|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
|
May 27th,
2008 - How Bush Sold the War |
|
By Douglas J. Feith Wall Street Journal May 27, 2008 In the fall of 2003, a few
months after Saddam Hussein's overthrow, U.S. officials began to despair of
finding stockpiles of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The resulting
embarrassment caused a radical shift in administration rhetoric about the war
in Iraq. President Bush no longer
stressed Saddam's record or the threats from the Baathist regime as reasons
for going to war. Rather, from that point forward, he focused almost
exclusively on the larger aim of promoting democracy. This new focus
compounded the damage to the president's credibility that had already been
caused by the CIA's errors on Iraqi WMD. The president was seen as distancing
himself from the actual case he had made for removing the Iraqi regime from
power. This change can be
quantified: In the year beginning with his first major speech about Iraq –
the Sept. 12, 2002 address to the U.N. General Assembly – Mr. Bush delivered
nine major talks about Iraq. There were, on average, approximately 14
paragraphs per speech on Saddam's record as an enemy, aggressor, tyrant and
danger, with only three paragraphs on promoting democracy. In the next year –
from September 2003 to September 2004 – Mr. Bush delivered 15 major talks
about Iraq. The average number of paragraphs devoted to the record of threats
from Saddam was one, and the number devoted to democracy promotion was
approximately 11. The stunning change in
rhetoric appeared to confirm his critics' argument that the security
rationale for the war was at best an error, and at worst a lie. That's a
shame, for Mr. Bush had solid grounds for worrying about the dangers of
leaving Saddam in power. In the spring of 2004, with
the transfer of sovereign authority to the Iraqis imminent, the president was
scheduled to give a major speech about Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld received an advance draft and he gave it to me for review. In
keeping with the new trend, the drafted speech focused on the prospects for
Iraqi democracy. White House officials
understandably preferred to declare affirmative messages about Iraq's future,
rather than rehash the government's intelligence embarrassments. Even so, I
thought it was a strategic error for the president to make no effort to
defend the arguments that had motivated him before the war. Mr. Bush's
political opponents were intent on magnifying the administration's mistakes
regarding WMD. On television and radio, in print and on the Internet, day
after day they repeated the claim that the undiscovered stockpiles were the
sum and substance of why the U.S. went to war against Saddam. Electoral politics aside, I
thought it was important for national security reasons that the president
refute his critics' misstatements. The CIA assessments of WMD were wrong, but
they originated in the years before he became president and they had been
accepted by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, as well as by the
U.N. and other officials around the world. And, in any event, the erroneous
WMD intelligence was not the entire security rationale for overthrowing
Saddam. On May 22, 2004, I gave Mr.
Rumsfeld a memo to pass along to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
and the president's speechwriters. I proposed that the speech "should
deal with some basics – in particular, why we went to war in the first
place." It would be useful to "make clear the tie-in between Iraq
and the broader war on terrorism" in the following terms: The Saddam
Hussein regime "had used WMD, supported various terrorist groups, was hostile
to the U.S. and had a record of aggression and of defiance of numerous U.N.
resolutions." In light of 9/11, the
"danger that Saddam's regime could provide biological weapons or other
WMD to terrorist groups for use against us was too great" to let stand.
And other ways of countering the danger – containment, sanctions,
inspections, no-fly zones – had proven "unsustainable or
inadequate." I suggested that the president distinguish between the
essential U.S. interests in Iraq and the extra benefits if we could succeed
in building democratic institutions there: "A unified Iraq that does not
support terrorism or pursue WMD will in and of itself be an important victory
in the war on terrorism." Some of the speech's
rhetoric about democracy struck me as a problem: "The draft speech now
implies that we went to war in Iraq simply to free the Iraqi people from
tyranny and create democracy there," I noted. But that implication
"is not accurate and it sets us up for accusations of failure if Iraq
does not quickly achieve 'democracy.'" As was typical, the speech
went through multiple drafts. Ms. Rice's office sent us a new version, and
the next day I wrote Mr. Rumsfeld another set of comments – without great
hope of persuading the speechwriting team. The speech's centerpiece, once
again, was the set of steps "to help Iraq achieve democracy." One
line in particular asserted that we went to Iraq "to make them
free." I dissented: - "This mixes up our
current important goal (i.e., getting Iraq on the path to democratic
government) with the strategic rationale for the war, which was to end the
danger that Saddam might provide biological or [other] weapons of mass
destruction to terrorists for use against us." - "There is a
widespread misconception that the war's rationale was the existence of Iraqi
WMD stockpiles. This allows critics to say that our failure to find such
stockpiles undermines that rationale." - "If the President
ignores this altogether and then implies that the war's rationale was not the
terrorism/state sponsorship/WMD nexus but rather democracy for Iraqis, the
critics may say that he is changing the subject or rewriting history." Again, I proposed that the
president distinguish between achieving our primary goal in Iraq –
eliminating a security threat – and aiming for the over-and-above goal of
democracy promotion, which may not be readily achievable. Mr. Bush gave his speech at
the Army War College on May 24, as Iraq was entering into the last month of
its 14-month occupation by the U.S. The president declared: "I sent
American troops to Iraq to defend our security, not to stay as an occupying power.
I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them
American. Iraqis will write their own history, and find their own way." I had hoped the president
would explain why sending American troops to Iraq had helped defend our
security, but he did not. The questionable line about sending those troops to
make Iraq's people free had remained in the speech. And it was rather late to
be promising the Iraqis that we would not stay as an occupying power but
instead let them find their own way. The president had chosen to
talk almost exclusively about Iraq's future. His political opponents noticed
that if they talked about the past – about prewar intelligence and prewar
planning for the war and the aftermath – no one in the White House communications
effort would contradict them. Opponents could say anything about the prewar
period – misstating Saddam's record, the administration's record or their own
– and their statements would go uncorrected. This was a big incentive for
them to recriminate about the administration's prewar work, and congressional
Democrats have pressed for one retrospective investigation after another. But the most damaging effect
of this communications strategy was that it changed the definition of
success. Before the war, administration officials said that success would
mean an Iraq that no longer threatened important U.S. interests – that did
not support terrorism, aspire to WMD, threaten its neighbors, or conduct mass
murder. But from the fall of 2003 on, the president defined success as stable
democracy in Iraq. This was a public affairs
decision that has had enormous strategic consequences for American support
for the war. The new formula fails to connect the Iraq war directly to U.S.
interests. It causes many Americans to question why we should be investing so
much blood and treasure for Iraqis. And many Americans doubt that the new aim
is realistic – that stable democracy can be achieved in Iraq in the
foreseeable future. To fight a long war, the
president has to ensure he can preserve public and congressional support for
the effort. It is not an overstatement to say that the president's shift in
rhetoric nearly cost the U.S. the war. Victory or defeat can hinge on the
president's words as much as on the military plans of his generals or the
actions of their troops on the ground. Mr. Feith was under
secretary of defense for policy from July 2001 until August 2005. This
article is adapted from his new memoir, "War and Decision: Inside the
Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism" (HarperCollins). External link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121184655427621367.html |