Everybody’s acting like it’s a big deal that President Bush said he would not be the one to finish the job in Iraq — that it would be up to his successor. (Well, everybody except The New York Times. They consigned it to the third paragraph of their lead story. They decided, for reasons that elude me, that it was a bigger deal that the president conceded that the war was eroding his political status.)
And I suppose it is — to anyone to whom this rather obvious fact is a surprise. But I have trouble understanding why it would be. This is what I always assumed to be the case. I guess it’s why I hardly know what to say to the growing number of people who talk about pulling out of Iraq, as if that would make any kind of geopolitical sense to do so — for this country, or for the rest of the world.
Once the first American boots were on the ground in-country, we were committed to a process that was bound to take longer than Mr. Bush would serve in office. But rather than rewrite what I’ve already said, I’ll just fill the rest of this post with the column that I wrote for March 23, 2003. It seems quite appropriate to the present moment:
Copyright 2003 The State
All Rights Reserved
http://www.TheState.com
The State (Columbia, SC)
MARCH 23, 2003 Sunday FINAL EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. D2
LENGTH: 966 wordsHEADLINE: THE ‘LONG HAUL’ WILL LAST LONGER THAN BUSH PRESIDENCY;
THEN WHAT?BYLINE: BRAD WARTHEN, Editorial Page Editor
BODY:
GEORGE W. BUSH has crossed his Rubicon, and he has taken us with him.Julius Caesar set world history on a new course when he took his legion into Italy in defiance of the Senate. President Bush has taken an equally irrevocable step by entering the Tigris and Euphrates basin to wage war in spite of U.N. objections.
The United States has rightly set aside its existing security relationships in favor of a new strategy. No longer can Americans be complacent isolationists who only rise up when prodded, then go back to our pleasures. Now, we have set out as knights errant to slay dragons, before the dragons can slay us and others.
This is one of those moments when everything changes.
The United Nations’ future is in doubt, as is NATO’s. Some of our best friends in the world have turned out to be something else altogether, and we’re going to have to sort that out. Going into Iraq is likely to rattle the foundations of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Iran and many others. It will change the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, cause North Korea to do who knows what, and freak out the Chinese more than that bomb on their Belgrade embassy did.
In other words, it will create both problems and opportunities, as do all of history’s great turning points.
This is all happening because the president has decided to use the military might of the most powerful nation in history to hunt down bad guys wherever they might be. It is a development that I welcome. With great power comes the responsibility to act.
Like The New York Times’ Tom Friedman, I worry that the president may have fumbled efforts to get international support – support that is crucial to long-term success, even if we don’t need it for the actual fighting. I fret that the president has good instincts about what to do in Iraq, but doesn’t clearly see how to make his goals in that area mesh logically with other policies.
But you know what? This is the guy we’ve got. And you know what else? He’s probably the only one stubborn enough to see this thing through. And that may be exactly what we need. We could maybe have had a more wonkish sort in the White House who was better able to articulate the big picture, but everyone I can think of who might fit that description would be far too likely to try to fight the war with one finger in the wind, ready to bolt at the first casualty or discouraging word.
George W. Bush is different. Something happened to him right after Sept. 11. He realized how dangerous it is to neglect the world, to let dangerous situations fester, to pretend that we have threats "contained" when all they have to do is buy an airline ticket.
Many others realized that, too. But most settled back into a routine after the main fighting in Afghanistan. Mr. Bush never settled back. He meant everything he said about the "long haul."
Anti-war protesters are wrong about many things, but they are right about the one thing that seems to be eating at many of them the most: We probably would not have gone to war in Iraq if George W. Bush were not president. Bill Clinton wouldn’t have done it. Mr. Bush’s own father wouldn’t have (it wouldn’t be prudent). FDR couldn’t even pull it off; as badly as he wanted to help Britain fight Hitler, he had to wait for Pearl Harbor (after which Hitler proved his madness by declaring war on us) to proceed.
George W. Bush doesn’t seem to care what this does to him politically, or to his place in history, or any of that usual stuff. He is going to see this thing through until the world is made safe from Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, the ayatollahs in Tehran and, yes, Osama bin Laden.
That is a fact that both reassures me and makes me worried about the long term.
The United States can’t back down now. To do so is to show the kind of faintheartedness that (among many other factors) led to 9/11/01. Osama bin Laden made certain calculations after we backed off from finishing Saddam the first time, and then skedaddled out of Somalia as soon as we suffered some casualties. He thought that all he had to do to defeat us was draw blood.
"The long haul" means a lot longer than four years, and there’s no going back. So what happens if this uniquely determined president is replaced next year? While I might like some of the people lining up to run against him in many ways, I don’t think any of them is as single-minded about this course of action as is the current president. And they need to be. There will be times when the resolve of the man in the Oval Office is tested as severely as that of Abraham Lincoln in his darkest hours.
And right now, Mr. Bush is the only one who’s enough of a cowboy to see it through.
So is that an endorsement of the incumbent in 2004? No. Because we have to face the fact that the "long haul" is also longer than eight years, and at the end of that time, we will definitely have a new leader. Whether we change horses in 2004 or 2008, we’re still going to be in midstream. This Rubicon is wider than the one Caesar crossed.
So what do we do about it? A lot of the burden falls on Mr. Bush himself. He needs to sell this war, both to the American people and to our sometime allies, with the same kind of relentlessness with which he has moved on Saddam.
Sure, he has tried. He’s done speeches, and generally said the right things. But he needs to try harder. That’s because his strategy is not going to succeed unless there is a sufficiently strong consensus in this country to support it for many years to come.
That consensus will determine who the next president will be. And whether Mr. Bush wants to think about it or not, there will be a next president at some point.
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“And I suppose it is — to anyone to whom this rather obvious fact is a surprise. But I have trouble understanding why it would be.”
And this is the heart and soul of the chickenhawk. You created a fantasy that doesn’t impose any burden or costs on you, and you are astonished that the people who bear those costs are becoming more and more dissatisfied.
As I’ve said before, just saying things like “democracy is good” doesn’t end the analysis. The analysis requires that we figure out what we want to achieve, the value of achieving it, the likelihood of achieving it, the costs of achieving it, the various scenarios that may arise from failure, the likelihood of each scenario, and the consequences of each scenario.
You scorned all of this analysis because first, you aren’t intellectually capable of doing it and because, as a chickenhawk, you weren’t going to bear any of the costs of either achieving the goal or of failing to achieve it. You contented yourself with spouting vague platitudes about how it is “a different world”, and talking about “resolve”.
Let me tell you something. Resolve isn’t sitting around wishing death on other people while you collect handouts and subidies paid for by their taxes. Resolve is figuring out what is best for America, and constantly analyzing your actions and advocacy in light of what’s best for America. You didn’t do that and will never do that because, at core, you aren’t a loyal American.
One thing you wrote that’s too funny to let pass is this:
“Anti-war protesters are wrong about many things,”
Oh yeah?
Can you name one now? Who has proven more prescient, you or anti-war protestors?
Your fundamental failure as a human being, I think, can be seen in this statement:
“So what do we do about it? A lot of the burden falls on Mr. Bush himself. He needs to sell this war,”
That’s the key to your failure as a human being. Bush needed to do more than sell the war. He needed to choose rightly whether to go to war or not. Because you’re a failure as a human being, you think that all that’s needed with respect to a disastrous policy is to “sell” it. A loyal American would see that the failure was not a failure to “sell” a disastrous policy, but a failure to avoid it.
Brad, your statement above “There will be times when the resolve of the man in the Oval Office is tested as severely as that of Abraham Lincoln in his darkest hours.” was truly prophetic. He will prevail, and as long as the appeasers and surrender monkeys on the left are not in power, this nation and freedom will prevail.
Polls in Iraq are showing that 70% of the people are glad that the Saddam regime was removed. Yes, there is a lot of fear and dissatisfaction as they see, mostly in a confined area of Iraq, the car bombers take their toll. What people like Scary Mary don’t understand is that given enough time and a base to work from, what is happening in Iraq is really a preview of coming attractions in our own USA. The left thinks if we “cut and run” then the nasty Zarqawis and AQ will conclude that all is well, let’s all live in peace. Wrong, this will give them amazing strength to build a worldwide movement with a goal to Muslimize the western free world. That is their stated goal so who can doubt that. Eventually, who knows when, there WILL be a dirty bomb or biological agent released in NYC or perhaps Boston, Mass. It’s coming for sure. That won’t deter the radical left, as they will claim we brought it on ourselves, i.e. we deserved it. Just like 9-11. The left was more than happy to live side by side with a brutal dictator thug who used Sarin gas on innocent villages filled with babies, women, and men. Paying suicide bomber’s families $25,000 with Oil for Food dollars was also quite acceptable to the Ramsey Clark’s, the Marys, and many in the Democratic party on the far left, as long as it wasn’t happening here. We even have democrats who think we should impeach the President for protecting us by listening in to Bin Laden’s phone calls to America. It’s OK to fire some cruise missiles to kill the guy but by all means it is really horrible to listen to his phone calls. And yet, these people want to run this nation.
Before we ever invaded Iraq, this administration and the military leaders stated that this was a 10 to 15 year campaign.
After 8 years of Clinton letting it fester, how quickly does anyone expect it to be cleaned up?
Now I know what inspired Ready to Hurl’s screen name.
the interesting point is that the republican candidate in 2008 will have to run on the continuation of the iraq adventure rather than having it resolved before the election; hubert hunphrey had a similar issue in 1968 and richard nixon had a secret plan to solve the vietnam war.it will be interesting to see if congress, using its budgetary power solves iraq before 2008 or whether the constant repeating troop deployments exhaust the military by 2008–glad the president reemphasized this point so the electorate can determine whether this is the way to go
George W. Bush doesn’t seem to care what this does to him politically, or to his place in history, or any of that usual stuff.
Some other things he didn’t care about: Protecting Iraq’s infrastructure and national treasures, listening to warnings about a potential insurgency, etc. He just talked a lot of cartoonish tough talk and then barged right in there.
Shame, really. You’d think something so crucially important to world stability would be worth doing right.
Oh, something else Bush didn’t care about: Figuring out how to pay for it.
That’s yet another thing his successors will have to figure out. But Bush at least will bask in the gratitude of millionaires when he retires from office.
Brad, thank you for re-running your column. I admire your courage, because (with all due respect) a number of things you said then are turning out to be incorrect…You believed what you believed then, which I can’t fault you for, though I disagreed with it then and disagree with it now.
“The United Nations’ future is in doubt”–maybe this was wishful thinking on your part, but the UN and the push for multilateral solutions to the world’s problems is not going away. If anything, the difficulty in Iraq is proving that in the long run, solving worldwide crises such as terrorism or environmental challenges is going to require many nations to work together, no matter how militarily powerful we are. It is impossible for us to solve global problems with unilateral action, and in fact, may in the long run cause greater harm to our nation in the attempt.
“Some of our best friends in the world have turned out to be something else altogether, and we’re going to have to sort that out.”–turning out not to be the case. We are getting pretty cozy again with France and Germany, simply because they are the cornerstone of a powerful (economically if not militarily) EU.
“Going into Iraq is likely to rattle the foundations of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Iran and many others. It will change the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, cause North Korea to do who knows what, and freak out the Chinese more than that bomb on their Belgrade embassy did.” You really WERE optimistic! I don’t see where North Korea has changed much as a result of Iraq, and China seems on the whole pleased with how their geo-political and economic importance in the world continues to grow. Palestine? Egypt? Iran? I see fundamentalist Islam strengthening in all three.
However, Brad, you were absolutely right about George W. Bush: “He’s probably the only one stubborn enough to see this thing through…” and “Mr. Bush is the only one who’s enough of a cowboy to see it through.” It grieves me that so many otherwise perceptive thinkers (you, Andrew Sullivan to name two) preferred the cowboy approach to “a more wonkish sort in the White House who was better able to articulate the big picture.” We see the results now of President Bush’s stubbornness, disinclination to listen to opposing viewpoints, and general intellectual incuriousness. Why does the intellectual ability of a President to grasp the multi-faceted nature of global challenges automatically mean (as you imply) he is incapable of decisive action? You may have meant the “Cowboy” reference in a light-hearted fashion, but it truly has had tragic consequences for thousands and thousands of human beings, and the ramifications to come may not be known for some time.
My fondest hope is that in some perverse way, the botch that Bush has made in Iraq will turn out to be such an instructive lesson for future Presidents and world leaders that it will in the long run lead to (by necessity) greater global co-operation in the challenges the whole world must face in the years ahead.
Hopeful, but not likely, Phillip. See: Vietnam War.
Wait until technology makes it even easier to play Battle by using clones and androids by proxy. The twisted will of war mongers like Bush-baby shall come thumping through in real 9.1 surround sound once we reach those days of future past.
I never thought I’d totally agree with The Mary Rosh until I just read that reprinted The Brad Warthen article.
If Mary represents my V for Vendetta does that make me her…Evey?! Zoikes…
Phillip – As long as you are around, Neville Chamberlain lives on.
Dave, military and geopolitical strategists often warn against “fighting the last war” in dealing with a current conflict. Evidently, fighting the last war is not enough for you–you would like us to adopt a “Fight-The-Fifth-War-Ago” policy.
I would prefer using 21st-century thinking to defeat terrorism, not a 1939 mindset.
“America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
Hunter Thompson
Phillip – Appeasement didn’t work in 1938-39 and will never work now. By the way, Chamberlain was a very popular, accomplished, and highly respected statesman in England, so my equating your positions with his thinking should not be insulting ( I hope). Terrorists are like plague carrying vermin. Allowed to flourish in the United States, they will spread that plague here. The FBI just now shut down a truck driver training school loaded with Muslims in Missouri. The Patriot Act has prevented or caused the arrest of 150 acts of terrorism so far. So, other than getting terrorists to sit around a nice negotiation table to debate their wants and needs, what is the 21st century method to deal with them. Notice what the exterminator does with plague filled rats, kill them before they sicken or kill you. That is the only solution that will work.
Bill, Hunter Thompson was mentally ill and proved it by using one of those guns on himself.
Dave’s a helluva medium, if nothing else. He channels the ghost of McCarthy so very well.
150 terrorists, eh? How scary will the ultimate results of the “Patriot” Act be when we clear the fog of “war” and examine these demon days through the prism of posterity?
How many will be in good spirits when the skeletons currently being shoved into the closet of this administration are ultimately revealed? How many arrests or wrongful imprisonments will be worth sacrificing the soul of America?
Just give me a number. I don’t want to be the one most haunted.
Dave, your vice-President shot his hunting partner by accident. And they call him “sane”…
At least, Thompson, as in his most lucid literary moments, was on target.
Capital A – You and Oliver Stone would make a good team. There has yet to be even one single proven abuse of the Patriot Act powers despite several hundred accusations that have been thoroughly investigated and documented. No library records taken for political purposes for example. Yet, Sen. Schumer’s staff person illegally obtained the credit report of MD. Senatorial candidate Steele and has now admitted to stealing it to use against him for political purposes. That isnt some skeleton in the closet, that is right now for real. Since Steele is a Republican, to many on the left, this is a big so what, let’s MOVE ON . ORG over it. Thankfully conservatives are more principled and have more integrity. That is why they are in the driver’s seat with the American people. Get over it.
Knave, in reference to your next to the last sentence, opinion polls claim otherwise.
Like most whose INITIAL answer to serious threats amount to little more than violence and anger, you’re afraid. You’re filled with the fear and/or ignorance of a child and exhibit the unwavering, unquestioning faith in the powers that be as a child would.
The men from which we Americans are all descended were not children. Jefferson. Addams. Paine. Washington. Franklin.
The writ of habeas corpus has been recently suspended more times than an unruly student at a country day school. That Legendary Administration that I mentioned above would not have stood for such bushfoolery. They would not have just “gotten over it.” They would have seeked to mete out justice in the manner that was agreed upon and laid down during days absent of or unruled by reactionary rancor.
You’ll pardon me if I take their lead over that of a very minor president and his modern minority of mooney-eyed admirers.
The Democrats who illegally wiretapped New Gingrich’s cell phone just lost their case in court, and were ordered to pay $700,000 in damages and costs.
The NY Times was sent the illegal surveillance tapes… yes, the same paper whining about the LEGAL surveillance of overseas terrorist phones.