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

by Glenn Greenwald

  The reason for Kagan’s plea for more Americans to enlist is self-evident. The country simply does not have the available troops to sustain the president’s glorious Churchillian ambitions, nor to satisfy the endless warmongering of those who want to take a belligerent and militaristic stance against “Islamofascism” by waging war against more Middle Eastern countries. In fact, according to the U.S. military itself, we do not have enough troops to sustain Kagan’s “surge” plan, let alone the broader regional war toward which the president, fueled by the faux warriors who compose his political base, is headed. Indeed, a consensus of military and intelligence conclusions have warned that even our mission to banish the Taliban and Al Qaeda from Afghanistan—the one previous success trumpeted by the Bush administration—is in danger of failing due to insufficient troop strength in that country.

  Regardless of disputes over specific numbers, Kagan has insisted that “Victory” in Iraq requires that more Americans volunteer to fight. According to Kagan and Keane’s Washington Post op-ed advocating their surge plan:

  We need to cut through the confusion. Bringing security to Baghdad—the essential precondition for political compromise, national reconciliation and economic development—is possible only with a surge of at least 30,000 combat troops lasting 18 months or so. Any other option is likely to fail.

  Yet President Bush, despite all of his soaring speeches about the unparalleled importance of this War of Civilizations we are allegedly fighting, has never once called for Americans to sacrifice in any way for this war, because doing so would entail political risks. Not only has the president been adamantly opposed even to the idea of a draft to support his seemingly endless quest for war, he has never once suggested that more Americans consider volunteering for military service.

  Moreover, the president has threatened to veto legislation designed to make America safer from real terrorism threats, such as bills to require more thorough inspections of cargo entering the country, on the grounds that such measures are too costly. Yet in between his attempts to depict the threat of terrorism as an “unprecedented” danger—the same threat that measures such as port inspections are intended to address—he never once entertained the idea that even a delay, let alone a cancellation, of his scheduled tax cuts may be necessary to pay for measures designed to protect the American homeland. The president endlessly proclaims terrorism as a towering, paramount threat to freedom and American security, yet he has been completely unwilling to undertake even the most minimal political risks, or ask the American voter to sacrifice in any way, in order to battle that threat.

  To the contrary, in November 2001, when the nation was most galvanized and eager to act in support of their country against terrorism, President Bush famously instructed that Americans need do nothing other than “go about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshipping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball games.” While such reassurances may have been necessary to calm the nation immediately after 9/11, the president never once requested, let alone inspired, any sacrifices by Americans as a whole. The contrast between the war leadership of President Roosevelt and the “war” exploitation of George W. Bush could not be greater.

  The president’s soaring war rhetoric and invocation of Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln simply can no longer obscure the self-evident reality that Americans now see for themselves. The threat of terrorism and the continuous reliance upon the need to battle against America’s enemies has taken center stage during the Bush presidency only when those concepts served the president’s political agenda.

  Those threats have been endlessly milked and exploited to justify a war which, as Americans realized belatedly though conclusively, never had any connection to that terrorism threat other than to exacerbate it. Unlike Presidents Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Truman—who led the country in wars of necessity and who faced down genuinely formidable threats to the security and/or very existence of the United States—President Bush has exploited the rhetoric of Enemy and Evil to promote an agenda that has little real connection to either. His eagerness to claim the mantle of the greatness of past American War Presidents is grounded in pure delusion and myth.

  The president’s inability to view the world as anything other than a paramount battle between the forces of Good and Evil—along with his unshakable conviction that not only he, but every decision he makes, is in service of that Manichean crusade—has kept him wedded to a war and to a method of governance long past the time when both have been revealed to be utter failures. And his core belief in both his own righteousness and the moral imperative of his mission have led him to engage in behavior that has all but destroyed America’s credibility and moral standing in the world. That credibility and standing have been built by American presidents, Democratic and Republican alike, throughout the twentieth century, and will take extraordinary efforts, and years if not decades, to restore.

  There is a reason why, pursuant to the Constitution, wars in the United States cannot be declared by the president, but instead require the consent of the American people through their Congress. As John Jay warned in Federalist 4, requiring that the American people approve of wars is essential for avoiding unnecessary wars, because presidents will start them unnecessarily, i.e., for their own benefit, but the people are much less likely to do so:

  It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.

  Americans have come to recognize that George Bush’s Iraq War is described almost perfectly, with eerie prescience, by this passage. And just as was true for President Johnson, this realization has almost single-handedly destroyed the presidency of George W. Bush.

  America’s overarching choice in 2008—whether to reaffirm the values for which America has long stood, whether to work toward restoration of our credibility and moral standing in the world—has unparalleled urgency in light of the fundamental changes to our national character wrought by the Bush presidency. George Bush repeatedly vowed to demonstrate that the United States is the world’s leader in individual liberty, human rights, and commitment to peace, yet the world, over the last six years, has reached precisely the opposite conclusion concerning the values this country embodies. And it pains one to acknowledge that the conclusion has been reached with good reason; the moralistic certainty that fueled Bush’s actions enabled, justified, and ensured an endless string of policies that violated our most basic values and led us to engage in the very behavior we have long vocally condemned.

  On March 29, 2007, Harold Hongju Koh, dean of Yale Law School, testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and observed:

  We now fail to tell the full truth about our human rights conduct, or that of our allies in the War on Terror. Increasingly, we avoid application of universal standards: whether the rules against torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions. But the United States cannot lead the world with moral authority unless we hold ourselves to the same high standards that we demand from others.

  The U.S. has put its own human rights practices center stage by promoting double standards for our allies, and arguing in favor of “law-free zones” (like Guantánamo), “law-free practices” (like extraordinary rendition), “law-free persons” (who are dubbed “enemy combatants”), and “law-free” courts (like the system of military commissions, which have failed to deliver credible justice and are currently being challenged in our courts for the recen
t stripping of the writ of habeas corpus). Through these misguided policies, the Administration has shifted the world’s focus from the grotesque human rights abuses of the terrorists to America’s own human rights misconduct, leaving other, equally pressing issues elsewhere ignored or unaddressed.

  The president who insisted that the key to American security was our moral credibility in the world single-handedly destroyed that credibility. The president who vowed to defend Good from the forces of Evil relied in that battle upon the very practices the United States has long insisted were the hallmarks of Evil—from an unprovoked, offensive invasion of a sovereign country that was not threatening us; to the creation of a secret and lawless worldwide prison network stocked with detainees who, in many cases, were abducted, tortured, and given no process of any kind to demonstrate their innocence; to the assertion of a limitless entitlement to act outside of any international conventions of law and ethics; to bellicose threats toward still other sovereign countries of more invasions, bombing campaigns, regime changes, and wars. The very values that the president insisted demonstrated America’s moral righteousness and political exceptionalism have been precisely those he has most vigorously repudiated and, indeed, betrayed.

  The Bush legacy is one whereby not only our moral standing but also our strength and security as a nation have been dangerously eroded. The president who venerated values of “strength” and subordinated all other goals to “security” has done more to diminish both than any modern American president. Our military force has been severely depleted by countless imperial commitments around the world and the endless occupation of Iraq specifically; the strength of our deterrent power has been severely weakened by the visible failures in Iraq and the accompanying resource constraints on our country and our military force; and we have suffered a virtually complete loss of our “soft power” tools of diplomacy and deterrence as a result of our worldwide loss of credibility as a nation. Machiavelli argued that, among one’s enemies and potential enemies, it is better to be feared than to be loved, yet under the Bush presidency, we are neither.

  The most ironic—and most revealing—aspect of the erosion of America’s moral credibility is that the reprehensible policies that caused it were “justified” as necessary steps in a moralistic mission. The president’s moral certitude is what enabled, is what spawned, some of the most amoral acts in our country’s history.

  The Manichean warrior recognizes no limits on the weapons he uses to annihilate the Evil enemies. Those who begin with the premise that they are intrinsically and by divine entitlement on the side of objective Good view any weapons they use as, by definition, just and necessary. Thus, the president who vowed to the world that he would demonstrate the values that have made this country great, thereafter systematically violated those very values to the point where our country is no longer defined by them. The epic challenge in the aftermath of the Bush presidency is the restoration of those national values, a rehabilitation of our national character, so that American morality and credibility are, once again, more than empty slogans in presidential Manichean war speeches. That is the tragic legacy George W. Bush leaves behind for America.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  One of the principal advantages of writing a daily political blog is that virtually every aspect of blogging is collaborative. Between one’s own readers and other bloggers, every idea is elaborated on and challenged, every error quickly detected and corrected, every undiscovered fact revealed. The views of anyone who spends substantial time reading political blogs—as I do—are the culmination of constant exposure to all of those varied sources. Many of the arguments and observations in this book are the by-product of that collaborative process, even when it is impossible to trace the genesis of a specific idea.

  Two individuals—one blog reader and one blogger—were indispensable in my writing this book. Therese Sarah, a longtime reader, volunteered to assist with the research and found even the most obscure information with absurd ease. Mona Holland, a fellow blogger, provided aggressive line-by-line editing that substantially improved and focused the manuscript, and also contributed original ideas that bolstered several of the arguments. Additional thanks to Marilyn Klubenspies, Jennifer Nix, and Werner Achatz.

  Sean Desmond, my Crown editor, played a central role in shaping this book from its inception. His suggestions and guidance were uniformly wise, even when I initially resisted them. He oversaw the writing of this book with the ideal mix of encouragement, constructive criticism, and even a little pressure when necessary. Working on a book of this scope is much easier and more fulfilling when one has a smart and insightful editor.

  And finally, my infinite and eternal thanks to David Miranda Greenwald, who is the one who makes everything possible.

  ALSO BY GLENN GREENWALD

  How Would a Patriot Act?

  Defending American Values from a President Run Amok

  Copyright © 2007 by Glenn Greenwald

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Crown is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Greenwald, Glenn.

  A tragic legacy: how a good vs. evil mentality destroyed the Bush presidency / Glenn Greenwald.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Bush, George W. (George Walker), 1946–—Political and social views. 2. Bush, George W. (George Walker), 1946–—Ethics. 3. Bush, George W. (George Walker), 1946–—Influence. 4. United States—Politics and government—2001—Decision making. 5. Good and evil—Political aspects—United States—Case studies. 6. Political leadership—United States—Case studies. 7. Character—Case studies. 8. Presidents—United States—Biography. I. Title.

  E903.3.G74 2007

  973.931092—dc 22 2007010813

  eISBN: 978-0-307-39521-4

  v1.0