A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency (20 page)

But those anti-invasion views were barely acknowledged by the mainstream political and journalistic forces that controlled the terms of the prewar “debate,” and when they were acknowledged, it was usually for the purpose of mocking and deriding them. Individuals who made such arguments—arguments that turned out to be
completely right, as a pure and demonstrable matter of fact
—were scorned and demonized by the all-knowing pundit class, by our nation’s media stars, and by the president’s core supporters. Because they opposed the president and his crusade against Evil, individuals urging caution and deliberation were weak and unserious; they were pacifistic, borderline subversive losers who, like the hippies in the generation before them, were not even worth listening to. Saddam was Evil and had to be stopped; and, by definition, no serious person could deny that. Those who did immediately stood revealed as fringe, radical figures who were at least indifferent to threats posed by the terrorists, if not actually on the terrorists’ side.

One of the most prominent—and most pilloried—preinvasion opponents of the war was Howard Dean. Dean is a medical doctor and was the governor of Vermont, having been elected five consecutive times by the citizens of that state. During his ten years governing Vermont, Dean was best known for his extreme frugality with taxpayers’ money and his unyielding refusal to present anything other than a perfectly balanced budget, which is what Vermont enjoyed for his entire governorship. He battled endlessly with the progressives of his state over his relentless budget cutting.

Dean was also one of the most favored political officials of the National Rifle Association due to his steadfast opposition to gun control laws—a view that was grounded in his unusually firm commitment to states’ rights, i.e., if hunters in Vermont want to live without gun control but residents of a state with high urban crime rates (such as New York or California) want such restrictions, the autonomy of both states should be respected. Prior to becoming governor, Dean had a small-town medical practice, and he and his wife raised their two children in the Green Mountain State. Until he exploded onto the national political scene in 2002, Howard Dean had lived as a typical American, and there had been nothing
remotely
radical about him, his life, or anything he had said or done.

In 2002, Dean witnessed the entire country, the president’s loyal supporters, the national media, and even a sizable bulk of Dean’s own party, sycophantically joining in, or standing meekly by, as the president marched the country to a preemptive, offensive war against a sovereign country that had not attacked us. He saw that there was virtually no opposition to this war march, and almost no questioning of the president’s highly precarious claims. Worse, there was little evident concern for both the foreseeable and unintended consequences of this invasion—a blithe indifference to what a physician would see as “side effects.” As a result, this previously unremarkable doctor and always-mainstream, small-state governor stood up and objected to the uncritical national war dance. And he voiced these objections at a time when very few individuals of any political prominence were doing so.

Because of his questioning of the president’s assertions and his opposition to Bush’s insistence that we attack Iraq—and because his candidacy was consequently opposed to the entire war-supporting Beltway political and media establishment—Dean was immediately depicted as a wild-eyed, fringe radical who was so far “to the left” that he was even outside the mainstream ideological spectrum. Almost overnight, this moderate, completely nonideological figure became demonized—by Republicans, prowar Democrats, and the mindlessly Bush-adoring press—as some sort of unholy, unhinged mix of Ward Churchill, Joan Baez, and Fidel Castro. Dean was the new Abbie Hoffman, a freakish creature whose insanity and emotional instability were matched only by his rabid affection for socialism, Saddam Hussein, and Islamic terrorism. That vilification project proved so potent that even now when Dean has been proven
right
about virtually every geopolitical issue with respect to Iraq, the stigma persists today and will likely never be expunged from many minds.

The issues Dean raised in defending his objections to the war were of vital importance, yet they were barely discussed. Instead, those highly pragmatic concerns were steamrolled by Manichean depictions of the Evil Nazi-like terrorist dictator about to create mushroom clouds over American cities. Only those who were weak or indifferent to the fate of Americans would oppose invading Iraq. As a result, not only was Dean himself demonized, but the arguments he attempted to make—with the objective of galvanizing a debate that the country needed to have before embarking on such a dangerous war—were utterly distorted, caricatured, then safely ignored.

To review Dean’s speeches against the war is to read, in essence, an almost exact roadmap of what has happened, a predictive list of the now-realized consequences of invading Iraq that have made it one of the worst strategic disasters in our nation’s history. By stark and tragic contrast, those who pilloried Dean (and urged that we start a war with Iraq because of the threats posed by Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax), those who scorned him as an unserious radical who was weak, naïve, and lacking even limited credibility, were wrong about virtually everything they predicted—not only about whether Saddam had WMDs but about the consequences of removing his regime.

As but one example of his prescience, Dean gave a speech at Drake University in February 2003, a month before the invasion, in which he explained why he opposed the president’s imminent decision to invade Iraq. Reviewing that speech, and similar ones, provides an abject lesson in the dangers of replacing free and rational debate with moralistic certainty and borderline-religious reverence for political leaders. Dean explained why he had spoken up:

I am worried that many of the policies the Bush Administration is pursuing today do not provide the best means of defending our interests, and do not reflect the fundamental values of our people…. I would not be doing my job as a citizen if I did not state my own conviction about where I believe we could do better…. The stakes are so high, this is not a time for holding back or sheepishly going along with the herd.

I believe it is my patriotic duty to urge a different path to protecting America’s security: To focus on Al Qaeda, which is an imminent threat, and to use our resources to improve and strengthen the security and safety of our home front and our people while working with the other nations of the world to contain Saddam Hussein.

Had I been a member of the Senate, I would have voted against the resolution that authorized the president to use unilateral force against Iraq—unlike others in that body now seeking the presidency.

Dean was a steadfast supporter of the invasion of Afghanistan. He thus opposed the war on Iraq
not
because he was opposed to use of the military to defend America, but precisely because invading Iraq would drain our military resources and thus
prevent
the use of the military to defend against actual, imminent threats. As Dean asked: “What happened to the war against Al Qaeda? Why has this Administration taken us so far off track?”

For Dean, it was never in doubt that Saddam was a brutal, homicidal tyrant. Nobody doubted that. As Dean readily acknowledged: “I agree with President Bush—he has said that Saddam Hussein is evil. And he is. He is a vicious dictator and a documented deceiver.” But many dictators around the world have always been, are now, and always will be brutal, tyrannical, and evil. That Saddam was these things was beyond dispute, but not remotely sufficient to justify starting a war. A whole slew of other considerations—which the president and most of the media systematically ignored—compelled Dean to warn about the dangerous and ill-advised course the country was about to undertake:

As a doctor, I was trained to treat illness, and to examine a variety of options before deciding which to prescribe. I worried about side effects and took the time to see what else might work before proceeding to high-risk measures.

We have been told over and over again what the risks will be if we do not go to war.

We have been told little about what the risks will be if we do go to war.

If we go to war, I certainly hope the Administration’s assumptions are realized, and the conflict is swift, successful and clean.

I certainly hope our armed forces will be welcomed like heroes and liberators in the streets of Baghdad.

I certainly hope Iraq emerges from the war stable, united, and democratic.

I certainly hope terrorists around the world conclude it is a mistake to defy America and cease, thereafter, to be terrorists.

It is possible, however, that events could go differently, and that the

Iraqi Republican Guard will not sit out in the desert where they can be destroyed easily from the air. It is possible that Iraq will try to force our troops to fight house to house in the middle of cities—on its turf, not ours—where precision-guided missiles are of little use….

There are other risks.

Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.

Iran and Turkey each have interests in Iraq they will be tempted to protect with or without our approval….

And, perhaps most importantly, there is a very real danger that war in Iraq will fuel the fires of international terror.

Anti-American feelings will surely be inflamed among the misguided who choose to see an assault on Iraq as an attack on Islam, or as a means of controlling Iraqi oil.

And last week’s tape by Osama bin Laden tells us that our enemies will seek relentlessly to transform a war into a tool for inspiring and recruiting more terrorists.

And while it became virtually heretical to question the administration’s WMD warnings once General Colin Powell appeared before the U.N. with his war-justifying slide show, Dean remained insightfully skeptical:

Secretary Powell’s recent presentation at the UN showed the extent to which we have Iraq under an audio and visual microscope. Given that, I was impressed not by the vastness of evidence presented by the Secretary,
but rather by its sketchiness.

And though Dean was depicted as an unserious, weak-willed pacifist who required a “permission slip” from the U.N. before he would even consider defending the United States, the opposite was true. Dean endorsed the right of America to act against imminent threats with or without U.N. approval. His point—almost never fairly presented or debated—was that there was
no need to incur the always mammoth risk of war or unleash its inevitable horrors,
given that the inspection process would reveal soon enough whether the intelligence touted by the president was really true, i.e., whether Saddam really did pose the threat which the president claimed compelled us to invade that country:

Now, I am not among those who say that America should never use its armed forces unilaterally. In some circumstances, we have no choice. In Iraq, I would be prepared to go ahead without further Security Council backing if it were clear the threat posed to us by Saddam Hussein was imminent, and could neither be contained nor deterred.

That a person speaking in such language was transformed into a fringe, crazed, soft-on-defense socialist-leftist, and that his posture was distorted by our national press into a radical symbol of anti-American weakness, oozing spineless and even subversive indifference toward U.S. security, is a testament to the effectiveness with which the administration imposed a Manichean worldview as the national political orthodoxy.

This demonization of Dean as an out-of-the-mainstream radical was fueled not even so much by the content of Dean’s opposition to the president as it was by his unapologetic
tone.
He became the leading war opponent at a time of the almost-unanimously and hastily passed Patriot Act, of anthrax attacks, a paramilitary presence in many of our nation’s cities, Homeland Security alerts, and sky-high popularity ratings for Bush. Most Democrats were cowed into submission, virtually endorsing every Bush desire and offering only the meekest and most apologetic resistance when they resisted at all.

The president was no longer a mere public servant nor even still a politician. He became far more epic and glorious than that. He was the
Commander in Chief in a time of war
. And though the United States Constitution makes clear that the president is vested with that role only with respect to members of the armed forces—most assuredly
not
vis-à-vis American civilians—his supporters frequently insisted that to undermine Bush was to weaken the United States and to aid America’s enemies. As Joe Lieberman once put it, “In matters of war, we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.” During the 2004 campaign, President Bush said that John Kerry’s criticisms of the war in Iraq “can embolden an enemy.” He thereafter warned, as he and his administration have emphasized many times, “In a time of war, we have a responsibility to show that whatever our political differences at home, our nation is united and determined to prevail.”

Dean is but one prominent example of how rational debate in the United States over whether to invade Iraq was trampled on by the president’s emotion-inducing sermons that the U.S. had been called to fight Evil. Jim Webb, the former Reagan secretary of the Navy and decorated Marine combat hero, was equally as prescient as Dean, and just as tenacious in the lead-up to the war in trying to induce a reasoned examination of the serious risks entailed in an invasion. In September 2002, Webb authored an op-ed in the
Washington Post
arguing vehemently against invading Iraq. As with Dean’s speeches, it is striking just how right Webb was about virtually everything he warned of and it is tragic that his arguments were all but ignored by a war-hungry political and media elite, intoxicated by an exhilarating Manichean mission: