Gusalmighty.com: A Leaded Perspective

My contention all throughout was that Iraq had nothing to do with the War on Terror and was just being packaged that way so the Bush administration could fulfill their own agenda regarding Iraq. I don't see any reasonable scenario, post 9-11, that would have caused Iraq to avoid invasion. The administration acted like it was a war of last resort, but frankly, they were going to invade basically no matter what, and it wasn't 9-11 that made up their minds on it, it was 9-11 that allowed them the political capital to execute a plan their minds were already well made up on. And, it's a difficult argument to have with people, because it comes down to this: Some people believe that that's fine, that Iraq DESERVED to be overthrown, regardless of the means, and the Bush administration could have made up a story about Vietnam POWs being tortured in Baghdad with bamboo shoots and used that as a justification and frankly I think a lot of people would still be fine with it. "Well sure, we don't KNOW that there were or were not those POWs, but at the end of the day, the world is a safer place because blah blah blah blah blah." That's the jist of this argument. Some people could frankly care less WHY or HOW we invaded Iraq, they're just happy it was done, and thus will defend it to their deaths regardless of the details.

I'm not of that camp. I think means are important. I think considering things in the bigger picture is important. And, I think this administration was going to invade Iraq no matter what, regardless of intelligence, regardless of excuses, regardless of world opinion, because that was their agenda, for whatever reason. Iraq didn't change after 9-11. Iraq was the same ineffectual, contained threat run by a brutal dictator that it was on 9-10-01. The only difference was that Bush had the political capital to finally take it out. What bothers me, however, is that I think the price paid to do it was too high, and I think the administration would have been better served by being honest about it from the get-go instead of dressing it up in half-truths and wild assertions. To take out Iraq, we sacrificed an unprecedented amount of moral world leadership and goodwill, we spent an incredible amount of money, we sacrificed a great many lives, both American and Iraqi, we vastly increased Al Queda presence in the Middle East and, as Clarke says, played right into their hands, we poorly planned the after-party, and we lost a great deal of credibility, world-wide and at home. All to contain a threat that was no worse or greater than it was pre-911, on the grounds that it was worse or greater post-911.

And that's what this administration isn't talking about in regards to Clarke. There's all kind of innuendo (oh, he wrote a civil and complimentary resignation letter, the scum) and character assertions, but very little in regards to factual countering. His assertion (the one I’m interested in anyway) is that this administration faced a new problem by reverting to old thinking. I’m sure they thought they were doing their best to protect us, but at the same time, the assertion isn’t that they were evil or trying to hinder our national security, but that, instead of redefining their agenda to coincide with new threats, they were redefining new threats to coincide with their agenda. The part of Clarke’s allegations that I take to heart the most is that this administration acted as if they were preserved in amber, coming into office as if they had just thawed out after 8 years instead of a fresh team ready to face new challenges in new ways. That, to me, isn’t being strong on terrorism, and it‘s a claim from Clarke that is backed up independently by a wide variety of sources, i.e. this isn‘t some crackpot floating left-field theories here, but as qualified an insider as you can get making assertions that have already been made many times before. You can make innuendos about Clarke being out for a quick buck, or sucking up to Kerry, or miffed at his demotion, or whatever, but none of that is really addressing the core issue: is he right?

I just look at this country now and don’t like what I see. 9-11 was an incomparable tragedy, but at the same time, it was an incredible opportunity. This country was divided in 2000, but post 9-11, we were united in a way we hadn’t experienced since World War II. Clinton had done a lot to shore up American hegemony and moral leadership on the world stage, and 9-11 finally brought with it a sympathy on the global stage that we’d never had before, where people put aside old grudges and really stood behind us. 9-11 showed us the problems we’ve had on national security, intelligence, inter-agency cooperation and communication, giving us a very clear litmus test on what worked and what didn’t. We could have played to all of that. Instead, we overplayed our hand gregariously, and instead of capitalizing on an opportunity, we positively squandered it by engaging in old agendas. We turned unprecedented national unity into a political scene more vehemently and perhaps irrevocably divided than ever. We took that global sympathy and moral leadership and threw it back in everyone’s faces, to the point where, only three years later, we’re scorned and derided globally, nobody particularly wants to have anything to do with us, and the ones that do get fucked by their voters for the trouble (even good, solid governments, like Spains). We took the glaring failures of intelligence, border control, law enforcement, whatever, and instead of working for honest change we just threw money and authority at them carte blanche and said “fix it“, and of course that‘ll have incredible repercussions for decades on our civil liberties and national identity because at no time in the process did we say “but by the way, these are the ideals we want to protect, because they’re what makes us a beacon of freedom in the first place” . Instead of beginning an open and honest dialogue with the American public, capitalizing on a time when it didn’t matter if you were a Senator or a fireman, you were both Americans, we dug foxholes and enshrouded the political process in more secrecy than at any time in my lifetime. We took a budget surplus and instead of a reasonable short term deficit to cover the immediate costs of 9-11, coupled with raised taxes to help the economy in light of a slight dip due to investor worry, we took that as a sign that deficits don’t matter anymore, so we may as well just spend as much as we want and cut taxes to cover it. And then all sorts of little things. Bush, widely derided by the left and chastised from within his own party, felt the need, to shore up his base and since he felt he could no longer unite anyway, decided to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants and push for a constitutional ban on gay marriages as an electoral strategy. Just stupid shit like that. The point is, 9-11 could have been a great opportunity for America, and instead of capitalizing on that, we so grossly overplayed it that we not only obliterated so much higher ground, we set upon a course to dig ourselves deeper and deeper into the shit than ever. And that, to me, falls squarely on Bush’s shoulders.

That’s what Clarke’s allegations get at, in my mind. Squandered opportunities. Missed chances for the sake of tired agendas. I have no doubt that if we would have culled popular opinion at home and abroad following 9-11 instead of throwing it in people‘s faces, that in a few years, we would have easily been able to accomplish what we wanted, multilaterally, in Iraq. That Bush would have truly become a uniter, sailing into re-election with approval ratings in the high 60s. That we would have been able to really work to improve our national security and our moral interests at the same time.