I would like to take a look at some of the ways that conservatives have suggested that historians may rehabilitate George Bush's reputation. Most of the the arguments will be taken from ChrisB at My Three Cents and RedBlue Christian because they seem to be pretty typical and because he has always been one of my favorite sparring partners.
Regarding 9/11, ChrisB wrote:
Conspiracy theorists not withstanding, I don’t think most people believe the Bush administration “allowed” the attacks to occur. If the administration and/or intelligence community dropped the ball prior to 9/11, they certainly made up for it afterwards. On Sept. 10, 2001, no one believed we could suffer such a blow; on Sept. 12, 2001, no one believed we would go more than a couple of years without another. The seven years that have passed without another incident can certainly be attributed to many things, but anyone who denies the Bush administration’s hand in it is blinded by ideology.
I find the conspiracy theories as silly as Chris does, but I do think that Bush dropped the ball prior to 9/11. I also think that Bush made a big mistake by failing to immediately appoint a commission to figure out what went wrong as Franklin Roosevelt did after Pearl Harbor. The administration took the attitude that the world changed on 9/11 when the truth was that world was the same, but 9/11 showed that we did not understand it. I think that a more careful assessment of what had gone wrong might have led to less impulsive decisions going forward.
Did the administration and intelligence community make up for it afterward? The intelligence on Iraq cannot be seen as anything other than a massive failure both in terms of the lack of WMD and the failure to anticipate the insurgency. History may show that the lack of further attacks is directly attributable to steps taken by the Bush administration and that would certainly burnish Bush's reputation, however, I don't think we will know until a lot of information is declassified and someone within Al Queda describes how they reponded to what the administration did. I think it is still possible to be skeptical without being ideological.
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"The administration took the attitude that the world changed on 9/11 when the truth was that world was the same, but 9/11 showed that we did not understand it."
ReplyDeleteI think this is mostly a sematic difference. The administration's point was, given what we learned on 9/11, we needed to change our behavior.
Re: WMD, for whatever reason, Saddam put a lot of energy into convincing the world he had WMDs for a long time, and the world believed him. It was only toward the end of the troop buildup that he started saying he had disposed of his weapons, and who was going to believe him then?
(Frankly, though, I'm still not 100% convinced. The question of the activity on the Syrian border has never been answered to my satisfaction.)
Re: the insurgency, I think they should have responded quicker, but I'm not sure anyone had reason to expect the conventional war would turn into what it did.
Re: attacks, did you catch Bush's recent speech where we listed some of the attacks they prevented in the last seven years?
Without knowing where the mistakes were made, we cannot be sure whether the tools available were insufficient or whether they were simply being incompetently applied. The administration changed its behavior without figuring out what changes were needed.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, Saddam’s claims could not be trusted and the administration never cited them as their reason for believing that he had WMD. The administration based its case on the intelligence it gathered. Many countries looked at the same intelligence and concluded that it did not indicate the gathering threat that the Bush administration claimed to see. I don’t think anything is going to come out that is going to make the case the administration articulated look any better.
Cheney had reason to expect an insurgency. He had given the possibility as one of the reasons for not taking Saddam down in the first Gulf war. He predicted many of the things that the administration failed to plan for.
I have heard about the plots that have been thwarted, but some of them sound so inept that it seems like Al Queda hasn’t really been trying to hit us here. I would also note that we were not hit for eight years between 1993 and 2001 so I don’t think there is enough evidence to say exactly why we didn’t get hit again. Bush might deserve the credit but I don’t think we know yet.
"Many countries looked at the same intelligence and concluded that it did not indicate the gathering threat that the Bush administration claimed to see."
ReplyDeleteI'm not at all sure that's correct. When stared down at the security council, none of them, reportedly, contradicted the US's claims. They simply said they wanted more "time."
On February 11, 2003, French President Jaques Chirac said that France lacked "undisputed proof" that Iraq still had WMD and that "nothing today justifies a war." His comments accompanied a joint declaration by France, Germany, and Russia calling for more time for inspections.
ReplyDeleteLet me throw in my 2¢ here. ChrisB writes:
ReplyDeleteOn Sept. 10, 2001, no one believed we could suffer such a blow; on Sept. 12, 2001, no one believed we would go more than a couple of years without another.
I don't think either statement is true. There were plenty who were sounding the alarms prior to 9/11. What people seem to forget, because it was so long ago, is that the outgoing Clinton administration told the incoming Bush 43 Administration that terrorism would be its biggest problem. But W's administration ignored those warnings (remember the infamous "Bin Laden Determined To Strike Inside US" memo?), instead choosing to focus its efforts on pipe dreams like missile defense for the first eight months, and wholly ignored terrorism.
The only people who didn't believe an attack like that could occur were the ones who were still engaging in cold war thinking, and those people were in charge. The intelligence community felt quite differently.
As for nobody believing we'd go a while without another attack, I don't see the basis for that statement, either. Some, including myself, were pointing out even at that time that the previous al-Qaeda attack on US soil had been over eight years earlier (February of 1993). The truth is, al-Qaeda prefers to have fewer, bigger attacks rather than lots of small ones.
for whatever reason, Saddam put a lot of energy into convincing the world he had WMDs for a long time, and the world believed him.
You think he wanted people to know he was a paper tiger? All the anti-Hussein rhetoric and scaremongering artificially inflated his stature, and dictator types eat that stuff up.
Re: the insurgency, I think they should have responded quicker, but I'm not sure anyone had reason to expect the conventional war would turn into what it did.
As Vinny points out, tell that to Dick Cheney, who in a 1994 interview cited precisely that as the reason they didn't into Baghdad back in 1991.