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War is Too Important to Be Left to Ideological Amateurs Robert Gilpin International Relations 2005; 19; 5 DOI: 10.1177/0047117805050059 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ire.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/1/5
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War is Too Important to Be Left to Ideological Amateurs 1 Robert Gilpin, Princeton University, USA
Abstract The 2003 American attack against Iraq was engineered by two powerful groups within the Bush Administration, the ultra-nationalists and the neo-conservatives. The ultranationalists’ motive was to gain control of the oil reserves in the Middle East and elsewhere in the region in order to gain and sustain American global primacy. While the neo-conservatives shared this objective, they also wanted a radical restructuring of geopolitical relations in the area in order to promote the long-term security of Israel. Supporting the Administration were powerful domestic constituencies, especially evangelical Christians. Opposition to the war was expressed by leaders of three professional services responsible for American security: the American army and marines, the Foreign Service, and Middle East experts in the CIA. Opponents of the war believed that there was no threat posed to the US by Iraq; they also believed that the civilian leadership of the Pentagon was not competent and that planning for securing and pacifying postwar Iraq was inadequate. The opponents of the Iraq War have proved correct. Keywords: clash of civilizations, evangelical Christians, Iraq War, Islam, Israel, Middle East, neo-cons, Pentagon, Powell Doctrine, terrorism
President George W. Bush’s costly and reckless war against Iraq has resulted in the greatest threat to the security and wellbeing of the United States since the US Civil War. The war against Iraq has significantly exacerbated dangerous social, cultural, and regional fissures in US society. The war has not only undermined the social and political stability of the Middle East, but has also let loose forces that threaten the entire global political and economic system. The hubris, ambitions, and incompetence of the ideological amateurs managing the foreign policy of the Bush Administration are unparalleled in the history of the United States. The needless deaths and the maiming of thousands of both combatants and Iraqi civilians weigh, or at least should weigh, heavily on the conscience of every American. Every citizen of the United States and millions of others around the globe have been placed at serious risk for the foreseeable future. Rather than serving as a ‘beacon of light unto the nations’, the United States has become almost universally hated and distrusted. Further and more importantly, the ‘pre-emptive’ war against Iraq, launched ostensibly to eliminate Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and its links to international terrorism, has actually greatly increased the magnitude of the terrorist threat to the United States and other societies. Despite increasing misgivings over the course of the war, US public support for President Bush’s ‘war on terrorism’ remains strong. Yet, in the early summer of International Relations Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol 19(1): 5–18 Downloaded from http://ire.sagepub.com at CAPES on August 12, 2008 © 2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. [DOI: 10.1177/0047117805050059]
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2004, the tide of public and expert opinion began to turn against the war and the President’s foreign policies in general. The first development undermining the Administration’s credibility was its embarrassing failure to find Saddam Hussein’s alleged cache of WMDs; nor has it found convincing evidence of the alleged connection between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001 on the United States by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The Administration has contrived one rationalization after another to justify its ‘pre-emptive war’ against Iraq. When no WMDs were found, the Bush Administration redefined the purpose of the war. The war has been defended as an effort to ‘bring democracy’ to Iraq and eventually to the whole Muslim world. On other occasions, the purpose of the war has been defined as the liberation of the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. The Administration has put forth at least a dozen different justifications for its attack on Iraq, but the originally stated purpose of the war, to eliminate Iraq’s WMDs, however, has been almost totally ignored by Administration spokespersons, at least since early in 2004. As months have passed and the violence in Iraq has intensified, Americans have learned more and more about the Administration’s true motives, hidden machinations, and outright deceits regarding the war. Growing numbers of people have recognized the many ways in which President Bush himself and the top officials of his Administration have lied to or deliberately misled the nation’s citizens. This increased public understanding of the true nature of the war has been greatly promoted by publication of a number of outstanding books and other writings by excellent investigative reporters and disaffected former members of the Bush Administration; in these writings, much of the excessive secrecy of the most secretive administration in US history has been diligently and patiently peeled away. Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies, a startling and influential book published early in 2004, seriously decreased trust in the Bush Administration.2 Clarke, one of the most experienced and knowledgeable US counter-terrorism experts, revealed and severely criticized the failure of the Bush Administration prior to 11 September to take seriously the dangerous threat posed to the United States by international terrorism, and especially by bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Other important books by respected US journalists and defectors from the Administration also alerted the US public to the extraordinary chicanery of the Bush Administration.3 Although the July 2004 Intelligence Commission Report on 9/11 revealed a wealth of information about the Administration’s activities behind its cloak of secrecy and lies, there is much that we do not know and probably never will know about the origins and conduct of the war.4 There is much that is murky about the Administration’s use and abuse of intelligence, the intense debate within the Administration leading to the decision to attack Iraq, and the crucial errors made by highly placed civilian officials in the Pentagon that could result in one of the worst military and diplomatic debacles in US history. Nevertheless, at this time it is possible to draw certain conclusions from the unsparing revelations by journalists, ex-officials, and others about the Admin-
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istration’s serious failures and true motives. It is now beyond doubt, for example, that both geo-strategic and domestic political considerations provided the principal motives for the Administration’s decision to wage war against Iraq. Moreover, although honest and sincere individuals differ profoundly about the wisdom of the war itself, few would deny that the planning for the war and its aftermath by the civilian leadership of the war effort was handled in an incompetent manner. Responsibility for these significant mistakes of judgment rests squarely on the shoulders of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other high civilian Pentagon officials, especially Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the top of the Pentagon chain of command. The major blunders of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) based in Baghdad and headed by US proconsul Paul Bremer also contributed significantly to the tragic US failures in Iraq. In a brief article, it is impossible to consider all the important decisions and mistakes that have led to the failure of the United States to achieve its ambitious and unrealistic goals in Iraq and the Middle East. Not even the US hyper-power can transform these ancient cultures and the geopolitics of its extraordinarily complex political system. The Pentagon’s inadequate plans for the war, its serious misjudgments with respect to the conduct of the war, and the incompetence of the civilian leadership of the US occupation made achievement of the Administration’s objectives highly unlikely and also greatly weakened global confidence in and respect for the United States.
Why do they hate us? The 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States produced an unprecedented trauma among Americans. In response to the terrorist attack, Americans asked themselves: why did foreign terrorists attack us? What had the United States done to deserve such savagery? Why do they hate us? Answers given have significantly shaped the US response to international terrorism and to the problems of the Middle East. Stated simply, there are two prominent and differing positions concerning the appropriate answer to the question of why the United States is hated and was attacked by Islamicist terrorists. The first and by far the most influential explanation is that the United States is hated for what it is; terrorists and other enemies of the United States hate the United States because of its huge successes and their own miserable failures. This position, which has been accepted, at least implicitly, by a majority of US citizens, has been exploited and promoted by the Bush Administration. The alternative explanation for anti-Americanism is that the United States is hated by millions of people around the world because of its policies, especially the arrogant policies of the Bush Administration. In other words, the United States is hated for what it does. The most widely accepted explanation for the 9/11 terrorist attack and opposition to the United States has frequently been labeled the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis.5 Although few in the United States would use this precise phraseology, many Americans have accepted this idea first put forth
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by Princeton University scholar Bernard Lewis that the United States was attacked and is hated for what it is rather than for what it has done. In other words, according to Lewis and the many pundits who follow his lead, terrorist attacks against the United States and its citizens are not attributable to Americans themselves or to anything that they have or have not done. Such pundits argue that the fault lies instead fully with the terrorists themselves. The implication of this interpretation of Islamicist terrorism is that anti-American terrorism arises from a failed Islamic civilization, is inevitable, and cannot be prevented through any attempt to resolve political disputes between Islam and the United States or any attempt to alleviate Muslim suspicions or criticisms of the United States and the West.6 The ‘clash of civilizations’ interpretation of Islamic terrorism takes many forms, and Lewis’s prolific writings, public lectures, and well-known books claiming to explain ‘why they hate us’ have had a profound effect on US public opinion regarding terrorism, and especially on the views of the top echelon of the Bush Administration. As a front page article in the 3 February 2004 Wall Street Journal has reported, Lewis’s diagnosis of the ‘Muslim world’s malaise’ and his strong advocacy of a war against Iraq ‘have helped define the boldest shift in U.S. foreign policy in 50 years’.7 It is worth noting that Peter Waldman, the author of the article, refers to Lewis’s highly influential views on the nature of Islamic civilization and the necessity for a war against Iraq as the ‘Lewis Doctrine’. Lewis views Islam as a degenerate, resentful, and dangerous religion/civilization that seeks to destroy the more successful and therefore threatening Western civilization. He argues that the United States was attacked on 9/11 because the Islamic world hates the United States and what it represents; the terrorists, he asserts, believe that Western secular values are corrupt and pose a serious threat to Islam’s social and religious beliefs. Another major point is that, whereas the United States is a highly successful society, Islam – once itself highly successful – is today a failed and demoralized civilization. This situation has led Islamic terrorists, and Osama bin Laden in particular, to resent the United States because of its successes, its democratic way of life, and its individual freedoms. Lewis views Americans as basically innocent; he believes that the United States has done nothing to merit the enmity of Islam. The United States stands for decency and civilization; its fundamental motive is to bring democracy and the blessings of liberty to the rest of the world. President Bush, using a similar argument, has frequently stated that the evil forces and individuals opposed to the US mission of promoting a ‘global democratic revolution’ irrationally wish to prevent implementation of the good deeds that the United States would like to do in Iraq and elsewhere around the world. Lewis is certainly correct that anti-Americanism is an ingredient in terrorist attacks on Americans and on symbols of US power and wealth. Yet widespread feelings of opposition to the United States and to Westernization existed long before the terrorism of the early twenty-first century. Muslim hatred and distrust of the West can be traced back at least to the Christian Crusades ending during the fifteenth century and, more recently, to US/Western imperialist interventions in the
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Muslim world. It is difficult, moreover, to accept Lewis’s single-factor oversimplified ‘clash of civilizations’ interpretation as the cause of a sudden and intense outbreak of anti-US terrorism and of the worldwide fury of Muslims, especially Arab Muslims, against the United States. This writer finds Lewis’s simplistic explanation of the behavior of Muslims implausible.8 The Muslim world is composed of highly diverse peoples and cultures. Islam extends across many disparate and distinctive societies from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Central Asia to deepest Africa. It is riven by many serious internal political conflicts and intense national rivalries, and many of its distinctive cultures have very different attitudes and policies toward the West and the United States. An alternative explanation, and the one that I myself prefer, is that US imperialist policies and anti-Muslim actions in the Middle East have provided the terrorists with a crucially important motive, one that is ignored and in fact rejected by Lewis’s explanation for Islamicist terrorist attacks against the United States. In particular, the bias of US policies toward the interests of Israel in the Israeli– Palestinian conflict and US support for corrupt, repressive Arab regimes foster resentment and opposition to the United States, particularly, but not only, in the Middle East. Islam is divided internally in a variety of ways. It is divided between two major and antagonistic branches (Sunni and Shia); there are also dozens of splinter groups based on ethnic or theological differences. It is worth noting, for example, that Sunni-dominated Iraq fought Shia-dominated Iran for 10 years in one of the bloodiest conflicts of the late twentieth century; in that war, the United States gave assistance to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq even though Saddam used chemical weapons against Iranian troops and his own people. This writer notes, however, that Turkey, a secular Muslim society and the most important Islamic country in the Middle East, is an ally of both the United States and Israel. The great diversity of Islam and the conflicts within the Muslim world cause me to question Lewis’s argument. Lewis’s generalizations about Muslim behavior concentrate almost entirely on the Middle East and on the Arab world in particular. In his analysis of anti-Americanism, Lewis neglects the more moderate Muslim societies of East Asia, including Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world. Although he gives scant attention to the Israeli–Palestinian territorial conflict, many prominent scholars of the Arab world as well as Israeli and Palestinian and other Arab/Muslim observers and politicians, believe that this territorial conflict and US policies regarding that conflict stoke the fires of the Middle East political cauldron and bear much responsibility for inflaming the terrorism to which this region has given birth. Lewis’s polemical writings demonstrate that he is an unreliable and misleading guide to the roots of anti-US terrorism. Unfortunately, the behavior in the Middle East of the Bush Administration, especially since 9/11, has confirmed the image of aggressive US policies toward the Muslim world, and this in turn has provoked more terrorism and supported the belief that the root of terrorism is hatred of the United States. An especially pernicious aspect of the ‘clash of civilizations’
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thesis is that it absolves Israeli and US policies of any responsibility for contributing to anti-US terrorism. Perhaps this is due to the fact that many proponents of that thesis have also been strong supporters of the repressive policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon toward the Palestinians. Some American pro-Israeli partisans have chosen to portray Israel as merely an innocent victim of a clash between Islamic and Christian civilizations rather than as itself a significant contributor to the dangerous conflicts in the Middle East. Lewis’s argument logically leads to the conclusion that diplomatic initiatives put forward by Israel, the United States, or others to further the cause of peace would have little impact on the problem of terrorism and could even signal Western weakness and thus embolden the terrorists to increase their nefarious actions. Such thinking has influenced or, at least, provided a rationalization for counterproductive American policies and for Bush Administration failures to take steps to eliminate the political problems that underlie and motivate terrorist behavior. Indeed, the Bush Administration has shifted the burden for solving the problem of terrorism entirely to Muslim societies themselves. The Bush Administration argues that in order to stop terrorism, Islamic nations must be transformed into more secular and democratic societies; they must become part of President Bush’s ‘global democratic revolution’ and become more like the United States. In effect, members of the Administration seem to believe that the only possible solution to the problem of Islamicist terrorism is the transformation, including the democratization, of Middle Eastern societies. If so, we are indeed entering an era of civilizational conflict that will be very long and extremely dangerous.
Terrorism as a political issue Terrorism in all its many manifestations is a form of political action carried out to achieve specific political objectives. Although revenge, hatred, and other powerful emotions can be important elements in the motivation of terrorists, these factors cannot in themselves explain specific acts of terrorism. The ten years of detailed planning by bin Laden and Al Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks certainly suggest that this extraordinarily well-conceived and -executed operation was much more than either an expression of emotionally based anti-Americanism or a means for individual Muslims to reach Islamic paradise. Bin Laden’s own words and actions suggest strongly that the 9/11 attack was a calculated tactical move to achieve specific long-term political objectives, especially the political unification of the Muslim world and the expulsion of Western influence from Islamic lands. He believed that the attack would force Muslims to choose between such apostate pro-Western ruling elites in the Arab world (i.e. the rulers of Saudi Arabia and of secular Egypt) and the true Islam in which he himself believed. Some experts believe that bin Laden hoped that his attack on New York and Washington would force the United States to retaliate and
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that this would draw the United States into a protracted and unwinnable land war in the Middle East. I believe that bin Laden intended such a war to rally the Muslim world against the new Christian Crusaders and that this would further his long-term goal of undermining and destroying the United States’ ‘puppet’ ruling elites in the Arab world. Disagreeing with the Lewis Doctrine, the hypothesis of this article is that the 9/11 attacks were politically motivated. Both bin Laden’s words and actions indicate that he believed that his actions would restore the true Islam to its rightful place in the Muslim world. More specifically, bin Laden appears to have hoped that the attacks on New York and Washington would cause the United States to retaliate militarily and be drawn into a protracted war against Islam. He believed that an American military invasion of the Middle East would in turn rally the Muslim world against the new Christian Crusaders and to support bin Laden’s efforts to undermine and destroy the US ‘puppet’ ruling elites in the Arab world. Whether or not this political explanation of Islamicist terrorism is correct, it is at least a plausible alternative to the Lewis Doctrine and should be given serious consideration rather than being summarily discarded in favor of an explanation based largely on the political preferences of the Bush Administration and right-wing supporters of pro-Israeli policies.
The military versus the militarists Shortly after the terrorist attack of 9/11, President Bush called a meeting of his national security team to determine the US response. The unanimous decision reached by the President’s ‘War Council’ was to wage war in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group (Al Qaeda) and its Taliban supporters. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz raised the issue of Iraq at the very first meeting of Bush’s senior security advisors after 9/11; he proposed that the United States use the opportunity provided by 9/11 to attack Iraq and destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein. Although Wolfowitz received some support, especially from his boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the issue of Iraq was set aside. However, the question of what the United States should do about Saddam Hussein’s regime was now firmly on the agenda of the President’s ‘war against terror’ and attention would be given to whether or not the anti-terrorist war should be expanded to include Iraq, how such a war should be fought, and the ultimate political purpose of such a war. Two major groups of protagonists struggled for the President’s ear and sought to influence his decision with respect to Iraq. The opponents of war included US military professionals and their allies in the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Senior military officers opposed to the war were located in the Department of the Army, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Department of State (Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage); many retired army and marine generals gave strong support to these officials. The
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most outspoken has been US Marine General Anthony Zinni, who served as Commander-in-Chief of the US Central Command that included Iraq and other countries of the Middle East and is an expert on the region. He had been appointed by President Bush as his special representative to assist in the resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. However, strong disagreements between General Zinni and the Administration regarding US policy toward that dispute led to Zinni’s dismissal by the President.9 Disagreeing with professionals in the State Department and the CIA and with many high-ranking military who argued that a war against Iraq would be folly, civilian officials in the Pentagon, the White House, and elsewhere in the Administration strongly advocated such a war. Those civilian advocates of war (whom I shall call ‘militarists’ because of their overriding confidence in the use of military force and because of their contempt for diplomacy) controlled the Pentagon and were also supported by such other civilian officials as Vice-President Richard Cheney and his influential Chief of Staff, Lewis ‘Skipper’ Libby. The bitter controversy between proponents and opponents of the war centered on the relevance of the Powell Doctrine regarding the necessity of a war and how such a war should be fought. Senior officers in the army and Marine Corps generally accepted the Powell Doctrine formulated by Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Powell Doctrine, based on the devastating experience of US ground forces in the Vietnam War, contained three fundamental principles. One, the United States should go to war only if there were a clear and present threat to US national security. Two, in such an event, the United States should destroy the threat with overwhelming force in order to defeat the enemy quickly and to rapidly secure and pacify the conquered country. Three, there must be an agreed ‘exit’ strategy that would give the United States military an honorable means of escape if the war went awry and eventual defeat should appear inevitable. In a nasty debate with the civilian militarists, the professional military strongly opposed war against Iraq; they did not believe that Hussein posed an imminent or serious threat to the security of the United States. The professional military saw no reason why the United States could not continue to deter and contain Hussein, as they assumed that he was ultimately rational and would not initiate any action that could lead to his overthrow or endanger his personal safety. Secretary of State Powell further argued that the war against terrorism should be restricted, at least initially, to Afghanistan and that the objective of the war should be limited to the destruction of Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies. Powell was particularly concerned that any expansion of the war and of US objectives beyond elimination of Al Qaeda and the Taliban would significantly undermine the diplomatic efforts of the US Department of State to forge a strong coalition against terrorism; an unprovoked attack by the United States on Iraq, he argued, would make it impossible to create a broad international coalition composed of West European, Muslim, and other states. Powell also wanted to involve the Security Council of the United Nations in any decision to destroy Al Qaeda and to obtain support for the US-led effort to eliminate Iraq’s WMDs.
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The civilian leadership of the Department of Defense, on the other hand, took the position that the war in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership provided the ideal opportunity to attack and destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime. They argued that the ‘war on terrorism’ should be expanded to include the destruction of any ‘state-sponsor’ of terrorism, which they ardently proclaimed was the case with Iraq. Opposing Powell’s emphasis on the importance of diplomacy and on involving the United Nations in dealing with terrorism and Iraq, this group, composed of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others, believed that a coalition, especially one composed of the traditional West European allies of the United States (or what Rumsfeld condescendingly called ‘old Europe’), would only inhibit US actions. The United States, they proclaimed, had both the will and the power to unilaterally destroy Saddam, cause other Muslim states to submit to US domination, and thereby gain full control over the Middle East and its immense petroleum reserves. The President, strongly influenced by Vice-President Cheney, gave his full support to this position. Another contentious issue arising from the army’s adherence to the Powell Doctrine concerned the ways in which a war against Iraq should be fought. On one side of the debate was the Department of State led by West Point graduates, Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, advocating the use of overwhelming force in order to quickly subdue Iraqi resistance; they also argued that a large US occupying force would be necessary in order to pacify postwar Iraq and forestall violent resistance against the occupying forces, prevent widespread looting and pillage, and provide personal security for Iraqi civilians. Secretary of State Powell’s argument for the deployment of as many as 300– 500,000 ground troops was supported by General Hugh Shelton, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Eric Shinseki, then Army Chief of Staff. Soon the latter’s candor and opposition to Rumsfeld’s untested war plans resulted in his dismissal from his command and forced retirement from the army. Powell’s, Shelton’s, and Shinseki’s serious reservations about the Pentagon’s war plans were strongly supported by many distinguished retired officers free to voice their opinions on the folly of the dubious war strategy of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his civilian cohort. The professional military and the civilian leadership of the Pentagon also differed about the need for an agreed-upon exit strategy if a US defeat should become probable. The military did not want to replay in Iraq any outcome that could lead again to images like those from Vietnam of US officials scrambling to board helicopters in order to escape Saigon and the embarrassing rout of US military forces. The civilian leadership in the Pentagon saw no need for such a contingency plan, and the White House supported them. Ahmad Chalabi and other Iraqi expatriates had convinced both Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz that there would be no need for an exit strategy because the Iraqi people would welcome US forces as liberators and greet them with ‘open arms’. Ardent supporters of the war in the Administration and the media boasted that victory over Saddam’s military would be a ‘piece of cake’.10
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The Pentagon’s curt dismissal of the need for an exit strategy was closely tied to the issue of planning for the postwar situation in Iraq and, in particular, to the question of whether the Department of State or the Pentagon would control defeated Iraq. The Department of State and its Middle East experts believed that extensive planning was required to ensure a stable and workable postwar Iraq. To this end they established dozens of task forces that worked for many months to deal with every possible aspect of postwar Iraqi society, including establishment of political stability and a smoothly functioning infrastructure. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had very different plans for postwar Iraq, and, following Chalabi’s advice, they believed that only minimal planning would be necessary for managing the postwar situation. Both Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were seriously misled by false intelligence regarding Iraq fed them by Chalabi and his associates. Indeed, these two top members of the Department of Defense, known as ‘sophisticated and experienced’ experts in matters of war and statecraft, had such extraordinary confidence in Chalabi that they expected that he would be installed as the head of a post-Saddam Iraqi government. They also expected that, once he was in power, Chalabi would fulfill several of their major objectives: first, the United States would acquire permanent military bases in Iraq; second, a post-Saddam Iraq would pursue a foreign policy of friendship and normalization of relations with Israel; and, third, Iraq would be governed by a secular, or at least moderate, Muslim regime. The important struggle between the Departments of State and Defense was ultimately resolved in Rumsfeld’s favor. He successfully convinced President Bush that the Pentagon could best plan for the postwar situation. By assigning this responsibility to the Pentagon, the President in effect accepted Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz’s military plans and political objectives. However, even in the midsummer of 2004, after the United States had officially transferred ‘sovereignty’ to the Iraqi interim government, there was no evidence that the Bush Administration was willing to give up the Pentagon’s long-term military and political goals. The President’s decision to forsake diplomacy and, in effect, turn over to the civilian militarists in the Pentagon the conduct of the war and the postwar fate of Iraq was one of the most disastrous mistakes ever made by a US leader in the realm of foreign policy.
The coalition supporting the war An understanding of the Bush Administration’s decision to attack Iraq must take into account the importance of domestic political factors in that decision. Three powerful groups in US society have provided the principal support for the war against Iraq and for the Administration’s war on terrorism in general. The most influential partisans supporting the war have been the ‘ultra-nationalists’ or ‘imperialist elite’ dominant in the Bush Administration, including Vice-President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and John Bolton, a high official in the Department of State. Their principal goal has been to ensure the
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continued primacy of the United States in the world and to prevent the emergence of any foreign power that could challenge US supremacy. This objective of achieving global dominance, first expressed during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, was made explicit in what became known at that time as the ‘Cheney– Wolfowitz Doctrine’; it advocated that the United States use its military superiority to prevent the rise of any challenger to its dominant world position. The Clinton Administration, at least implicitly, accepted the goal of US primacy but employed economic rather than military means to achieve this objective. The ultranationalists in the Bush Administration, on the other hand, have believed that US political/military control over the world’s petroleum reserves in the Middle East, Central Asia, and elsewhere, was necessary to achieve their goal of global domination. The ultra-nationalists and their imperial ambitions are supported by the neo-cons in high positions in the Administration and by influential allies in the media and in many well-known private organizations. For the first time, neo-conservatives have occupied powerful positions in the Pentagon, the White House, and other parts of the US national security establishment. The neo-cons, both inside and outside the government, have included individuals with such familiar names as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Daniel Pipes. The neo-cons believe that the survival of Israel is dependent upon a Middle East transformed by geo-strategic arrangements favorable to the security interests of Israel. Elimination of the ‘Iraqi threat’ to Israel’s survival has been particularly important to them. Even during the early Clinton years, the neo-cons, then out of power, began a concerted campaign to denounce Iraq as a threat to the United States and to Israel. Through the effective use of the public media, they also advocated a US war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; such efforts by the neo-cons were supported financially and in other ways by such influential ‘think tanks’ as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Heritage Foundation. The document, ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’ (the ‘realm’ refers to the state of Israel), provides the most frank and explicit statement of the neo-con agenda. ‘A Clean Break’, written for Benjamin Netanyahu, was published by the Jewish Institute for National and International Security Affairs (JINIA), an Israeli government think tank with a US branch in Washington, DC; the director of the American branch of JINIA at the time of the report was Paul Wolfowitz. Written by Richard Perle and a committee of other neo-cons, the JINIA report advocated a total rearrangement of political and geo-strategic affairs in the Middle East to achieve the long-term security of Israel. The report made specific recommendations that the regime of Saddam Hussein should be eliminated and the Hashemite dynasty that had been overthrown by the Iraqi military should be reestablished. In addition, the report emphasized the dangers posed to Israel by Syria and especially by Iran. The report further argued that there was an urgent need to take action against enemies of Israel and supporters of anti-Israeli terrorism. It advocated further that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia be broken up and that the United States take control of that country’s immense oil reserves.11
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The authors of the report recognized that only the United States could achieve their ambitious goal of reordering the geopolitics of the Middle East; they knew also that the United States would intervene militarily in the Muslim world only if its own security were threatened by developments originating in the region. Both the ultra-nationalists and the neo-cons viewed the terrorist attack of 9/11 as a terrible but fortuitous event that empowered both groups within the Bush Administration and enabled them to promote their complementary plans for reordering political and strategic affairs in the Middle East. It is important to emphasize, however, that it was President Bush himself who made the crucial decision to attack Iraq and that he did so for his own reasons. Evangelical Christians are the largest and most important group supporting the Bush Administration and its policies toward the Middle East, especially the United States’ close ties to Israel.12 This highly motivated religious and increasingly political movement advocates a strong pro-Israeli US policy. A loose grouping, consisting largely of fundamentalist Protestant faiths, the evangelicals constitute a sizeable fraction of the US population and are concentrated in the politically important states of the South and Midwest. The support of these groups is essential to the political success of George W. Bush and the Republican Party. The strong support of evangelical Christians for Israel is based on their fundamentalist reading of the Bible. They passionately believe in the ‘Second Coming of Christ’ and the Apocalypse, or ‘end of time’, that will accompany his return to Earth. This interpretation of the Bible was moot until the creation of Israel in 1948. Up to that time the evangelical belief in the ‘Second Coming’ had been largely theological and had not been considered a reason for political action. However, when the state of Israel was ‘re-established’ in 1948, evangelicals realized that their biblical interpretations indicated that this development had made possible the ‘Second Coming’ and that it could possibly occur during their own lifetimes. Because the ‘re-gathering of the Jews’ in the Holy Land is a biblical prerequisite for the earthly return of Jesus Christ, evangelicals want the United States to support and protect Israel against the followers of anti-Christian Islam.
Conclusion In 2004, the Bush Administration is searching for an honorable and face-saving exit from the disastrous and ‘unwinnable’ war in Iraq. Some formerly strong advocates of the war against Iraq, both within and without the Administration, reluctantly concede that the war was a serious mistake. Many experts who strongly advocated a war against Iraq failed to assess properly and with adequate prudence the likely course and outcome of the war, to weigh carefully the war’s inherent risks for the United States and the Middle East, or to consider realistically the likelihood of a chaotic postwar situation in US-occupied Iraq. A number of those individuals who must share some of the responsibility for war and its devastating consequences defend themselves by arguing that problems have arisen in postwar Iraq that no one
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WAR IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT TO IDEOLOGICAL AMATEURS
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could have anticipated. Yet many military officers, Middle East experts, and foreign policy professionals provided extensive and timely warnings of the dangers awaiting US forces in an occupied, anarchic, and devastated Iraq. Anyone familiar with the ‘fog of war’ and war’s unpredictable nature should have known better than to be confident in predictions about the outcome of a war. In contrast to the imprudent and flawed speculations of many enthusiasts for the war, the more carefully weighed views and warnings of such military professionals as Chief of Staff of the army General Shinseki and many Middle East experts proved correct. Alas! Few officials in either the executive or legislative branches of the US government gave serious consideration to the many warnings from strategic and political experts who sought to point out the dangerous pitfalls of an Iraq war, and particularly of a poorly planned war. Dissenters within the Administration who questioned the wisdom of the war were either totally ignored or moved to positions where they could not make trouble. And the Congress, with few members dissenting, enthusiastically and without serious deliberation committed the nation to the most dangerous and hazardous initiative ever undertaken by the United States. Whereas caution and prudence are of the utmost importance in matters of war and statecraft, President Bush plunged the country into a war that has produced tragic consequences for the United States and the rest of the world: consequences which have not yet fully run their course.
Notes 1 2 3
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This title is a variation of the famous remark attributed to Georges Clemenceau that war is too important to leave to the generals. This article is an edited and updated version of the E. H. Carr annual lecture delivered at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 16 October 2003. Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terrorism (New York: Free Press, 2004). This article relies heavily on the superb books and articles by such journalists as Bob Woodward of the Washington Post and Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker magazine. Woodward’s two remarkable books based on extensive interviews with members of the Administration are Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002) and Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). Hersh, an outstanding investigative reporter, has written extraordinary articles in which he exposes many embarrassing shortcomings and failures of the Bush Administration. US Congress, The 9/11 Commission Report (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, July 2004). The ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis gained popularity following the publication of Samuel Huntington’s book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). However, Bernard Lewis coined that term. Lewis has written a number of articles, books, etc. setting forth his thesis that the origin of Islamicist terrorism lies in the failures of Islamic society itself and is not due to the actions or policies of the United States and the West. One of Lewis’s earliest attempts to set forth his argument blaming Islam itself for terrorism is ‘The Revolt of Islam’, The New Yorker, 19 November 2001. The most important statement of his thesis is in his best-selling book, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). A powerful critique of Lewis’s book and its argument is by M. Shahid Alam, ‘Scholarship or Sophistry? Bernard Lewis and the New Orientalism’, available at: http://www.counterpunch.org (accessed 22 June 2004).
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INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 19(1) Peter Waldman, The Wall Street Journal, 3 February 2004, p. 1. For methodological reasons alone one should be highly skeptical about any argument that attempts to explain major social and political upheavals by a single motive or cause. A good summary of General Zinni’s severe criticisms of the war and the Administration’s policies can be found on the website http://www.cbsnews.com (accessed 21 May 2004). The role of Chalabi in the events leading up to the war, his bizarre relationship with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, and answers to many other important questions are still unknown. Was he, for example, an Iranian agent and did he support an attack on Iraq believing that the major beneficiary would be Iran? R. Perle, J. Colbert, C. Fairbanks, D. Feith, R. Loewenberg, J. Torop, D. Wurmser and M. Wurmser, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Washington, DC: The Jewish Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, 1 June 1996). Much has been written about the strong support of evangelical Christians for Israel and US proIsraeli policies. A sampling of this literature is available on http://www.antiwar.com (accessed 8 May 2003).
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