A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

by Glenn Greenwald

  And as early as his January 2002 “axis of evil” speech, it has been apparent that the president views Iran as part of the same undifferentiated mass of “America’s Enemies” that also includes Al Qaeda and included Iraq—notwithstanding Iran’s Persian rather than Arab ethnicity, notwithstanding its Shiite rather than Sunni religion, and notwithstanding its intense and protracted hostilities with both Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The president, who sees the world as one cleanly divided between Good and Evil, and who believes he has been called to the mission of battling Evil, is incapable of recognizing, let alone navigating and exploiting, the critical differences among the various factions that do not submit to America’s will. Thus, our “enemy” is not one terrorist group or one country, but a whole host of heterogeneous groups and nations that have been grouped together as “Evil” and targeted with the same single-minded policies of aggression.

  Yet, in his 2002 Cincinnati speech, the president—in addition to compiling all of that “evidence” demonstrating the “grave threat” posed by Iraq—sought to assure Americans that the underlying rationale for invading Iraq would not compel a series of new wars thereafter. Instead, the president argued, the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was unique in both nature and severity; it was unlike any other anywhere in the world:

  First, some ask why Iraq is different from other countries or regimes that also have terrible weapons. While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone—because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States.

  By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique. As a former chief weapons inspector of the U.N. has said, “The fundamental problem with Iraq remains the nature of the regime, itself. Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction” [emphasis added].

  Despite those prior assurances to Americans of the “unique” threat posed by Iraq, the president, throughout 2006, has been applying almost identical language, and identical reasoning, to prepare the country for a potential military confrontation with Iran. His choice to depict Saddam as a Nazi-like Evil threat led inexorably to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and his similar depiction of Iran and its leaders portend the same outcome.

  Thus, as the president sees and describes the world, Iran has now replaced Iraq as a “grave threat” and “state sponsor of terrorism” and the ruling Iranian mullahs and the elected Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have replaced Saddam Hussein as the new “Hitler,” the current incarnation of pure Evil. Just as Saddam was allegedly too power-crazed and Evil to be reasoned with, so, too, is the Iranian government. And just as Saddam Hussein’s alleged development of nuclear weapons was such an intolerable threat to American security that the United States was compelled to stop Iraq by any means necessary, the president spent much of 2006 and early 2007 making the same argument with respect to Iran.

  Indeed, the administration seems to be intentionally repeating most of its rhetoric almost verbatim. As early as January 2006, the Washington Post noted the obvious:

  President Bush declared Friday that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose “a grave threat to the security of the world” as he tried to rally support from other major powers for U.N. Security Council action unless a defiant Tehran abandons any aspirations for nuclear weapons.

  In using the phrase “grave threat,” Bush invoked the same language he used before launching the invasion of Iraq in 2003….

  That January press conference marked a serious and deliberate escalation of the saber-rattling rhetoric toward Iran:

  The “grave threat” language was not in any talking points prepared and distributed Friday across the U.S. government and surprised diplomats and even some of Bush’s own aides.

  But by and large, he has shied away from those words regarding Iran.

  In August 2006, the president delivered a speech at a fundraising event for Senator Orrin Hatch which left no doubt that, in his mind, there is nothing at all unique about Iraq. Instead, as he sees it, there is a whole host of other equally evil and threatening “state sponsors of terrorism” against which he is willing to wage war based on exactly the same reasoning he deployed to persuade the country of the need to invade and occupy the “uniquely” dangerous Iraq. The president explained:

  The enemies of liberty come from different parts of the world, and they take inspiration from different sources. Some are radicalized followers of the Sunni tradition, who swear allegiance to terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda. Others are radicalized followers of the Shia tradition, who join groups like Hezbollah and take guidance from state sponsors like Syria and Iran.

  According to the president, Iran (and Syria) are “state sponsors” of terrorism, which are tantamount to—perhaps even teamed up with—Al Qaeda. What do we do with state sponsors such as Iran and Syria? In the president’s worldview, the answer is obvious, as the president emphasized in the same speech: “If you harbor terrorists, you are just as guilty as the terrorists; you’re an enemy of the United States, and you will be held to account.” Under what he calls the Bush Doctrine, when the president labels another country a “state sponsor of international terrorism,” it is the functional equivalent of a declaration of war; that is how they are “held to account.”

  In the president’s August 2006 speech, the specific assertion that Iran is a “state sponsor of terrorism” was accompanied by this crystal-clear ultimatum to the Iranians, employing language virtually identical to that directed at Saddam Hussein in the fall of 2002:

  This summer’s crisis in Lebanon has made it clearer than ever that the world now faces a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran…. The Iranian regime denies basic human rights to millions of its people. And the Iranian regime is pursuing nuclear weapons in open defiance of its international obligations.

  We know the death and suffering that Iran’s sponsorship of terrorists has brought, and we can imagine how much worse it would be if Iran were allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Many nations are working together to solve this problem. The United Nations passed a resolution demanding that Iran suspend its nuclear-enrichment activities. Today is the deadline for Iran’s leaders to reply to the reasonable proposal the international community has made. If Iran’s leaders accept this offer and abandon their nuclear weapons ambitions, they can set their country on a better course. Yet, so far, the Iranian regime has responded with further defiance and delay.

  It is time for Iran to make a choice. We’ve made our choice: We will continue to work closely with our allies to find a diplomatic solution—but there must be consequences for Iran’s defiance, and we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

  These threats were issued with the same language as that used toward Iraq and are equally incoherent. If, for instance, Iran is such a crazed regime, how can we ever trust that they have given up nuclear weapons development? And even if they do that, they would still allegedly remain “state sponsors of terrorists,” and thus must be “held to account” under the Bush Doctrine. That would mean that even a vigorous inspections and verification process or even a cessation of Iran’s nuclear research activities would not alleviate Bush’s perceived need for regime change ( just as Saddam’s capitulation to the U.N. weapons inspection process did not avert Bush’s invasion of Iraq).

  Indeed, just as was true with Iraq, the president’s emphasis has been not only on Iran’s alleged attempt to acquire nuclear weapons but also on its government’s alleged connection to “the terrorists” as well as its repressive internal practices. Just as was true for Iraq, this formulation means that there is but one solution that would sat
isfy Bush—not merely a suspension of Iran’s nuclear program, but regime change. And given that there is no chance that a “diplomatic solution” will result in “regime change,” the president’s claimed commitment to diplomacy is illusory, just as it was with Iraq.

  The president himself has emphasized that his thought process with regard to Iran is virtually identical to that which guided him in the weeks prior to the invasion of Iraq—with the sole exception that he apparently views a diplomatic solution with the Iranians as being less likely than it was with Saddam’s regime, and that war with Iran is therefore even more probable than it was with Iraq. National Review editor Rich Lowry was a member of a small group of conservative pundits to sit for an interview with President Bush in September 2006. On September 13, Lowry wrote about the president’s remarks on Iran:

  Time is also something Bush emphasizes in the Iran crisis. But his language suggests that the Robert Kagan–thesis that the seemingly interminable Iran diplomacy is the necessary run-up to a strike on Iran has something to it. Bush says, “It is very important for the United States to try all diplomatic means.”

  That’s what we did in Iraq: “I’m often asked what’s the difference between Iran and Iraq. We tried all diplomatic means in Iraq.” Iran, he seems to imply, might eventually prove impervious to diplomacy, but that’s something we have to find out [emphasis added].

  The notion that the president “tried all diplomatic means in Iraq” before invading is as transparently insincere as is his claim that he is seeking to do the same in order to avoid war with Iran. And just as the president’s threatening rhetoric toward Iran is identical to that which he adopted vis-à-vis Iraq, so, too, is the language he is using to deny the inevitability of military conflict with Iran.

  Long after it was apparent that the president was intent on invading Iraq, he continued publicly to deny that fact, insisting instead that he was still committed to a diplomatic resolution. As New York Times reporter Michael Gordon and retired general Bernard Trainor documented in their book, Cobra II—The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, the president repeatedly insisted that he was not working on war plans to invade Iraq even when war was the option with the greatest claim on his attention.

  In May 2002, for instance, the president went to Germany and sought to assure European allies that he was seeking to avoid war with Saddam: “I told the Chancellor that I have no war plans on my desk, which is the truth, and that we’ve got to use all means at our disposal to deal with Saddam Hussein.” Three days later, in Paris at a news conference with French president Jacques Chirac, the president made a virtually identical statement: “The stated policy of my government is that we have a regime change. And as I told President Chirac, I have no war plans on my desk.”

  And later in May, when General Tommy Franks was asked how many troops would be needed to invade Iraq, he responded, “That’s a great question and one for which I don’t have an answer because my boss has not yet asked me to put together a plan to do that. They have not asked me for these kinds of numbers.”

  But as Gordon and Trainor document, all of those claims were highly misleading, if not outright dishonest, because the president was clearly intent on invading as the sole means to resolve the “grave threat” posed by Saddam:

  The president’s statement was true in only the most literal but trivial sense. Bush had ordered the development of a new CENTCOM war plan, repeatedly met with Franks to hear its details, offered his own views on the schedule for deploying troops and on the military’s effort to couch the invasion as a liberation, and sent his vice president halfway around the world to secure allies for the war. And as for Franks, even the cleverest hair-splitting could not reconcile his remarks with the activity of CENTCOM during the previous six months.

  In like manner, throughout 2006 the president and then-Secretary Rumsfeld were employing almost identical language, and identical means of denial, with regard to their war planning against Iran. In April, for instance, they chided the media for what they both called “wild speculation” with regard to the president’s preparation for military action against the Iranians.

  And as the year progressed, the president, when asked about Iran, would respond almost exactly as he did when queried in mid-2002 about Iraq: by quickly expressing hope for a “diplomatic solution,” cursorily noting that war is a “last resort,” but then animatedly stressing that military action is an option and that, regardless of what else is true, it is “unacceptable” to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.

  Indeed, throughout the year, the president repeatedly used the term unacceptable when speaking of Iran, a term which, as noted in October by the Washington Post, is one of the most bellicose and deliberate words a president can choose in the foreign policy context:

  Having a president call something “unacceptable” is not the same as having him order U.S. troops into action. But foreign policy experts say the word is one of the strongest any leader can deploy, since it both broadcasts a national position and conveys an implicit threat to take action if his warnings are disregarded.

  When the president calls Iran a “state sponsor of international terrorism” and repeatedly proclaims its conduct “unacceptable,” that is as unambiguous a threat of war as can be issued short of an ultimatum or promise to commence a bombing campaign on a specific date.

  Worse, the president’s own claims about Iran make diplomacy all but impossible from the start. When one embraces the view that a certain country is the equivalent of Nazi Germany and its leader tantamount to Adolf Hitler, diplomacy, by definition, is not occurring and is certain to fail, since one has preordained that the country, by definition, cannot be trusted and cannot be reasoned with. What rendered Hitler such a singular threat—his defining attribute—was that he craved war as a means for asserting dominion over other countries, and affirmatively did not want a “diplomatic solution.” To equate Saddam, and now Iranian leaders, to Hitler, and to equate the threat posed by their countries to the one posed by Nazi Germany, is by definition to declare in advance that diplomacy is destined to fail and that—as was true with Hitler’s Germany—war is the only viable option.

  War-threatening allegations regarding Iran have not been confined to the president’s speeches and interviews. On September 5, 2006, the White House unveiled its new National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. It is composed largely of empty rhetorical platitudes that are by now depressingly familiar. Its fundamental premise is that “the War on Terror will be a long war,” but there is no need to worry, because we have a very specific and coherent strategy for winning:

  There will continue to be challenges ahead, but along with our partners, we will attack terrorism and its ideology, and bring hope and freedom to the people of the world. This is how we will win the War on Terror.

  That is the president’s plan for “how we will win the War on Terror”—we are going to “bring hope and freedom to the people of the world.”

  But the strategy is not completely filled with moralistic platitudes of this sort. Just like the 2002 strategy that presaged the invasion of Iraq, the document contains some unquestionably meaningful pronouncements, the most significant being the emphasis on Iran and Syria as “state sponsors of terrorism.” The strategy repeatedly makes the claim that those two countries are supporting terrorists: “Some states, such as Syria and Iran, continue to harbor terrorists at home and sponsor terrorist activity abroad.” The strategy also notes that “the United States currently designates five state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Syria, Sudan, North Korea, and Cuba,” but pointedly asserts that “Iran remains the most active state sponsor of international terrorism.”

  This is the same claim the president made in a speech he delivered several days prior to the issuance of the strategy, in which he declared, “We know the death and suffering that Iran’s sponsorship of terrorists has brought,” and then ominously warned, “if you harbor terrorists, you are just as guilty as the terrorists; you’r
e an enemy of the United States, and you will be held to account.”

  In September 2006, Paul Gigot, editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, asked the president about Iran. Gigot wrote on September 9:

  On the other hand, Mr. Bush remains as blunt as ever about the nature of the Iranian regime when I ask if one lesson of North Korea is that Iran must be stopped before it acquires a bomb. “North Korea doesn’t teach us that lesson. The current government [in Iran] teaches that lesson,” Mr. Bush says. “Their declared policies of destruction and their support for terror makes it clear they should not have a nuclear weapon.”

  One way or another, Iran will be the major dilemma of the rest of his presidency, and Mr. Bush knows it.

  While the emphasis on Iran is relatively new, the Bush mentality driving the administration’s war-seeking posture was announced long ago and has not changed. As early as February 2002, for instance, Vice President Cheney gave a speech at the Nixon Library in California and accused Iran of being “a leading exporter of terror,” and then pointedly added, “Under the Bush Doctrine, if you harbor a terrorist, you are a terrorist. If you feed or fund a terrorist, you are a terrorist, and you will be held accountable.”

  In early 2002, then-Secretary Rumsfeld was eager to underscore the newly threatening posture of the United States toward Iran, telling reporters,

  If I were in Iran or North Korea or Iraq and I heard the president of the United States say what he said last night about weapons of mass destruction and about terrorism and about terrorist networks and about nations that harbor terrorists, I don’t think there would be a lot of ambiguity as to the view he holds of those problems and their behavior.