Bush's Fiascos in Iraq

The word does not require an "E," but the world desperately needs one-E for EXIT from the march of folly toward wider war brought on by plural US policy blunders: in Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon, for starters, and now threatening to spread to Syria and Iran. Fortunately, Webster's does allow the insertion of an "E" and that's precisely what we must do now. We need to make a prompt exit from the policy fiascoes that have brought violence and chaos to the Middle East.

If we do not look beyond the carnage of the last few weeks, weigh the reaction of others in and outside the region, and reflect on Washington's role in precipitating the violence, I fear there will be no exit. A brief review may be instructive. Who led our march into this modern-day Valley of Death?

Ideologues and Amateurs

Let's begin with the new people and policies that President George W. Bush brought in with him when he took office on Jan. 20, 2001. Who urged on him what Michael O'Hanlon of Brookings calls "the huge mistake of giving Israel a blank check?" Who played the leading roles in encouraging Bush to let slip the dogs of war on Iraq?

Honors for the leading role in the category of fiasco goes, ex aequo, to Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld-the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" described by Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.). At an award ceremony, the cabal no doubt would offer copious thanks to other key actors-first and foremost, to ideologues Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. The Oscar for best actress in a supporting role goes to Condoleezza Rice.

It was five and a half years ago that Rice was formally initiated into the neo-conservative brotherhood as an auxiliary. Her most important service was greasing the skids for the brothers to try to shoehorn into reality their ambitious but naive dreams of using "preemptive" war to ensure total US/Israeli domination of the Middle East. At the new administration's first National Security Council meeting on Jan. 30, 2001, then-national security adviser Rice stage-managed formal approval of two profound changes in decades-long US policy toward Israel-Palestine and Iraq. Thanks to Paul O'Neill, confirmed as Treasury Secretary just hours before the NSC meeting, we have a first-hand account.

The neoconservatives had already gotten to the new president, for he began with the abrupt announcement that he was ditching the policy of past presidents who tried to honest-broker an end to the violence between Palestinians and Israelis. Rather, the president declared that the US would tilt sharply toward Israel. Most important, Bush made it clear that he would let then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon resolve the conflict as he saw fit. The US would no longer "interfere."

Powell: Dead Man Walking

O'Neill described Secretary of State Colin Powell as "startled" at hearing this. Powell warned that US disengagement would unleash Sharon and the Israeli army. But Bush shrugged dismissively, adding, "Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things." Just seven weeks later with Sharon in Washington, the president again shocked those present when, out of the blue, he turned to him and said, "I'll use force to protect Israel," according to Sheryl Gay Stolberg writing in today's New York Times.

After his requiem for the decades of US sweat and blood expended on the effort to work out a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, the president turned immediately to Iraq. Rice led off by reciting the received wisdom of the neocons (I still wonder how many of them actually believed it) that "Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region." Whereupon, at her request, then-CIA director George Tenet displayed a grainy overhead image of a factory in Iraq that he just happened to have with him. Tenet thought the factory "might" be associated with a chemical or biological weapons program, but no such association could be confirmed. No problem. The conversation immediately turned from this typically Tenet-ative "intelligence" to the question of which Iraqi targets to begin bombing. Remember: this watershed meeting of the NSC took place more than eight months before 9/11 and more than two years before the invasion of Iraq.