9. Introducing the Wilsonian Bush
All of which does not exactly add up to an answer to my friend Terry’s original question. Is the War in Iraq justifiable on humanitarian grounds, even in the absence of any weapons of mass destruction? Again, my answer is yes. The US War in Iraq is just. Our intentions to help Iraqis create a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic nation for themselves, whatever form it might take, is a worthy goal. Ending the Saddam regime, whatever might be said, was justifiable and righteous. I have supported our military without reservation from the moment the first cruise missile flew. When I heard of the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein I felt genuinely elated. The arrest of each and every face on the US military’s “Most Wanted” deck of cards is a source of satisfaction to me. I wish them long and contemplative lives in concrete cubicles with no windows. But I am also haunted by the American and British dead and by the allied soldiers who have yet to die. In these things I stand hand-in-hand with every American I know. And regardless whether the war was really begun for humanitarian reasons or whether it was over WMD or to protect the American position in an oil-rich Middle East—or even to settle some festering family vendetta and expunge the “the ragged ending” of the first Gulf War--the ending of the monstrous regime of Saddam Hussein was morally just. At the same time I believe the War in Iraq, at the time and in the manner we began it, was profoundly wrong.
When I first read about Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations back in high school during the late 60’s, I felt a deep chagrin at Wilson’s untimely death, and the greater tragedy which was the death of his dream, the League of Nations. The “War to End All Wars” thus failed at the last moment, like an athlete tripping over the last hurdle. Such melodrama appealed to me. Sixteen is an emotional age, but it is also an age of moral clarity—at least concerning the acts of others. As an Evil Empire used its Evil Veto on the Security Council to paralyze the United Nations I ardently yearned for the destruction of communism. I believed then that the United Nations was an international extension of American ideals. I hoped it would become the benign instrument of a united world. It was to me the logical answer to a world of problems that troubled my adolescent brain: the Israeli-Palestinian question, the Cuban question, the Civil Rights question; injustice in Africa, starvation in India, totalitarianism in Russia and China. Somehow my teachers had made all these my problems. I had a duty to know and think about them. This duty fell to me simply because, like everybody else, I was a citizen of the world. What was more, I could read and write, and had never known hunger. I was an American and Americans were the keepers of democracy and justice in the world.
Today the idea of using American military supremacy to right the wrongs of the world has great appeal to many Americans—enough appeal to make it a convenient smoke screen for a president and an administration who cannot by any stretch of the imagination be seen as the ideological offspring of Wilsonian internationalism. The dream of a League of Nations for them is as remote and ludicrous as the idea of a powerful United Nations. The Bush Doctrine is a doctrine of American hegemony, not of American dedication and responsiveness to humanitarian ideals. The War in Iraq was designed to be an unequivocal example, a seminar on the principles, the execution, and the effectiveness of the Bush Doctrine. To know the reason why we really went to war in Iraq we have only to go to the main source and proponent of the Bush Doctrine, Vice President Dick Cheney. To get an accurate view of his thinking we have only to read the lines (and between the lines) of a speech he gave to the Nashville Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 29, 2002.
To understand the vision Cheney laid out in his speech it is necessary to recall the events between September of 2001 and August of 2002. In the lightning space of three months, from October, 2001 when bombing began in Afghanistan, to December 2001 when Hamid Karzai was sworn in as leader of the interim government in Kabul, an amazingly swift and relatively painless US-led military action had transformed the political face of a country arguably as dysfunctional as any on the planet. The invasion of Afghanistan was, by just about anybody’s measure, a tremendous success. The performance of our military was awesome. American bombs and troops liberated the Afghani people, killed thousands of our avowed enemies, sent the leadership and the remnants of the Taliban into hiding or exile, and set the stage for a possible rebirth of Afghanistan under the auspices and with the military, economic, and technological support of the world’s most successful democracies. The future looked rosy, if difficult. In the minds of many, we had gone to war against terrorism, and we had won. The political benefits for the Bush Administration were enormous. The President’s approval ratings skyrocketed. His defense team and policy advisors were hailed as formidable statesmen—even as visionaries. It was in this atmosphere of success and high hopes that the Bush Doctrine came of age.
From Vice President Cheney’s VFW speech in August we can conclude that the Afghanistan experience had left the administration with three conclusions that had a grave bearing on the question of Iraq: 1) The US military could rapidly overwhelm any force in the Middle-east, whether regular or irregular; 2) the people of Iraq, like the people of Afghanistan, would support an American invasion of their country; and, 3) an invasion and “liberation” of Iraq would set an eloquent example to the Arab “street” and vastly enhance American prestige throughout the region and the world:
“Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region. When the gravest of threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace. As for the reaction of the Arab ‘street’, the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are ‘sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans.’ Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of Jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart. And our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced, just as it was following the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.”
And then came the line in Cheney’s speech that to me explains volumes about the true reasons for the war. More than hours and hours of speeches and interviews and breifings and press conferences it answers the baffling question as to why a securely popular president, under the advisement of a cabinet of veteran policy makers who should have known better, had decided to throw caution to the wind and stake his prestige and the prestige of the United States of America, not to mention the lives of unknown numbers of American military personnel and Iraqi people, on a perilous military adventure in the deserts of Arabia. “The reality is,” Vice President Cheney told the verterans, “ that these times bring not only dangers but also opportunities.”
What these “opportunities” were we can only imagine, but it is safe to say they consisted, in large part of the following: Bush and his administration would free the Iraqi people; they would neutralize a rogue regime; they would rid the world of a bloody tyrant; they would secure an important source of oil; they would settle old scores with Saddam; and best of all, they would set an example—an unequivocal, perfectly on point, and awe-inspiring example of the irresistible logic and power of the Bush Doctrine. Hallelujah! All of this without mentioning the adulation, the vindication, and the secure places they would secure for themselves in history. Finally, as the nation and the world watched them stand up and sieze these opportunities, the positive political ramifications already tantalizingly demonstrated by the campaign in Afghanistan would be multiplied manifold, thus securing for a leadership that had begun its term under a cloud of controversy and illigitimacy the undying love of millions of American voters and virtual political invincibility. Of course, there was also a “down” side. It was not a plan for people of weak faith.
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