Abstract
Beating a fast path to Baghdad, the Bush administration may have paved its road to ruin.
In 1815, Napoleon met his Waterloo, a term now synonymous with military collapse. Adolf Hitler's grand plans for domination of Europe failed when he launched his armies toward Stalingrad. George W. Bush's plan to spread democracy around the world at the end of a gun has reached a similar point in the streets of Baghdad.
The continuing loss of American and allied soldiers casts the shadow of failure over the president's much-ballyhooed “Mission Accomplished” triumphalism on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. The administration flopped from one strategy to another until the president, in mid-November 2003, while denying it was true, adopted a “cut and run” approach timed for maximum effect on the November 2004 elections.
Bush is not the only one whose reach has exceeded his grasp. The dreams of the neoconservatives who dominate the administration's national security apparatus–people like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and Vice President Dick Cheney's adviser, Lewis Libby, Jr.–have been smashed by an Iraqi resistance they had not foreseen and an easy reconstruction that failed to materialize.
The neocons, as they are nicknamed, assured a president who wanted to believe them that no other country could stand before the mightiest military machine ever created. American armed forces overwhelmed the Taliban in Afghanistan and easily scattered Saddam Hussein's army, but the country has failed to win the peace that followed.
The neocons calculated that overwhelming U.S. military power could reign dominant across the globe, deterred neither by disagreeable allies, unruly international organizations, dilatory diplomacy, or existing treaties. Unilateralism was the order of the day; the United States was willing, even eager, to go it alone. With Bush in tow, the neocons overmatched Colin Powell at the State Department, dismissed longtime allies like Germany and France, and disdained negotiations for a long period of time over North Korean nuclear ambitions.
The neocons also decided that “preventive war” was the new name for an old game, an updated label for “shoot first and ask questions later.” The United States, they said, reserved the right to attack any country that might be a threat in the future.
Unfortunately for their hopes and dreams, preventive war in Iraq has proved a miserable failure. The intelligence information underpinning what euphemistically was called preemption, warning of Iraq's dangerous weapons of mass destruction, has proved grievously incorrect and grossly hyped. Waves of inspectors failed to find the promised caches of hideous weapons of mass destruction that were ready to be used against American soldiers at any moment.
Whatever the results of the 2004 presidential election, the United States has seen the high tide of the neocons. A Democratic candidate for president may be elected in part because of the disaster in Baghdad.
As George W. Bush is loath to admit he or his policies are incorrect, he is unlikely to fire Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz or the others who got him into this imbroglio. However, if there is a second Bush term, the neocons will be gone, and a new team with different policies will reassert the internationalist bent that had been so thoroughly rejected by the current team. The first term of the “W” regime will be seen as an exception to the post-Cold War trend.
But the neocons have accomplished one thing. They have created a broad coalition of those who reject their philosophy. Their views are widely reviled by Democrats on all sides of the ideological divide, and discredited within the uniformed military, by many Republicans, and in the media.
The evidence of this new anti-neocon coalition became clear in the fall of 2003 as the casualties in Iraq mounted. Zbigniew Brzezinski, distrusted by many on the left for his role in undermining the Carter administration's foreign policy in the late 1970s, delivered a speech on October 28 in which he decried “the loss of U.S. international credibility [and] the growing U.S. international isolation.” He argued that while “American power worldwide is at its historic zenith, American global political standing is at its nadir.”
Brzezinski's views are reflected by Democratic presidential candidates ranging across the political spectrum. Joseph Lieberman, the pro-war candidate, and Howard Dean, the anti-war candidate, agree on two things: Iraqi reconstruction has been a disaster and American foreign policy is in shambles.
Lieberman told a Council on Foreign Relations audience on September 10: “The Bush administration has hoarded authority, bungled diplomacy, pushed allies to the margins, and divided rather than multiplied the strength we need to win the war on terror.”
Howard Dean's views are similar. In a statement on his Web site, he argues: “Under George W. Bush, this nation has lost its way. Not only are we less secure at home and abroad, we have squandered our role as the inspiration and guiding light for other peoples.”
Many retired military, who overwhelmingly supported Bush in the 2000 election, are now singing a different tune. Retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni spoke for many active and retired military in a September 4 speech to the Naval Institute Forum: “Almost every one of my contemporaries in this room have feelings and sensitivities that were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifices. We swore never again would we do that. We swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, is it happening again?”
Dan Christman, a retired three-star army general who served in Vietnam, was quoted in USA Today on November 7: “There are an awful lot of retired officers who agree with General Zinni. This really resonates.”
In the same article, Paul Van Riper, a retired marine lieutenant general who served two tours in Vietnam, criticized the administration's false claims: “For the president to say these [increased enemy] attacks show we are winning is almost Orwellian.”
More signs of the new anti-neocon unity: two distinguished retired military leaders, former U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak and former Chief of Central Command Joseph Hoar have agreed to serve as Dean for President advisers.
Even loyal–and not so loyal–Republicans are straying from the party line. Arizona's Sen. John McCain, who supported the Iraq war, has criticized the administration's newfound desire to get out of that country, timed for the next elections, and called for an increase in American troop strength. He remarked to a November 5 Council on Foreign Relations gathering that “the simple truth is we do not have sufficient forces in Iraq to meet our military objectives.” McCain called on Bush to be more involved in decision making on Iraq.
More surprising was Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner's plea for the administration to change its strategy and quickly establish a provisional government rather than waiting for a new constitution to be drawn up.
Many Republicans have been alienated not only by Bush policies but also by its practices. In an October 31 Los Angeles Times piece, Nebraska's Sen. Charles Hagel complained, “They have treated us like a nuisance and appendage.” The same article quoted an anonymous Republican senator who also complained about Rumsfeld's cavalier treatment: “He is so disdainful of members of Congress for daring to ask a question. It is like we are a pesky fly.”
The neocons are on the run, even if they don't know it themselves. They have argued for the United States marching alone but have instead created a diverse group of individuals and groups working on parallel tracks to return to the broadly internationalist and bipartisan foreign policy that emerged after World War II.