Bush Responds To The Revisionists
In a very welcome move that cannot be repeated too often, President Bush lashed out at those who would rewrite the history of the buildup to the Iraq War in a Veterans Day speech:
One of the hallmarks of a free society and what makes our country strong is that our political leaders can discuss their differences openly, even in times of war. When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support. I also recognize that some of our fellow citizens and elected officials didn’t support the liberation of Iraq. And that is their right, and I respect it. As President and Commander-in-Chief, I accept the responsibilities, and the criticisms, and the consequences that come with such a solemn decision.
While it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. (Applause.) Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs.
They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction. And many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: “When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security.” That’s why more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate — who had access to the same intelligence — voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.
The complete transcript is here, and the Political Teen has the video…
Bush’s speech misses the mark for these reasons:
1) The sentence “some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war” is not refuted by the sentence “these critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments related to Iraq’s weapons programs.” It is true that the Senate report did not find instances of pressure on intelligence analysts, but it made no finding regarding whether the intelligence was manipulated by the administration after it received it, or whether it was distorted when the administration made its case for war. The charge is that the administration misled the public by exaggerating the intelligence which pointed towards WMD and ignoring the evidence which suggested that there were no active weapons programs – this charge is not answered by Bush (at least in the excerpt).
2) It is true that there was a consensus that Hussein had WMD, and I think Bush can be forgiven for believing it to be true. Some argue against the war with the view that all pre-emptive wars are wrong. I am not in that camp, and I believe that if Bush truly but mistakenly believed in the existence of WMD, it is a forgivable mistake. However, I believe that there are two principal reasons why the Bush administration should be accountable for failure in Iraq. The first reason is that once it became evident that there were no WMD, there was no apology or even any acknowledgement from the administration. Things would be much different had Bush said “we had reason to believe that there were WMD and we invaded Iraq in an effort to prevent an attack against our people or other countries. We were wrong in our judgment and we apologize to the Iraqi people for the loss of life and property which resulted from our actions. We will do our best to make amends by committing ourselves to the rebuilding of Iraq, and we have contributed to a new Iraq with the removal of their barbaric leader and our assistance in the foundation of a democratic government.” Instead, the administration pretended that the WMD existed until it could no longer be denied, and then simply changed the subject. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t think that you can bomb the crap out of a country in the stated effort to protect your citizens by finding WMD, then find out that they don’t exist, and not even acknowledge your mistake. Is it any wonder that we are viewed as a bully and an aggressor?
3) The larger issue is the administration’s inept handling of the occupation. There were apparently no detailed plans to occupy the country; the military force was insufficient to maintain order; we sent in the incompetent Jay Garner, to be replaced by the ideologue Paul Bremer; we didn’t give Iraqis a meaningful role in making political and economic decisions; we insisted on purging the military of Baathists, creating manpower for the insurgency; we made few if any efforts to build a middle class which would be a natural constituency of support for our presence. We invaded a country seemingly without any real understanding of Iraq, and ruled it with a hammer when we needed a scalpel. It’s like hiring a contractor for your house who is good at demolition but can’t do construction. Had the occupation gone smoothly, things would be very different for Bush and for America. Nobody suggests that a successful occupation is an easy thing to do, but the sheer ineptitude with which the administration has handled things after the invasion is the principle reason why neither the American people nor the rest of the world support our presence there.
Peter: I honestly appreciate you taking the time to present your point of view, which, if you haven’t already guessed from previous comments, is a bit different from mine. I don’t have time to respond right now but would point you toward the Podhoretz piece in Commentary for rebuttal: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/Production/files/podhoretz1205advance.html
Meanwhile, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and John Kerry whine about the timing of the President’s remarks and the “politicizing” of Veteran’s Day. Unlike you, they are disingenuous and do not argue in good faith.
Steves: thanks for your kind note – as you may have figured out, my aim is to convert the readership of this site to Prius-driving, latte-drinking, sandal-wearing, Micheal Moore ticket stub-holding liberals who spend their free time watching Joan Baez perform at the Al Sharpton Pavillion.
Re the Podhoretz article: I read it when Mark posted it a few days ago, and it seemed both factually correct and sensible. I’m not in the “Bush lied, kids died” camp. However, like the excerpt from Bush’s speech today, I think it misses the mark. While there are plenty of questions to be answered about the quality of pre-invasion intelligence and how it was used, the larger problem lies in what the administration did after the invasion. I think that we had the opportunity to recover from our mistakes – however I believe that we made serious mistakes which will take years to recover from.
peter, a quick response: I welcome a full investigation into the leadup to the war, and I’m not being cute when I say it should start, at the very least, at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, if it is to be meaningful and not an exercise in political showboating.
I wholeheartedly agree that Bush is overly sensitive about apologies; someone (Rove? Cheney? Laura?) has apparently convinced him that they are a sign of weakness, when, as we all know, they can be signs of strength…but I don’t think Bush has totally dodged the subject. He may not have apologized, but he has taken ‘responsibility’; not as good, I admit, but it is something.
As to the occupation, well, I would be a fool, indeed (as well I may be), if I argued that things went well initially. I think they are going far, far better now than Bush’s critics admit, and suicide bombings, as horrible as they are, are not an effective counterpoint to the real progress of democracy in Iraq. Freedom has a way of spreading, and I don’t think the people of Iraq are going to turn back now.
Bush is right to stand up against the revisionist history that is taking place; I hear what you’re saying on point number one, and it is a distinction that has merit…but I have maintained from the beginning, and will continue to do so until it is proven to me that I am mistaken, that this is a President who was ill-served by the intelligence community, not the other way around…
Whether Bush was ill-served by the intelligence community, or vice versa, is to some extent moot: it’s Bush’s watch, and he is accountable. You could argue that FDR was poorly served by the intelligence community before Pearl Harbor (unless you believe that FDR knew about the attack and kept silent so America would be galvanized to fight the war).
The counter-argument is that Bush was alerted by the CIA about the 9/11 attack in the summer of 2001, and yet counter-terrorism was a low priority for the administration until 9/11 happened. I don’t think it’s fair to blame Bush for 9/11 (even though it is under his watch) – but to be consistent, if you are going to blame the CIA for Iraq, you would have to blame Bush for 9/11.
However, you could also make the case that Bush is directly responsible for the misuse of intelligence because of the way he set up his government. Jimmy Carter, in an interview last week with Tim Russert, said that as President there were fifteen government agencies involved in collecting and analyzing intelligence, but everything was funneled through his DCI, Stansfield Turner. Carter said that Feith’s office at the Pentagon and Cheney’s shadow NSA apparatus enabled them to circumvent the intelligence establishment, and it eliminated the checks and balances which were heretofore part of the government’s intelligence apparatus. Quite clearly, there were many in the Bush administration who pushed for war with Iraq even before 9/11 – if you look hard enough for something, you are bound to find it.
peter, sorry, I don’t buy that if you blame the CIA for Iraq, you have to blame Bush for 9/11 (and I certainly can’t stomach national security advice from Jimmy Carter, who allowed America to be humiliated for well over a year). Bush’s job is not to gather intelligence – how can he be blamed for 9/11? Furthermore, the chatter pre-9/11 was not actionable – there was no where or when. Indeed, 9/11 happened so early in Bush’s presidency that it would be far more accurate to blame Clinton – though still not fair.
I agree with what you say – and I think neither Clinton nor Bush are culpable for 9/11. My point was that the CIA did publish an intelligence brief pointing to the likelihood of an Al Qaeda attack. In this instance, he was well served by the CIA. There was no known response by the administration to this alert. My point is only that if you are willing to excuse Bush because he purportedly was ill-served by the CIA regarding Iraq, then the corollary is that when the CIA does do its job, the responsibility for acting upon it would logically fall to Bush. Even had Bush moved aggressively after receiving the NIE in the summer of 2001, I doubt that 9/11 would have been prevented – all one could reasonably ask for is that a more aggressive stance and a higher priority would have been given to counter-terrorism. It is true that this was early in Bush’s first term (although here is the counter-argument: Waco happened when Janet Reno was on the job for two weeks. Is she culpable there?). I’m not trying to over-state my case – only to state that excusing Bush because he was allegedly ill-served by the CIA leads to logical inferences which you may not be comfortable with.
You guys have covered most of what I would say, except for this:
The evidence that Iraq was a threat was overwhelming (not unquestioned) and did not need to be hyped or sold. This included WMD, links to Al-Qaeda (loose as they might have been), and the words and actions of Saddam Hussein. The base argument for the war was one of pre-emption, which, if I’ve read the above posts correctly, we are in agreement with. The argument against the war was not that Saddam and Iraq were not a threat but, rather, that the UN regime of control was working.
During the lead up to the war I was perplexed by Saddam’s behavior. If he did not have WMD then all he had to do was allow Hans Blix and the UN to help him prove that to be true. But he obfuscated, dodged and feinted, leading us to believe that he had something to hide. We now know that he was emboldened by the Oil-For-Food bribery campaign that involved UN Security Council member States. He clearly believed that the US would be prevented from going to war.
In that context I don’t see how the President, who takes an oath to protect and defend the Nation and its Citizens – had any choice but to remove Saddam from power. As to the post-war occupation, I can’t in good faith argue that its been successful, 24/7. I would argue that we’ve come a long way, and the story is increasingly positive, but it was clearly mismanaged at the start.
Lastly, the topic of apologies. It is right and proper to admit your mistakes and apologize when you have wronged someone – except in politics where apologies are a sign of weakness. I can think of no positives that would accrue to the President by publically apologizing as you’ve suggested. In fact, I would predict that the President would barely have finished his apology when Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi or Ted Kennedy would be heard explaining why the President had just admitted that they and their Democrat colleagues were right all along.
Well, as it turned out, Saddam was not much of a threat. At the time of our invasion, his WMD program was either non-existent or barely there. His links with Al Qaeda were either non-existent or barely there. (I don’t think that any meetings between Iraqi officials and Al Qadea by themselves indicate much. Today’s paper mentions a $9 million fee Jack Abramoff received from Gabon to arrange a meeting between its president and Bush, and notes that the two leaders did meet. That doesn’t indicate that we’re in cahoots with Gabon). So what you had was a loud and belligerant dictator who terrorized his own people but lacked the wherewithal to be a real threat to the US for the foreseeable future.
Based on what we know now, there was no overwhelming threat and hence an invasion based on pre-empting an attack against the US was unjustified. But that is based on hindsight — the question is how accountable Bush should be for acting on the information which was known at the time. I think the answer is somewhere between the idea that he is a blameless dupe of his own intelligence and the “Bush lied, kids died” camp. Probably about half way between.
Re apologies: I think that a public apology would be the single best thing that Bush could do at this point. When he campaigned in 2000, he talked about having a humble foreign policy. Well, a hallmark of humility is admitting mistakes and seeking reparations. More importantly, though, it would be the most effective way to show the world that we undertook this mission in a good faith to protect our citizens, and that we will do our best to rectify what has gone wrong. We will never defeat terrorism by finding all of the terrorists and killing them. This is a hearts and minds struggle which can only be won when we have regained the moral stature which comes from embodying the ideals of liberty and freedom which the administration so frequently espouses. This includes distancing ourselves from governments like Egypt and Saudia Arabia, providing due process to prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere, and finding ways to use our influence positively (Would things be different if, instead of repurposing Abu Ghraib when we took it over, instead Microsoft and Dell donated a thousand computers and it became a computer school?). Perhaps most importantly, it includes taking responsibility for our actions, recognizing when they were wrong, and doing the best we can to fix things.