Presidential Vanity of Vanities 2007, Volume 4
Keith Hazelton
May 01, 2007
As we remember on May 1st the fourth anniversary of what then was proclaimed the end of major combat operations in Iraq, many rightly have re-examined, as should all Americans, our opinions of a war now lingering far longer and exacting an American and Iraqi human and financial toll far greater and more terrible than we were led to expect when the drums began beating for regime-change in Iraq in 2002.
In his 2003 speech on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, with the now much-maligned “Mission Accomplished” banner behind him, President Bush said, “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11, 2001, and still goes on.” And so it goes, as the recently late Kurt Vonnegut might have said.
War, it has been observed, is much easier to begin than to end, and, once started takes on an existence of its own which defies those efforts of men to end it. We now are bogged down in a conflict which clearly now is a full-fledged civil war that four years ago, so we were told, had the noble promises of a safer world and the birth of a fledgling democracy.
In 2002 many of us were led to believe it was high time for Saddam Hussein to go. Saddam had unspeakable weapons of mass destruction and certainly had hosted in his deserts our terrorist enemies who trained and practiced and refined their murderous craft with his blessings and support. Most tactlessly, he managed to remain in power despite Gulf War I, mocking us as he looted his country of what little wealth it could generate and, allegedly, plotting the assassination of George H.W. Bush, the President's father, in 1993.
And, of course, Iraq had all those addictive barrels of oil under its sands, of which precious little was flowing to the world's refineries, keeping our gasoline prices well-above $2.00 a gallon in early 2003, trickling out of Iraq under what we now know to be the disastrously corrupt United Nations Food-For-Oil program. More importantly, we were told, it was the right thing to do and our unilateral right to do so. After all, if the United States couldn't be counted upon to keep the world's peace with the most powerful military in the history of the planet, who would?
Four years later, many of us – yet not enough – have changed our minds. We now believe the United States should not, as a matter of foreign policy, maintain the unilateral right to initiate preemptive regime change. Outside the United States, this opinion is unanimous. In a Time magazine interview a year ago, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, now 76, said, “I think some people may have been pushing President Bush in the wrong direction. I don't think the U.S. can impose its will on others. This talk of preemptive strikes, of ignoring the U.N. Security Council and international legal obligations – all this is leading toward a dark night.”
September 11, 2001 began our global war on terror, perhaps, as we now know, within minutes of these murderous attacks as administration neo-cons hit the “print” button to produce Iraq invasion plans developed years earlier. As they collectively, and quickly, realized as that day's horror unfolded, 9/11 was to be that “catalyzing and catastrophic event – like a new Pearl Harbor” described in the infamous Project for a New American Century's 2000 white paper “Rebuilding America's Defenses” (p.51).
As such the tragedy of 9/11 was used as a catalyst (pretext) to put into motion the long-standing Iraq invasion plans, much as the use of nuclear weapons in Japan in World War II was not to end the war – Japan already had made inquiries regarding terms of surrender – but to scare the hell out of the Soviet Union.
But at this date, and after such a costly “victory” in Iraq, we truly wonder what is the real reason we made war against Iraq now that the president has acknowledged the absence of both WMDs and terrorist training camps?
To rid the world of a notorious despot who might have caused more serious trouble for us and our allies? That we did. To prevent future terrorist attacks – fight them “over there” so we will not have to “over here?” Maybe.
To light the beacon of democracy – flickering dimly here at home – in the far-off sands of the Middle East? Conceivably. To have better access to a huge source of oil? Possibly (it was represented that the war would pay for itself with Iraq's renewed oil exports). To build a group of fortified permanent military bases and an “embassy” which has been dubbed “Pentagon East?” Definitely.
Or also, perhaps, underneath it all, our invasion of Iraq simply was an opportunity to settle a personal score – a family vendetta – that has festered for more than a decade? Was the Iraq war sold to George Bush as a way for him finally to be a source of pride to his father and to improve his stature as a president? As unthinkable as we would hope, presidential vanity is not without precedent.
At the beginning of our involvement in Vietnam, conspiracy theorists suggested that oil had discovered in Vietnam and that the United States wanted it. In fact, our involvement largely was predicated on President Kennedy's view that, after committing more than 20,000 troops as military advisers to South Vietnam, he, as he told friends, had “to go all the way with this one” to secure his stature as a “wartime” president.
Without the Civil War,” Kennedy is quoted, “whoever would have heard of Lincoln?” Kennedy expected Vietnam would be a short test of U.S. resolve to – officially – contain the advance of communism after his embarrassing Bay of Pigs failure in Cuba and the construction of the Berlin Wall. It also would be a chance to demonstrate – again – to our Cold War enemies the capabilities of our Special Forces in a “brush fire” war, much the way President Truman in 1945 demonstrated, using Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets, the efficient destructiveness of our newly invented nuclear weaponry.
The Vietnam-era conspiracy theorists had it wrong, as no one then in government had in mind anything so “reasonable” as the mere theft of oil, as author Gore Vidal has observed, which, coincidentally, also has been suggested by present-day conspiracy theorists to explain the true, underlying motive behind our current war in Iraq.
Regrettably, Iraq also may have begun as a war of vanity – presidential vanity – under the cover of national security and terrorism and our inalienable right to cheap gasoline, as Vietnam was vanity in the guise of a free, democratic Southeast Asia.
As we should never forget, a misguided insistence on an “honorable exit” from Vietnam by Richard Nixon beginning in 1969 ultimately led to the deaths of more than 20,000 additional young American men over the next six years, countless wounded and a significantly greater number of dead and wounded Vietnamese.
Ultimately for what purpose were those nearly 60,000 lives sacrificed, hundreds of thousands wounded and families torn apart and a country destroyed? Eventually we left Vietnam, humiliated, with a bitterly divided country at home. As Bruce Springsteen observed in his song Born in the USA, ”Had a brother at Khe Sahn, fighting off the Viet Cong. They're still there, he's all gone.”
And today, more than three decades later, a united Vietnam isn't the evil land we sought to “liberate” from the oppressive yoke of communism, as most effectively demonstrated late last year when President Bush attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hanoi (having missed an opportunity to visit during his military service).
We yet believe the president and his administration want to protect us from further terrorist attacks. But we have changed our minds about our continuing involvement in this exercise of preemptive presidential power (is Iran next?) that, four years after “victory,” now has us searching – as with Vietnam – for any exit, the opportunity for an honorable exit from Iraq now long since passed.
In his 2003 speech on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, with the now much-maligned “Mission Accomplished” banner behind him, President Bush said, “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11, 2001, and still goes on.” And so it goes, as the recently late Kurt Vonnegut might have said.
War, it has been observed, is much easier to begin than to end, and, once started takes on an existence of its own which defies those efforts of men to end it. We now are bogged down in a conflict which clearly now is a full-fledged civil war that four years ago, so we were told, had the noble promises of a safer world and the birth of a fledgling democracy.
In 2002 many of us were led to believe it was high time for Saddam Hussein to go. Saddam had unspeakable weapons of mass destruction and certainly had hosted in his deserts our terrorist enemies who trained and practiced and refined their murderous craft with his blessings and support. Most tactlessly, he managed to remain in power despite Gulf War I, mocking us as he looted his country of what little wealth it could generate and, allegedly, plotting the assassination of George H.W. Bush, the President's father, in 1993.
And, of course, Iraq had all those addictive barrels of oil under its sands, of which precious little was flowing to the world's refineries, keeping our gasoline prices well-above $2.00 a gallon in early 2003, trickling out of Iraq under what we now know to be the disastrously corrupt United Nations Food-For-Oil program. More importantly, we were told, it was the right thing to do and our unilateral right to do so. After all, if the United States couldn't be counted upon to keep the world's peace with the most powerful military in the history of the planet, who would?
Four years later, many of us – yet not enough – have changed our minds. We now believe the United States should not, as a matter of foreign policy, maintain the unilateral right to initiate preemptive regime change. Outside the United States, this opinion is unanimous. In a Time magazine interview a year ago, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, now 76, said, “I think some people may have been pushing President Bush in the wrong direction. I don't think the U.S. can impose its will on others. This talk of preemptive strikes, of ignoring the U.N. Security Council and international legal obligations – all this is leading toward a dark night.”
September 11, 2001 began our global war on terror, perhaps, as we now know, within minutes of these murderous attacks as administration neo-cons hit the “print” button to produce Iraq invasion plans developed years earlier. As they collectively, and quickly, realized as that day's horror unfolded, 9/11 was to be that “catalyzing and catastrophic event – like a new Pearl Harbor” described in the infamous Project for a New American Century's 2000 white paper “Rebuilding America's Defenses” (p.51).
As such the tragedy of 9/11 was used as a catalyst (pretext) to put into motion the long-standing Iraq invasion plans, much as the use of nuclear weapons in Japan in World War II was not to end the war – Japan already had made inquiries regarding terms of surrender – but to scare the hell out of the Soviet Union.
But at this date, and after such a costly “victory” in Iraq, we truly wonder what is the real reason we made war against Iraq now that the president has acknowledged the absence of both WMDs and terrorist training camps?
To rid the world of a notorious despot who might have caused more serious trouble for us and our allies? That we did. To prevent future terrorist attacks – fight them “over there” so we will not have to “over here?” Maybe.
To light the beacon of democracy – flickering dimly here at home – in the far-off sands of the Middle East? Conceivably. To have better access to a huge source of oil? Possibly (it was represented that the war would pay for itself with Iraq's renewed oil exports). To build a group of fortified permanent military bases and an “embassy” which has been dubbed “Pentagon East?” Definitely.
Or also, perhaps, underneath it all, our invasion of Iraq simply was an opportunity to settle a personal score – a family vendetta – that has festered for more than a decade? Was the Iraq war sold to George Bush as a way for him finally to be a source of pride to his father and to improve his stature as a president? As unthinkable as we would hope, presidential vanity is not without precedent.
At the beginning of our involvement in Vietnam, conspiracy theorists suggested that oil had discovered in Vietnam and that the United States wanted it. In fact, our involvement largely was predicated on President Kennedy's view that, after committing more than 20,000 troops as military advisers to South Vietnam, he, as he told friends, had “to go all the way with this one” to secure his stature as a “wartime” president.
Without the Civil War,” Kennedy is quoted, “whoever would have heard of Lincoln?” Kennedy expected Vietnam would be a short test of U.S. resolve to – officially – contain the advance of communism after his embarrassing Bay of Pigs failure in Cuba and the construction of the Berlin Wall. It also would be a chance to demonstrate – again – to our Cold War enemies the capabilities of our Special Forces in a “brush fire” war, much the way President Truman in 1945 demonstrated, using Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets, the efficient destructiveness of our newly invented nuclear weaponry.
The Vietnam-era conspiracy theorists had it wrong, as no one then in government had in mind anything so “reasonable” as the mere theft of oil, as author Gore Vidal has observed, which, coincidentally, also has been suggested by present-day conspiracy theorists to explain the true, underlying motive behind our current war in Iraq.
Regrettably, Iraq also may have begun as a war of vanity – presidential vanity – under the cover of national security and terrorism and our inalienable right to cheap gasoline, as Vietnam was vanity in the guise of a free, democratic Southeast Asia.
As we should never forget, a misguided insistence on an “honorable exit” from Vietnam by Richard Nixon beginning in 1969 ultimately led to the deaths of more than 20,000 additional young American men over the next six years, countless wounded and a significantly greater number of dead and wounded Vietnamese.
Ultimately for what purpose were those nearly 60,000 lives sacrificed, hundreds of thousands wounded and families torn apart and a country destroyed? Eventually we left Vietnam, humiliated, with a bitterly divided country at home. As Bruce Springsteen observed in his song Born in the USA, ”Had a brother at Khe Sahn, fighting off the Viet Cong. They're still there, he's all gone.”
And today, more than three decades later, a united Vietnam isn't the evil land we sought to “liberate” from the oppressive yoke of communism, as most effectively demonstrated late last year when President Bush attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hanoi (having missed an opportunity to visit during his military service).
We yet believe the president and his administration want to protect us from further terrorist attacks. But we have changed our minds about our continuing involvement in this exercise of preemptive presidential power (is Iran next?) that, four years after “victory,” now has us searching – as with Vietnam – for any exit, the opportunity for an honorable exit from Iraq now long since passed.