Bush and the words of war
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By James O. Goldsborough
Columnist
The San Diego Union-Tribune
September 19, 2002
The Bush administration needs to be reminded that overkill is ineffective in democracies. It may work under governments that lack open debate and independent means of analysis, but in democracies it can be ludicrous.
The Bush administration's language since Saddam Hussein accepted the return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq has been intemperate, as though he had done the opposite.
This is after all, good news, insufficient, but good. To hear President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld describe it, however, things are worse than before. "Bogus, phony, ploy, deception," was Bush's reaction to Saddam's action, while Rumsfeld's remarks to Congress are best described as hallucinatory.
For Rumsfeld, Saddam is Hitler and arms inspections are Munich. Not quite satisfied, he threw in another Pearl Harbor if Saddam is not removed (Rumsfeld likes Pearl Harbor analogies and last year suggested America would face a "space Pearl Harbor" if we did not deploy weapons in space). He used so many metaphors with Congress I lost count. One I remember is that we shouldn't be "waiting for a smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud."
The causes of the Bush chagrin are clear, but first let's address their argument that "the goal is not arms inspections but Iraqi disarmament."
That is exactly right, but for Bush to present arms inspection, which is a means to disarmament, as an alternative to it is deceptive. All arms agreements are based on inspections, and getting U.N. inspectors into Iraq without restrictions is the necessary means of enforcing the U.N. arms resolutions Iraq accepted in 1991.
Bush's reaction to Saddam's capitulation is understandable. The Bush goal of "regime change" is different from anything in the U.N. resolutions, and he needs to up the ante if he wants to bring the American people and other nations along. Rumsfeld's speech-writers think Hitler, Pearl Harbor and mushroom clouds are the way to go, but I think they are wrong.
For Bush, Iraq's action changes nothing. The brains of this administration, starting with Dick Cheney, the redoubtable vice president, and Rumsfeld, who has been Cheney's alter ego for 30 years, gets its energy from two groups with powerful Washington influence. Neither group is likely to be placated by sending U.N. inspectors back to Baghdad.
One group is the neoconservatives, whose overriding interest is Israel. The other group is the unilateralists, whose main interest is steering clear of multilateral agreements and knocking nations that defy U.S. policy or challenge U.S. supremacy.
The neoconservatives, represented in and around the Pentagon by people like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle and supported by a host of influential East Coast, neo-con publications, are those who persuaded Bush to "park" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and go after Iraq first.
Their argument, strongly supported by Israeli politicians and which will be unchanged by U.N. inspections, is that with Saddam out of the game, Arab states will be weakened, and Israel will have an easier time imposing its will on the Palestinians.
Far more likely, I believe, is that a U.S. attack on Iraq would weaken moderate Arab regimes and revitalize terrorist cells everywhere.
There was near-total Arab condemnation of the Sept. 11 attacks, which were seen as barbaric and unjustified.
A unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq would be viewed the same way. Consider the number of Iraqi civilians likely to be killed in an attack, which is one reason President Bush I, according to Colin Powell, declined to invade Baghdad a decade ago.
The unilateralist tendency is represented ideologically by Cheney and Rumsfeld and inside the White House by convert Condoleezza Rice. These are the people who persuaded Bush, who was new to foreign policy, to pull back from the United Nations, abrogate old treaties, refuse to sign new ones and take up arms against an "axis of evil" that challenged America.
In one year, Bush's polices have eroded much of the good will America received after Sept. 11. The "we are all Americans today" sentiment that echoed around the world has been replaced by denunciations of U.S. unilateralism and adventurism, of a nation that does not respect friends, alliances, treaties or institutions.
The Bush mantra of "pre-emptive" war, which the unilateralists try to present as an extension of traditional U.S. foreign policy, is actually a radical change. Pre-emptive war means open season on anyone you don't like, and Bush has made clear there are a lot of people out there he doesn't like.
The civilians in the Pentagon are gung-ho for war with Iraq, but what of the military? Officers still in uniform must stay silent, but we get the flavor from those who are not.
"It might be interesting to note that all the generals see this (Iraq) the same way, and all those that never fired a shot in anger are really hell-bent to go to war," says Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general who has been the Bush administration's special envoy to the Middle East.
The U.S. military, those who would actually fight the war, aren't so keen as the civilians. I wonder why.
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James O. Goldsborough is foreign affairs columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and a member of the newspaper's editorial board, specializing in international issues.
Goldsborough spent 15 years in Europe as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, the International Herald Tribune and Newsweek Magazine. He is a former Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign relations and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment.
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