To say Bush lied on Iraq is itself a lie
D'Souza
Special for the REPUBLIC
Jan. 21, 2007 12:00 AM
As Congress considers the issues of funding the Iraq war and increased troop levels, there is widespread suspicion of President Bush's motives for escalating American involvement in Iraq.
The reason for this is the belief that Bush got America into the Iraq war under false pretenses. Bush's crime, according to his critics, is not merely one of error but one of deception. Since no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, Bush's critics now charge that he was deliberately misleading the American people from the outset.
At one time, these charges of lying were restricted to the political left. In the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, the Nation claimed Bush went to war based on "falsehoods and deceptions." Writing in Dissent, Jeff Faux began to refer to "the liar in the White House." Al Franken took the charge a step further, alleging "the president loves to lie." advertisement
Author Joe Conason insisted Bush's deceptions on Iraq "will someday fill many volumes." Activist Cindy Sheehan insists, "My son died for lies. George Bush lied to us, and he knew he was lying." Of late, even mainstream Democrats have started to talk this way. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration, recently faulted Bush for going to war in Iraq on "false pretenses."
It is easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to fault Bush for being wrong about the weapons of mass destruction. But unlike pundits and rival presidential candidates, statesmen do not have the benefit of hindsight. They must act in the moving current of events, using information available to them. At the time, there was little doubt across the political spectrum that Saddam Hussein was pursuing WMDs. Saddam himself acted as if he had such weapons, constantly evading the efforts of United Nations inspectors to monitor Iraqi weapons facilities.
Bush had to weigh the risk of invading Iraq and being wrong against the risk of not invading Iraq and being wrong. In the first case, he would be risking American troops in an unpopular war that would, nevertheless, result in the removal of a vicious dictator. In the second case, he would be risking Saddam's acquiring a deadly weapon, which could end up in the hands of terrorists. If, as a consequence, a massive bomb exploded in Chicago killing half a million Americans, then who would take the responsibility? Weighing the risks, Bush decided it would be better to take preventive action and invade Iraq. Given what he knew at the time, it was the right decision.
In retrospect, Bush was wrong to invade Iraq at the time he did, in the way that he did. With the benefit of hindsight, I think he might have done better to focus on Iran, which had nuclear aspirations of its own and was pursuing them, it turns out, with greater effectiveness than Saddam Hussein. Statesmen, however, do not have the luxury of making decisions in retrospect.
Consider a similar decision made by President Franklin Roosevelt. In the period leading up to World War II, a group of emigre German scientists warned Albert Einstein that the Germans were building an atomic bomb. The emigres told Einstein the German project was headed by that country's greatest scientist, Werner Heisenberg. Acutely aware of the dangers of Hitler possessing an atomic bomb, Einstein took this information in the fall of 1939 to Roosevelt, who commissioned the Manhattan Project. The United States built the bomb, and later dropped two of them on Japan.
Many years later, Americans discovered the Germans were nowhere close to building an atomic bomb. Their project was on the wrong track, and it seems to have stalled in its infancy. Some historians believe Heisenberg was trying to thwart the project from the inside. Be that as it may, in retrospect we now know that the intelligence that led to the Manhattan Project was wrong. But no one goes around saying, "Einstein lied" or "FDR lied." They didn't lie; they used the information they had to make a tough decision in a very dangerous situation.
The same is true of Bush. Acting against the somber backdrop of 9/11, he may have acted in haste, and he may have acted in error, but he did not act in bad faith. The claim that "Bush lied" is itself a lie. By acknowledging this, we remove some of the poison that currently infects the Iraq debate and help lay the groundwork for a constructive discussion of America's future role in Iraq and in the Middle East.
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