in a good cause, raises the stakes considerably--because if your ulimate goal is unachieved, or its accomplishment proves not worth the cost, then your duplicity magnifies the failure.
For what it's worth, I believe what happened is that they didn't think it mattered what justification they used. Emboldened by the speedy and cheap military victory in Afghanistan, followed by the rapid achievement of their proximate political goal--the fall of the Taliban--they figured that they'd win the war in Iraq, install a puppet and set up their bases before Christmas.
The fact that attaining a proximate goal like the fall of an extremely unpopular government headed by crazy foreigners led them to believe that their ultimate goals in Afghanistan had been achieved is something you should find profoundly disturbing.
That they apparently really believed the stuff about flowers and candy, and really thought they could waltz in, install Chalabi, throw a bone to the Kurds and get home in time for Christmas should cause you to have nightmares.
A story like that (how else do you explain the Mission Accomplished photo op) really seems to be what went on.
BTW, I saw six people (George Packer, Robert Baer, Doug Feith, the ambassador from Iraq to the US, Mark Danner, and James Woolsey) talk about Iraq last night. I'm going to post a blog entry about it later on today. I'd appreciate your comments, because I'm having a hard time figuring out what people really believe about this issue.
September 24, 2005 6:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The countries in the Middle East genuinely believe that we are encouraging and cultivating the suicide bombers and the break up of Iraq. Why?"
As I've noted in another post the recent incident with two undercover British special forces agents made no sense to me. At least as reported here.
. What were the agents doing?? Some reports (I think BBC had the agents with explosives). Why were they so quick to shoot when they were challenged at the checkpoint??
. Why was the outrage from the populace so great? With all due respect it is hard to see the accidental death of a policeman (as reported) causing this level of outrage. Without understanding what was really going on this is strange.
. Why was the British response so quick, decisive and so willing to disregard the local feeling?? Isn't this totally out of character for the "soft" British occupation.
I would appreciate any light someone might shed on this incident?
September 24, 2005 7:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Prior to the 9-11 attacks Iran held the dubious distinction of being implicated in the most deadly terrorist attacks against the United States. The 1983 attacks in Beirut against the US Embassy and the Marine "barracks" were the most lethal attacks until 9-11. Hezbollah operative Imad Mughniyeh made his bones there. The subsequent withdrawal of the US from Lebanon convinced the Iranians that force and intimidation would work against the US. The Lebanese model is the reason Osama Bin Laden sought a meeting in 1992 with Mughniyeh. Also, the 1996 bombing of the US barracks in Dharan, Saudi Arabia involved elements of the Iranian Government. We should not fool ourselves into believing that Iran has turned over a new leaf and is not keen on aggressively defending what it views as its legitimate national security interests.
September 24, 2005 7:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Larry Johnson's analysis is right on target.
The power which America has "enjoyed" for decades is corrupting in a very particular way. Just as powerful members of Congress, Presidents, CEO's, religious leaders, and many others, ultimately fail, we as a nation are failing because we do all the talking and none of the listening. The "listening" components of State and CIA and the Pentagon have been cut back purposefully. We don't want to hear, we want to dictate.
It's very hard not to detest those who believe they have all the answers -- as Bush himself is detested by so many now. Even those who hate America, though, are surprised at our incompetence, just as Americans are stunned at our government's incompetence here at home. We watch the government and our nation bluster. We watch them destroy. We watch them as they tell us and others that they mean well. We'd be laughing if we weren't in tears.
September 24, 2005 7:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
The WH intelligence folks ignored the conflicts in the information. They selected the information that the administration wanted and ignored the pieces that didn't support the WH agenda.
It would be one thing if the administration's actions were that passive.
As far back at 2003 Josh was linking a series of WorldNetDaily articles that laid out the background for a much more active manipulation of the intellegence by the political leaders.
There was no "analytic failure" in the intellegence comunity. Those who told inconvinient truths were dismissed from their positions of responsibility and those who created reports to support The President's story were rewarded with cash and promotions.
September 24, 2005 8:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe one of these days someone will figure out why the war was (and is) so manifestly incompetently run. But I can't figure it out now.
And maybe some day people will figure out why a horse trader was put in charge of FEMA, and since then it has been so incometently run.
And maybe some day people will figure out why$300 billion surpluses turned to $550 billion deficits.
And maybe some day people will figure out why Paul O'Neil, the one administration official who predicted the the Iraq war might cost more than $10 billion (I think he suggested $60billion) was released from his duties as SecTreas.
And maybe some day people will figure out why General Shinseki was shunned by the political leadership when he suggested we might need more than 200,000 troops in Iraq to enforce order.
And maybe some day people will figure out why the head of the energy department intellegence division was release from his job after he said that the aluminum tubes in Iraq could not be used for uranium centrafuges, and why his replacement was given a cash bonus after changing the Energy Department's intellegence conclusions to state the could.
I'm not sure whether you question was rhetorical or not - but I think the jury is back, and the reason "the war was (and is) so manifestly incompetently run " is because the leadership is manifestly incompetent and confident about imposing it's incompetence.
September 24, 2005 8:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let me add at question. Isn't there an internal Shia conflict going on over control of the Southern region of the country and over ties to Iran?
September 24, 2005 9:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Daniel Greenbaum: I was just going to post something along the lines you point out. It occurred to me as I was thinking about this question for the last few hours that Tony Shahid had mentionned Moktada al-Sadr as one of t6he few people in Iraq today who had appeal beyond sectarian divisions. Certainly when the first attacks on Fallujah, a Sunni bastion, were made, Sadr organized opposition. But he is probably unacceptable to the anglo-Americans because he is a genuine nationalist. They perhaps prefer the federalist split-upin Iraq because it is always easier to gain control over oil when you have a smaller region and less leaders to currupt and control. So maybe the 2 British agents were part of an operation intended to attack Sistani forces and blame it on Sadr. This goes along Daniel Greenbaum's initial thoughts. It is striking that the agents were turned over to Sadr forces; and how clearly panicked the British high command was.
September 24, 2005 9:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a standard leftist rant that Bush "lied" about WMDs, as if he knew they weren't there, but told people they were anyway.
I had strong suspicions there were no WMD in Iraq because of many statements by experts dissenting from the administration's views. From the beginning, I thought the invasion of Iraq was wrong, so I guess I would fit your category of a leftist ranter, because I certainly spoke out.
I don't think Bush really cared whether there were WMD in Iraq; he was going in no matter. He said whatever he thought was necessary to get things going. 9/11 gave him his excuse to do what he wanted to do from the moment he took office.
September 24, 2005 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Even if the US were to go in tomorrow and crush every aspect of the insurgency, many of the foreign jihadis have already come and gone, after gaining valuable hands-on experience in urban warfare and terrorism. "
It is unclear to me just how transferable the terrorist experience in Iraq is to Boston. Is seems the weapons used in Iraq are IEDs against armored vehicles and car bombs against civilians.
The IED techniques certainly are not needed in Boston.
Does one really need to travel to Iraq to learn how to build a car bomb? It seems to me the biggest terrorist problem with using car bombs in a civilized society is finding a way to get the explosives, build the bomb and get it into position to detonate without being detected by security. The solution to that problem is certainly different in Iraq than Boston.
More spectacular techniques involving airplanes or chemical weapons are not being studied in Iraq since the terrorist are distracted by the day-to-day battle.
September 24, 2005 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said Thursday that he had been warning the Bush administration in recent days that Iraq was hurtling toward disintegration, a development that he said could drag the region into war.
Here I am in agreement with the Saudi foreign minister. I never thought I'd see the day.
Larry, this is an excellent and informative post.
September 24, 2005 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ackroyd has it all over Brad. But that's because he focuses on the months and weeks just before the war, after UN inspectors had regained access (because of the US threat) to Iraq. Most of the time before the war, while troops were being dispatched, it was possible, as Brad says, for an honest and reasonable person to contrive to believe that the WMD were there. (In retrospect, we know that more skepticism was in order. But the mistaken belief was very widespread, even among opponents of the war.)
So by the time the facts Ackroyd adduces were there to be seen, the war machine's momentum was very considerable. And the fruit seemed to be very ripe and low-lying.
Advocates of war, events have reminded us, rightly face a high standard, as to democratic procedure and the substance of security requirements. We can now see clearly how contemptuous of truth and reckless of consequences Bush and company were. We can see already the great accomplishments of Bush's first five years in power: a stripping away of needed revenue to the point where the state can do what it must only by borrowing fraught with peril to us and unfairly burdensome to our children; entering into a war that has, in the way Johnson so nicely sums up, substantially aided our most fearsome enemies; and, perhaps worst of all, bringing upon us the great shame of being unable to deny that agents of our government now practice torture as a matter of routine and that our chief executive dearly treasures his asserted right to authorize this practice.
No wonder even some of Mr. Bush's hitherto most stalwart supporters have begun to drift away. But the damage is irredeemable.
September 24, 2005 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
The point here is that while in retrospect the invasion was a terrible mistake, it was not irrational for people to have supported it at the time.
Agreed. Having said that, the conversation I would have liked to hear in 2004 would go something like this:
GWB - If you knew then what you know now, would you have voted to support the war?
Response to GWB - If there was any way I could have predicted that that this administration would demonstrate such incompetence, such reckless indifference to to wise advise of anyone who knew about the arab world, with such a lack of planning or appreciatation of what going to war acutally means, I could not have supported giving the President the power to launch this war.
September 24, 2005 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
As you surmise, I pick that moment in time because it was at that point that it was unambiguously clear that there was absolutely no threat to anybody from the sanctioned and contained Saddam. The intelligence that "everybody agreed on" was, according to Kenneth Pollack, gathered by the inspectors before being booted out. The hard information was augmented by intelligence officials afraid of being wrong agan, and underestimating Saddam's capability. This made it very difficult for a member of Congress to vote against the bill giving the president the goahead for war.
However, it is not the case that Bush suddenly received this new information when the rest of us saw it emerge onto the public record. They had to be well aware, well before that date, that there was no evidence of any threat. Yes, the war machine's momentum made it easy to just keep going, but that momentum had been built well in advance of any actual, timely, accurate intelligence making its way to the public. Whether it is a "liberal rant" to say that the administration was lying about the case for war lies in the period during which the inspections were taking place. They certainly did not act in that period with open minds.
I do think it is important to strike down this claim whenever it arises. There is no doubt that before the war was officially begun, there was no evidence of any Iraqi threat and considerable evidence of no Iraqi threat.
We are still in a situation where we are committed indefinitely to a war in Iraq. We still have not heard our government tell us why we are there. We do know, for sure, that we are not there because of a threat from Iraq to New York, to London or to Tel Aviv.
As I said, engaging in this kind of thing duplicitously raises the stakes. The (to my mind) cynical, purposeful exploitation of 9/11 that you allude to, and the cynical exploitation of our natural and heartful desire to believe that the president wouldn't do this kind of thing if it were not necessary, raised the stakes still higher.
By proceeding in this way, Bush has for a long time damaged the ability of the president to turn to the American people and say that something needs to be done. He has, for a long time to come, damaged the ability of the American president to say to the world that there is a serious problem we have to deal with.
if Bush had lost the last election, the latter problem would have been diminished--all nations pick bad leaders at times. But that same cynical abuse of power and innocence that they used to star the war also worked to win an election. In the eyes of the world, though, that's no excuse.
September 24, 2005 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the info rea,
I do remember 1980. I've even posted elsewhere that I wish the Democrats would put together a campaign by construction workers around America to put up banners on all construction sites counting the number of days that Osama Bin Laden has been on the loose working to kill more Americans. That or the number of Americans killed since "Bring 'em on!"
I was also at Brooklyn College when one Barry Rosen started working there a few years after the Iran hostage situation. I can even find the link for you to Rosen's op-ed piece in the New York Times asking why the current Bush group was working to kill the American hostage group's suit against Iran just at the time it was about to reach fruition.
There were even some stories that came out during the Afghanistan only part of America's campaign where Iran was supposed to have helped in search and rescue operations for downed American aircraft.
Need I mention the original basis of the phrase "October surprise?" How about Iran Contra? It would seem that even when the Iranian government seems most averse to Americans they find friends in high places in the Republican Party.
As for the Saudi government being separate and distinct from the vast majority of Saudis that effected the 9-11 attrocity, I think you're being naive. The Saudi government and wealthy Saudis were both the money and spiritual inspiration for the Islamist termperment that has given us this world wide terror campaign. Some of that aspect exists today and can even be seen in the words of the Saudi minister whose recent remarks have drawn so much attention. That's what I see as important in Mr. Johnson's disingenuous portrayal of the Sunni terror assault in Iraq as a war for freedom from oppressive Shia. What's his angle?
September 24, 2005 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just imagine this:
You have access to all the information that the US had at its disposal. You are NOT the president (and therefore have no secret agenda). You are not Congress (and therefore are not worried about appearing "soft" on defense).
If you decide that war is necessary, you are the one who is going in to fight. You, and others like you will kill or be killed if YOU believe that we need to go to war.
Remember -- the UN weapons inspecters are there on the ground, with full access, and saying there is NOTHING. Saddam is under scrutiny from the world. He has no place to hide.
Maybe you decide to give the inspecters more time. Now, THAT is rational. Maybe you decide to get better intelligence, since so much of what you have is conflicting. Now, THAT is rational. Maybe you decide to listen to your allies, or even get them to listen to YOU. -- Rational.
What was the rush? The rush was that if the truth ever came out, there would be no justification for this woefully pathetic, selfish, incompetently run, ruinous-to-the-world, goddam WAR!
NOW, I DARE anyone to refute what I said! (Actually, since I am NOT George Bush, I respectfully ask for other views on my thoughts!)
Jan Knaus
September 24, 2005 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
It seems to me that if we make a deal with al queda (i know, "we don't deal with terrorists" - that's nice for big egos but doesn't do anything to protect my children), we are safer. I'd rather have a promise of peace and a target, than a promise of terror and no target, which is what we have now.
If we agree to pull out of the middle east 100 percent, we can do so with some conditions to the agreement. 1. The flow of oil does not stop or else we are coming back with Gulf War III. 2. The palestine/israel border will no longer be disputed. 3. If one nation attacks another, we are coming back with Gulf War III.
No one can fight guerilla wars without bring the war to the innocent citizens as well as the guerilla fighters. We are very good at desert wars though fighting militaries. So I think following this strategy leverages our strength not our weakness. Our current middle east and Iraq policy leverages our weakness (guerilla / urban warfare / hunting hiding terror cells.)
If we do this, Al Queda should either sit idle or morph into a different kind of organization that actually has a headquarters = a target, no?
I'm no expert. But that is the way I'd like it done. Since we can always go back if we have to. With mobile aircraft carriers we don't need bases in the middle east, is my uneducated opinion.
As a P.S., I think what is going to happen, even if Rumsfeld is able to replace U.S. soldiers with Iraqi soldiers over the next few years before the 2008 elections, and withdraw 95% by then (leaving only special forces behind and some special weaponry), or even if it gets to a 100% withdrawal, I think the terror car bombs and instability and assassinations will continue, as terrorists I think will still view the new Iranian government as a U.S. puppet. I think this is a likely outcome, no? That G.W. Bush is unwilling to accept, since it represents a failed war? You mention that middle easterners think we are doing this on purpose, to setup instability on purpose, and it must be along the lines of leaving behind a puppet government in the eyes of the fundamentalists, which is no different then an "occupation" to them, even though it is run by arabs/muslims/iraqis, they will still view them as infidels/puppets.
September 24, 2005 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The (to my mind) cynical, purposeful exploitation of 9/11"
Did Bush think "I know there's no link between 9/11 and Iraq, so I will deliberately avoid saying there is, but craftily juxtapose the two in a way that will convince waitresses and such everywhere that there is"? Not quite.
I think he thought "the war is desirable if not quite necessary, and entails only low risks. To convince the country, the WMD rationale is the optimal one, and I scarcely need examine the evidence with care. That's not my style, and it seems weighty enough to me and my advisers and lots of other folks as well.
"Americans' core concern in fact is and is felt to be a repeat of 9/11. Whether or not the 9/11 attack was concocted in Iraq, Iraq represents a piece of the larger threat, which can be reduced by taking Hussein out. [The logic here is weak, but that's not to say Bush and his advisers didn't think this way.] If I can better sell the war by linking Iraq to 9/11, I'm making the country more secure by doing so."
Is this account of Bush's reasoning inaccurate and too kind? If the account is accurate, does it add up to a purposeful, hence cynical, exploitation of 9/11?
Himmler: "we can say: We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have taken on no defect within us, in our soul, or in our character."
Nazis of course in a class by themselves, but useful to look at as the extreme. Was even Himmler cynical? He avowed, embraced, took pride in, as evil a purpose as may be imagined.
Himmler purposed evil. Bush's purpose was a (as he saw it) low-cost high-gain (for us and them) war. But he was also careless with the truth and reckless of consequences.
No idea what these meanderings add up to. Bush surely careless, reckless, mistaken, wrong, small-minded. Not sure about cynical, though he might as well be, and not sure what to make of the deep confusion and ignorance of his thinking.
To what extent did he think "how can I exploit September 11 and the people's belief I responded well to it"? To what extent was the decision to go to war in Iraq determined by such considerations? Was his thinking on short-term political effects as clear as his thinking on the longer-term effects of the war was muddled?
September 24, 2005 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
thepeoplechoose
September 24, 2005 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would like to comment on one more thing if I may,
"In the coming years the United States may face the unsavory prospect of actually having to invade Saudi Arabia to secure and protect its access to oil."
I find one very simple fault with this argument - since America uses 25% of the world's oil, wouldn't it be rather unprudent of any oil producing nation to stop selling to their largest customer?
I really think this argument is bogus, on top of that, I think we can militarily annex whatever oil we needed if it ever came down to it. And the threat of doing that I think would be the 2nd reason why a shiite run saudi arabia would never stop selling oil to their largest customer.
To stop selling your country's main economic export to your largest customer, would be like shooting yourself in the foot. Whether they like us or not, I don't think they'd ever do that. Even if they did do that, we could buy the oil indirectly from whomever they did sell their oil to. A 3rd reason why they would not stop selling oil to us.
We do not need to control (oil) something that they will always sell to us no matter who is running those countries.
September 24, 2005 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Larry's otherwise sound analysis suffers from a bad case of Shia-phobia. The kings and emirs should be afraid but they should not determine US policy toward Iran. Bush has screwed the pooch. Iran is the new regional hegemon. The US now has a pressing interest in reconciling the factions of the New Gulf Order. We can no longer afford to be the mercenary pawn for one side or the other in this game.
September 24, 2005 3:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I had a similar response to that line at first, but in context, I think it's referring to the embassy hostages in '79-'81. On the other hand, if you're going to go that far back, you might have to revisit the USS Starke "incident"....
September 24, 2005 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Marine barracks was a military target, and the US was hardly a neutral player. You really have to twist the meanings of words around to describe the attack as "terrorist."
September 24, 2005 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
We do not need to control (oil) something that they will always sell to us no matter who is running those countries.
September 24, 2005 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's actually simpler than that. Oil is fungible. It sells on world markets. You can't, practically speaking, embargo any particular customer. You can stop shipping oil entirely, as OPEC did during the embargo but you can't cut off the US. Recall how hard it was to keep Iraqi oil off the markets.
It's very difficult to imagine a scenario where an American-hating Islamist state keeps it oil off world markets to punish Americans. Since we've had such a state in place for a while in Iran, and since it has remained a member in good standing of OPEC, violating its maximum output limits along with the rest, I don't think we need fear religious compunctions stopping sales.
The risk in Saudi Arabia is destruction of productive capacity in order to bring down the regime. Right now, Saudi production buys off dissent, both by welfare expenditures and by force. If islamists substantially reduced production, the royal family might fall. However, once in power, the islamists would have little choice but to resume production.
I think the knee-jerk "we have to control the oil" reaction comes from WWII. It could be argued that Japan and Germany lost as much because they ran out of fuel as for any other reason.
Even if Saddam had taken Kuwait and kept, oil production would have continued. That war was partly about treaty obligations and partly about Saddam being a very bad guy with Scuds to launch at people and (it turned out) an advanced weapons program. The oil would have kept flowing, though, regardless of who was in charge.
September 24, 2005 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did Bush think "I know there's no link between 9/11 and Iraq, so I will deliberately avoid saying there is, but craftily juxtapose the two in a way that will convince waitresses and such everywhere that there is"?
Yes. That is just what he did, with great aplomb and a talented propaganda crew in the White House. Within days of 9/11, ex-CIA chief James Woolsey along with scattered military and intelligence people were making the case that Saddam was linked to 9/11. That myth, invented out of whole cloth, was expertly sold to the American public over the next two years without ever actually saying it directly. That 70% of Americans still believed there was a connection as late as the 2004 campaign testifies to its effectiveness.September 24, 2005 7:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suppose I'm about to sound like a conspiracy nutcase, but so be it. Does anyone else remember when the USSR crumbled and many of us on the Left wondered what the Right would do without a global boogeyman as their reason for being? Gays, abortion, and taxes were always too narrow as wedge issues to win elections continuously on. So here we are twenty-some years later and in 5 short years the Bush administration has managed to capitalize on the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor and turn a dangerous but small and marginalized group of pissed-off religious zealots into a large and increasingly popular group of pissed-off religious zealots. When Al-Queda has an easier time recruiting than the US military, you know something's wrong. No matter what anyone does now, we'll be stuck fighting these people on our soil and across the globe for the forseeable future. Scary, and people's fears always trumps their ideals when it comes time to vote, doesn't it?
I don't believe this has been some sort of Rove-ian strategy from the get-go. I think it's just the inevitable result of the kind of fear-based mindset that has infected social conservatives from well before this country was born. For sociopathic personalities like Rove et al, a base filled with fear and greed is a loud invitation for exploitation. They have created policies based in fear and greed that will certainly create more of both, which will "justify" more policies based on fear and greed. Duh. They're not geniuses so much as completely amoral opportunists. No better or smarter than the shady "businessmen" currently price-gouging in the wake of the hurricanes. This is not politics, just a self-created Hobbseian nightmare. When we pretend that it's all politics - just different strategies, it's like saying that someone pulling out an Uzi at a chess match is using a "different strategy" to win the game.
September 25, 2005 6:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
To allow disolution of the sanctions was, in my mind a rational for this war. The rush to war on the other hand was irrational. Obviously, the way in which this administration conducted every step of this war from lying about the cause and the evidence, to the obvious intent to secure oil fields for American companies, to the proud embrace of torture, to .. . on and on and on. If this war was administered with great care and compitence, I honestly believe we could have seen a net positive outcome.
One note on the UN sanctions which I seem to deride above. . . . THEY WORKED. At the end of the day, there were no WMDs in Iraq. Which means (and I haven't heard this said very much) THE UN INSPECTIONS AND SANCTIONS WORKED!
President Clintion and the UN managed to take a country that had been armed to the teeth with WMD, and had been on the verge of producing a Nuke, and rendered it impotent. Clean of effective weapons. That's something you won't hear in on Fox News, but it is true.
September 25, 2005 8:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Does anyone else remember when the USSR crumbled and many of us on the Left wondered what the Right would do without a global boogeyman as their reason for being?"
I wouldn't put it past them. We trained Bin Laden afterall, and he has never been captured. Don't forget the oil factor, and the fact that Bin Laden actually comes from an elite family in saudi arabia.
In other words, striking a deal with the devil: We'll keep the U.S. guzzling gas, if you'll play the role of monster.
September 25, 2005 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
The longer the US occupation continues, the more time there will be for the barbarity of the occupation to come out. A captain and two sergeants of the 82nd Airborne have gone public that the torture and beatings of detainees was systemic with the full knowledge of their superiors and the urging on intelligence officers to soften them up for interrogation. Sometimes they just did it for fun. But they distroyed all their snapshots after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.
It's known in Europe that an enterprising Floridian has set-up a website where occupation troops can trade their snapshots of them posing with their kills for porn. They also have clever captions for their snaps. For example, one photo displays a woman with her leg blown off by a landmine with a caption reading: bad foot, nice puss (I'm paraphrasing).
US technology has made the war more barbaric. There is shock and awe: lots of bombs. Cluster bombs are deployed that create instant minefields especially attractive to children who think they are toys. Then there's the updated version of napalm, mark 77 firebomb. And let's not forget that the US makes some of its munitions out of radioactive waste (depleted uranium) which partially vaporizes on impact and then settles as radioactive dust to the ground. Even troops that are coming back to the US show radiation exposure when tested.
On the human resources front, there are the 20,000 to 30,000 mercenaries th US employs who are subject to neither military or Iraqi law.
Jimmy Carter and the Red Cross contend in civil wars and counter-insurgency campaigns 9 civilians die for each combatant.
Although the US has some 130,000 troops in Iraq, it cannot contain an insurgency and provide security to only the 20% of the population that are Sunni. Once the Shia (60% of the population) get restless, the US military truly will become just another militia group.
To those that say leaving Iraq would only encourage the terrorists, I say the terrorists won when the first US bomb exploded in Afghanistan.
September 25, 2005 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink