An Iraq Perspective & The Democratic Opportunity

Ok. Here is my take on Bush and Iraq in a few paragraphs - the Democratic Opportunity will come in the next Post.

Bush was a rich kid struggling in the shadow of his father and trying to find his own identity. He was a playboy, frat guy in his youth; he made a mess of his Air National Guard service; failed at an early attempt at politics; failed in the oil industry and was rescued by the Texas establishment. They allowed him to buy in to the Texas Rangers baseball franchise and put him in the front office as the "front man." If he was lucky, he may have gotten to be Baseball Commissioner someday. Then he met Karl Rove.

Rove took him (but primarily his name) back into Texas politics. He won the Governorship of Texas and did a reasonably good job, in an essentially weak office. He proved adept at co-opting the achievements of others in the Texas legislature. And, with the name, Rove, and a lot of slick marketing wins the Republican nomination for President. Following one of the closest and most contentious elections in our history and thanks to his younger brother in Florida and the Supreme Court, he wins the Presidency.

But, did it really matter to most of the country? The economy looked great on paper and the rich were getting richer, following eight years of Clinton and a cozy relationship with Wall Street and Globalization. So...unless you were a die-hard Democrat, pissed because you believe you've had an election stolen from you...the answer is no. And main street America looks at Bush and thinks: "OK, he's not the brightest star in the sky, but basically a nice guy, who has overcome personal problems and whose values reflect the mainstream. What can go wrong?"

The first thing to go wrong is the economy. The Wall Street "house of cards" takes a tumble. An over valued market and corporate corruption - all of which grew worse and worse under Clinton - puts the economy in the tank and it's up to GW to do whatever he can to fix it.

He falls back on the Republican theory of "trickle down economics." It worked with Kennedy; it worked with Reagan. Big tax cuts to investors allows for more investment. Increased investments leads to new enterprises and new jobs. And, it works...but with a big caveat. Kennedy and Reagan were dealing with a national economy; now the economy (and investment) is global. Without enforcement of anti-trust and new restrictions on the outflow of manufacturing and high tech jobs, the effect of "trickle down economics" only creates more hamburger flippers and Wal Mart employees. The economy looks great on paper; unemployment goes down and the middle class (whose demise began under Clinton) continues to suffer. But, politicians on both sides of the aisle fail to notice, or if they do, simply ignore it - they know who butters their bread. The Democrats attack the tax cuts as simply making the rich, richer (which is no great surprise to anyone) and the Republicans point to the raw data that shows that the tax cuts are working and avoiding increases in unemployment...and they have the added advantage in a procedure that only counts those drawing unemployment insurance as the "unemployed." And, of course, both parties wish the Immigration problem would simply go away - and it won't, because now a sizable number of formerly middle class voters are competing with illegal aliens for jobs as hamburger flippers.

Then, comes 9/11. Had either Party taken Al Qaeda seriously 9/11 in all likelihood would have never occurred. On balance, Clinton may have paid more attention, but didn't want (or couldn't) go through the hassle of invading Afghanistan two years earlier and taking them out. I was never a great fan of the Clinton foreign policy. Homeland security was non-existent. The walls between the FBI and CIA, created in the aftermath of Vietnam and the Church Committee, remained. Our European allies did draw us into the Balkans to prevent genocide in Europe, but we ignored the same in Rwanda and turned tail and ran in Somalia. In my opinion, the Clinton administration forgot to note that U.S. embassies abroad and warships are considered "sovereign U.S. territory" and as much of an attack on the United States as flying airplanes into the World Trade Center. On the other hand, I do not blame Clinton entirely. Until 9/11 all recent U.S. Presidents, when it comes to U.S. military foreign deployments, have lived in the shadow of Vietnam. Carter failed to react in Iran; Reagan in Lebanon. Ironically, and aside from Reagan's poker like bluff that brought an already teetering Soviet Union down, the only savvy post-Vietnam U.S. President (i.e. since Nixon and Kissinger) we've had was, in my opinion, Bush Senior.

But, the story of 9/11 and George W begins, as Bill Maher has noted, with the seven or so minutes of video tape of GW before the elementary school kids in Florida, when he was told "the country is under attack." While I don't make as much of this tape as Michael Moore or Maher, there is little getting around the impression that here is a clueless guy, wondering, "what the hell do I do now?"

By his own admission, GW was neither an intellectual or foreign policy wonk. He didn't read much and when he did, again by his own admission, it was chiefly "sports biographies." [He's tried to change this image over the last few years.] At best, his Vietnam-era service in the Air National Guard was an indication that he had no great interest, at the time, in foreign policy and was chiefly motivated by trying to stay out of harm's way. I don't hold that against him. He was just not interested or involved and struggling at that time apparently with his own personal demons. I believe, other than one brief trip to Europe and several trips to Mexico, as Governor of Texas, he had never traveled abroad. He was just not interested in foreign policy. The closest he came in the 2000 election was a reasonably firm stance against "nation-building."

So, when 9/11 occurred, after the initial 7 or so minute shock, captured on tape, his first thoughts must have turned to his national security advisers, chief among them, Dick Cheney.

Here, aside from Powell (whom, I would suggest, no one took very seriously because of jealosy), there was a distinct vacuum. Neither Cheney or Rumsfeld were "policy wonks." Both were known, not for their enormous intellects, but for their administrative talents. They were good corporate guys and, I suspect, in the failure to anticipate 9/11 or a similar incident, had been put on the ticket and appointed because of these talents. Rumsfeld to clean-up the Pentagon and bring it into the 21st century; Cheney to clean-up the federal government in general, reduce its size and get it to run more efficiently - as well as being the political point man with the oil industry. The overall emphasis was on good "management" and not major policy shifts.

And, overall, until 9/11 this was pretty much of an Administration without a foreign policy... on September 12th, they needed to get one...fast.

Within the broader Republican Party, most were still basking in the sun of Ronald Reagan as the Victor of the Cold War. Aside from sort of generalized dissatisfaction with Marylin "Halfbright" and a perception of weakness in the Clinton administration, "foreign policy" to Republicans was basically defined in terms of dislike of the UN, greater leverage befitting our status as the remaining super power in international organizations (the WTO, et al) and free trade. In actual military terms, Republican interest seemed to be in force modernization and Star Wars...a Reagan legacy.

Now, when a foreign policy was needed, the key players...Cheney and Rumsfeld turned to their staffs...sort of the House intellectuals...the people who were actually policy wonks. And, they found neo-conservatives. People, who without getting into the fine print or messy details, had obtained their jobs through a general agreement with their bosses that the Clinton foreign policy had been a failure and that the United States needed to exercise its power more effectively within the international community. Both Cheney and Rumsfeld are "doers" and not particularly "thinkers." They might know the latest in management techniques, but I doubt either had ever read a book on political theory, or if they had, they skimmed it, took away the facts and never gave it another thought...hurrying back to "doing." But, it was the policy wonks beneath them who had.

In Cheney's office this was "Scooter" Libby. In DoD, it was Paul Wolfwitz and a host of others. Only the State Department had avoided placing neo-cons in policy positions and that didn't matter much to the neo cons, who for the most part considered the State Department useless anyhow.

I suspect that when the histories are written, they may be kinder to Cheney and Rumsfeld than public opinion is now. And, I suspect that both men were largely duped by their own neo-con staffs...the policy wonks. 9/11 required a dramatic statement of U.S. power. I would contend that Afghanistan and the elimination of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden would have sufficed. But the neo cons, assisted by cherry-picked phony intelligence saw 9/11 as an opportunity to fill a vacuum and seize control of U.S. foreign policy...and Rumsfeld and Cheney, not familiar with the neo-con "fine print" went along. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

So, to Rumsfeld and Cheney, whom Bush relied almost entirely upon for advice, the adoption of neo-con principles was simply a sort of visceral, knee-jerk reaction to 9/11. For the die-hard neo-cons who advised them, it was confirmation of everything they'd been preaching since John Foster Dulles argued for "roll-back" in Communist Eastern Europe in the post WWII period and the opportunity to bring about a major post World War II change in American foreign policy.

Rove simply tailored the politics to fit. I seriously doubt he had a major input to the foreign policy shift, but merely structured the political arguments around the Cheney/Rumsfeld policies, in the vein of "selling ice to Eskimos."

And so, largely unconsciously, Bush abandoned 50 some years of successful containment policies and multlateralism, isolated us from much of the world and took us into what has delicately come to be known as, "a war of choice."

The "War on Terror," is really in my opinion not so much the issue with the American people as is Iraq - and they've come to understand the difference. The Iraqi prison scandal, the torture scandal and debate, the civil liberties issues regarding surveillance are certainly important collateral issues, but would not be as large as they are without Iraq or the evidence of Administration incompetence - i.e. public opinion would say, "OK...temporarily...but be very, very careful." But faced with a war instituted on false premises and the examples of Katrina, EVERYTHING, now became suspicious and important.

There has been a colassal, but understandable mistake in American foreign policy. And, there is some indication that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld came to acknowledge this during the 2004 election campaign. Most, if not all, of the neo-cons are now gone from government. Quietly, without fanfare they've either been dismissed or, in Wolfwitz's case, kicked upstairs. Their departures are an indication that Republican leadership finally realized what exactly they were being asked to buy into and turned away. The neo-con hijacking of foreign policy failed...and now we have the mess they made to clean-up. It ain't going to be easy...for either Republicans or Democrats.