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Iraq was JEB’s War: Started by the Dim Son Instead

Bruce Webb | May 13, 2015 12:17 pm

There has been some furor over the “Would you have launched the Iraq War?” question posed to Jeb Bush mostly revolving around the question of whether he understood the qualifying “knowing what we know now” as opposed to “knowing what we knew then”. But this is to miss the point. Because Jeb was on record for launching a war on Iraq right from 1997. That is screw what we did or didn’t know in September 2001 or March 2003, Bush was ready to lead the Neo-Cons to war years before that. To see that this is true you need to examine two coupled documents from the Project for a New American Century and their signatories: the PNAC Statement of Principles (1997) and their Letter to Clinton on Iraq (1998)

Now some might make the case that the Statement was just aspirational and the Letter operational but I say that in this case that is a distinction without a difference. In 1997 Jeb Bush and Dick Cheney signed their name to a manifesto, one that committed this country to a campaign of perma-war to establish a ‘New American Century’. If only the country would put the power to do so in their hands. Which the country (with an assist from the Supreme Court) did in 2000. Which in turn made the war on Iraq a matter of when and not if. If that is you take the Neo-Cons at their word. As publically signed in a full page ad in the New York Times. The Statement opens as follows:

American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America’s role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century.

We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.

As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world’s preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?

Elliott Abrams
Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett
Jeb Bush
Dick Cheney
Eliot A. Cohen
Midge Decter
Paula Dobriansky
Steve Forbes
Aaron Friedberg
Francis Fukuyama
Frank Gaffney
Fred C. Ikle Donald Kagan
Zalmay Khalilzad
I. Lewis Libby
Norman Podhoretz
Dan Quayle
Peter W. Rodman
Stephen P. Rosen
Henry S. Rowen
Donald Rumsfeld
Vin Weber
George Weigel
Paul Wolfowitz

This is the Bush Foreign Policy. The JEB Bush Foreign Policy. And in this policy the Iraq was was a Feature, indeed the Opening Feature, and not some Bug.

15 Comments

little john says:

May 13, 2015 at 3:57 pm

Hmmm. And what would have Hillary done? Well we already know that answer. Like John Kerry, she was for it before she was against it. I have a funny feeling that this is a line of inquiry Hillary isn’t too interested in debating.
Bruce Webb says:

May 13, 2015 at 4:09 pm

Little John as far as we know Hillary was not privately or publicly asking Bill in ~~1999~~ 1997 to launch a whole series of wars starting with Iraq in order to establish a New American Century. On the other hand Jeb was.

That is the difference this post is trying to establish – JEB was an original Vulcan, aka a PNAC Neo-Con committed to use the U.S. military on a unilateral basis to “maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century.”

The New AMERICAN Century.

On the other hand Hillary got rolled five years later. Largely by falsified intelligence solicited by and often even fabricated by Cheney’s deputy I. Lewis Libby and Rumsfields’ deputy Douglas Feith. Of whom Libby and Rumsfield were right there with Cheney and Bush signing the Statement of Principles.

You can make the argument that both the Con Man and the Mark are in on the Con. That doesn’t mean they share the guilt.
Anna Lee says:

May 14, 2015 at 11:12 am

Bruce, I have found that the only thing harder than getting people to read the Leninist Strategy is getting people to read the PNAC letters. I gave up which makes you a better person than me.
little john says:

May 14, 2015 at 12:07 pm

Maybe you would like to elaborate on exactly what wars Mr. Bush (Jeb) was advocating?
I’d also like to see proof of intelligence evidence that was fabricated by Libby and/or Feith.
In terms of the PNAC’s influence on the Bush administration’s foreign policy I would point you to a number of academics who have spent their careers studying think tanks and their roles in public policy. Both Inderjeet Parmar and Donald Abelson have indicated that the PNAC’s influence on Bush foreign policy has been overstated.
In terms of Hillary being duped by Feith and Libby, you’re more naïve than I thought. President Clinton did attack Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. Was that a PNAC influenced decision?
I’d also argue that to a large extent we’re all neocons now. Think Afghan surge, Libya, Pakistan and Yemen drone strikes, arming and advising Syrian insurgents, etc. It reminds me of the 1952 election. While Stevenson ran on Truman’s containment strategy, Ike proposed “rollback”. Of course Ike won and in 1953 NSC 162/2 officially rolled back “rollback”.
Bruce Webb says:

May 14, 2015 at 12:36 pm

Signatories to the 1998 Letter to Clinton
Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett

Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky

Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad

William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman

Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber

Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick

Ignoring overlaps we can add these from the Statement of Principles:
Dick Cheney, JEB Bush, Frank Gaffney, Donald Kagan,

Your uncited scholars can argue that PNAC’s influence on the Bush Administration has been “overstated” but you would have to be blind to deny that almost the entirety of the Bush Admin foreign policy and civilian military team was drawn from the signatories of these two core PNAC documents. With the major exceptions being the two people generally rejected by Cheney et al of being squishes: Condi Rice and Colin Powell. Your claim fails the laugh test here. Bolton, Perle, Wolfowitz, Libby, Rumsfeld and even the then unknown Khalilzad, which is to say the entire second tier and with Rumsfeld and Cheney the first tier of Bush war advisors is present and accounted for.

Clinton attacked al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Sudan. Targeting the man that by 2002 Bush claimed was “on the run” and who he wasn’t worried about anymore, one Osama bin Laden, even as he and his were planning a war on Iraq in the name of 9/11. And far as I know the only attack Clinton did on Iraq was in enforcing the No-Fly Zone initiated by G.H.W. Bush and one that seemed to be working in that the Kurds were operating a mostly autonomous state in the north and Saddam was no longer launching genocidal attacks on Shi’ia in the South. Moreover as we know now the arms embargo on Iraq also launched by the elder Bush and maintained by Clinton had caused the Iraqi regime to shut down its WMD programs in 1996. More than a year BEFORE the PNAC advocated a unilateral war on Iraq.

As to the “we are all Neo-Cons now”. First you are conflating actions related to Bush’s war (the Afghan surge) with actions that can be seen as a continuation of Clinton’s targeted war on al-Qaeda (Pakistan and Yemen) with actions that were a consequence of the Arab Spring (Libya and arming Syria). For one thing a lot of liberals, including me were no on board with either Surge, which were both designed to buy time to cover American withdrawel but which both ended up with our having perma-presense in both countries (although with fewer boots on the ground) and certainly can not be considered as ‘successes’ when it comes to producing peace for either Afghans or Iraqis. For another thing the Neo-Cons were not entirely on board either the Libya intervention (which they alternately bemoaned as being too much and/or not American led) or the way we have gone about Syria where folk like McCain advocated going in much harder and with a focus on active regime change (because that worked out so well in Iraq).

But in any event much of the Left was divided between reluctantly backing Obama (because ‘hero’) and recoiling because he continued about 90% of the errors of the Bush Administration in regards to the Middle East. With me somewhere uneasily between those poles.

Libby went to jail. Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans was near universally panned by getting everything wrong, often by dismissing CIA intelligence of underestimating Saddam. Instead of if anything over-estimating. We don’t need to get down in the weeds of aluminum tubes and meetings in Czechoslovakia and yellow cake and Curveball to grasp the idea that Feith was tasked to dummy up the case for a war that the PNAC was openly calling for in 1998.
Bruce Webb says:

May 14, 2015 at 12:38 pm

For those who think I am overhyping the 1998 letter here is the text, I will be going into edit mode to add some highlighting. In the meantime:

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.

Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.

Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater.
We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.
Bruce Webb says:

May 14, 2015 at 12:52 pm

Finally I would note that the argument that we only went to war because EVERYONE was in agreement in 2002 based on then current intelligence and that therefore everyone who voted for the AUMF was equally at fault for the war rather ignores the fact that none of the Signatories of the 1998 letter AT THAT TIME had official access to current U.S. intelligence and yet were so sure of their conclusions that they were advocating immediate launch of a regime change directed war on Saddam ANYWAY. That is the whole “It wasn’t US, it was the CIA!” defense put on by Bushies since was an is total bullshit.

The CIA didn’t drag us into war. Cheney and friends dragged the CIA into war. They wanted their war and 9/11 gave them the opening. Full Stop.
little john says:

May 14, 2015 at 1:49 pm

I cited two scholars by name. Google them and find their CV. It’s not necessarily my claim but two of the world’s most respected academics in the field of think tanks.
Clinton attacked Iraq over a plot to assassinate G.H.W.Bush.
The rest is opinion which I could buy into except I could never figure out why they wanted a war with Iraq so badly. I just can’t believe that “serious people” would actually desire a war for war’s sake.
Bruce Webb says:

May 14, 2015 at 2:16 pm

Little John I am not impressed much by “the appeal to authority”. That two “experts” who are “respected” wrote something means nothing to me, certainly I am not going to take it as a reading assignment. If you would care to restate their argument in a form that seems persuasive then maybe I would be induced to Google. As it is there are any number of other items on my Google agenda.

As for the “attack”, well thanks for reminding me, I had forgotten it. But a one time launch of 23 Tomahawks against a specific target (that was NOT Saddam personally) is not equivalent to a full scale ground invasion intent on regime change.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/clinton-punishes-iraq-for-plot-to-kill-bush

As to why they wanted the war on Iraq there are two answers. One is simply to read the Statement of Principles at face value. The PNAC Vulcans wanted to establish a New American Century favorable to American political AND economic interests by military force. A short version of this is “Its all about Oil and Halliburton”.
The second answer goes more to the Michael Ledeen/Richard Perle argument. That a war on Iraq was the first step to establishing an Israeli friendly Middle East by eliminating all States who were a direct threat to Israel (which would include Iraq and Syria), or who directly supported Hezbollah and Hamas (Iran, Syria, and Iraq) or who might in the future pose a direct existential threat to Israel via development of a nuclear capability (primarily Iran but also Iraq and Syria).
In the opening days of the war and “Cakewalk” this was more or less explicit: Iraq would rapidly fall into U.S. and Chalabi-led forces hands, certainly by November. A Chalabi led Iraq would recognize Israel and provide bases for a subsequent attack on Syria even as direct cross border support to the MEK and other Iranian dissident groups would lead to a rapid fall of the Iranian regime. Bereft of external support Hezbollah would be no match for the Maronite Christian and Druse factions that had once dominated Lebanese politics.
Meanwhile this string of victories under the leadership of George W Bush under the doctrine of the Arbitrary Executive (or as GWB put it: “The Decider”) would lead America to fall in line behind the vision of Karl Rove’s (Bush’s Brains) openly proclaimed dream of a Permanent Republican Majority.

BTW you could well take your own advice and Google “Michael Ledeen” “arbitrary executive” and “Permanent Republican majority” if you would like illumination on what I would call the Master Plan. If that didn’t set off too many Godwin Bells.

But that was the Plan. Openly published via full page ads in the NewYork Times and openly by Republican operatives like Rove and Ledeen: New American Century. and Permanent Republican Majority. Now THAT would have been Mission Accomplished. (And for one brief shining moment they thought it was).
little john says:

May 14, 2015 at 2:57 pm

Blood for Oil was never convincing to me. Why not be really good friends with them instead? Kind of like our relationship with KSA. Halliburton, Bechtel and Fluor know how that (friendship/money) works much better than they know how war works.
I can’t believe hard headed political operatives would be naïve enough to believe A) they could remake the ME into an Israeli friendly environment B) create a permanent GOP majority.
I have a different take on the whole thing but maybe I am the one who is naïve!
Bruce Webb says:

May 14, 2015 at 3:33 pm

LJ you might be right. After all having just about the entirety of the Republican foreign policy apparatus including its most influential journalists and academics publish their Statement of Principles as a full page ad in the New York Times might indeed just have been some prank not to be taken seriously. On the other hand just three years later a bunch of these naifs were in place at every lever of power in the American military machine. Somehow I go down the following list of names and don’t find anyone who was just pulling our legs:
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Perle, Gaffney, Podhoretz, Bolton, Woolsey, Kristol.
There are people who have been openly supporting the MEK for decades now and who demand they be taken off the Terrorism list just because they use terroristic tactics.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/28/mek-supporters-us-iranian-opposition
“MEK supporters and members of Congress at the forefront of the campaign to unban the organisation now want the Obama administration to back it as a spearhead to regime change in Tehran. The delisting will leave the group free to raise funds without concerns of breaching anti-terrorism laws and to shift the focus of its now considerable political support, which includes scores of members of Congress and former top officials including ex-directors of the FBI and CIA, toward its campaign to topple the present government in Iran.”
You have similar support for insurgent movements in Iranian Balochistan
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=262453
These are the same kind of people who spent the entire 1950’s insisting that the answer to Maoist China was simply to “Unleash Chiang Kai-chek”
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/quemoy_matsu.htm
There are plenty of people aspiring or who aspired to political power who believed that there is nothing that can’t be done by properly applying U.S. military force: for example Senators McCain, Graham, and Rubio. There are many others that insist that anti-American regimes are ripe for collapse if you would just arm the right rebels. Cetainly Saddamist Iraq was in that category as are Iran and Syria. Hell even liberals get into this game: hence the miraculous results of the Arab Spring that brought peace and democracy to Libya and Yemen and the targeted interventions that perfectly solved the problems in the Horn of Africa leading to the idyllic conditions that govern the Sudan and Somalia today. Ooops my Bad!! Because ALL those countries are emmeshed in bloody civil wars and worse (because Somalia doesn’t even rise to the level of ‘civil war’). All because Neo-Cons and Realists and all too many Neo-Libs and Third Way Dems figure that the only problem with past, present an future military interventions by the U.S. and proxies not having perfect success is the actual calibration of force applied. Some day we will just get our Goldilocks War on: Not Too Hot and Not Too Cold. Nope it will be Just Right!! And rounds of Pax Americana all around!!!

So yes there are people who believe it is perfectly possible to remake the Middle East into an Israeli friendly environment. Which is why those people are insisting that Iran not only give up ALL its nuclear capabilities before considering lifting sancitions, but that it all not only recognize Israel but also explicitly recognize it as a Jewish State (despite the fact that about half of the people under its direct control are not Jewish) AND continue to advocate for arming groups like MEK. Not only do they want to have it all, by all appearances they believe that with the right leadership (i.e. theirs) that all this is achievable.

And yes Republicans, starting with not by no means stopping with Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay in the 90s and Karl Rove and many others in the 00’s and currently believe there is a path towards permanent Republican majorities in Congress and continued dominance of State governorships and legislatures.

You are free to have a different take on the feasibility of all this, but to deny that there are people who have this as an active program is not to be naive but instead willfully blind to the last 60 years of political history.
little john says:

May 14, 2015 at 4:43 pm

I think we’re almost on the same page. I was just commenting that there isn’t a real significant difference on foreign policy between Hillary, Jeb and most other elite leadership figures. At least that’s the way I read the last 60 years of political history.
JimV says:

May 15, 2015 at 1:22 pm

Little John’s reaction was my reaction back in 2011-2012: senior executive officials with vast experience are telling me that Saddam has WMD; I have to believe them. I recall a televised press conference in a big tent in Iraq soon after the invasion, in which a Chinese reporter asked something like, “Okay, where are the WMD?” I was annoyed by the question, thinking, we’ve only been there for two weeks, give us time, we’ll find them. Wow, was I naive.

How Cheney and the rest dare to show their faces in public amazes me. I guess I’m still a little naive – but not as much as I was.
Bruce Webb says:

May 15, 2015 at 1:38 pm

There is a new post up on the same basic topic, hopefully better arranged.
JimV says:

May 15, 2015 at 4:35 pm

Correction: in my senility I wrote 2011-2012 instead of 2001-2002, which is what I meant. It does seem like yesterday, but then so does everything else.