The Enemy At Home (33 page)

If the left had gotten its way, Bush would never have invaded Afghanistan and the Taliban would still be in power. Islamic radicals would still be in control of two states, Iran and Afghanistan. Al Qaeda would still have an official state sponsor, so that its future attacks could be more effectively planned, funded, and executed. One can see why bin Laden might be pleasantly surprised to find, in the very nation he attacked, a group of people seeking to minimize the prospect of retaliation and to keep his Taliban supporters in power. If he was furious about rulers in the Muslim world who inexplicably promoted America’s cause, bin Laden could be expected to be exhilarated to see a group in America—secular infidels no less—who surprisingly promoted the Islamic fundamentalist cause.

On the issue of Afghanistan, however, the left remained on the margin of political discourse. Its position of vocal opposition to the war on terror was generally shunned by the Democratic leadership in Congress. But the left did succeed in mobilizing an energetic and powerful political movement. This movement, led by groups like Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), is frequently termed “antiwar,” although it is more accurately termed “anti-Bush,” because its opposition is not to war per se but to Bush’s war. From the left fringe, this movement has over the past few years migrated into the political mainstream. In the 2004 primaries, it won over the leading Democratic contenders. It now defines the position of the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

IT IS THE
Iraq war that has provided the rallying point for liberal Democratic opposition to Bush’s war on terror. Even some libertarians and conservatives have joined the coalition to defeat Bush’s Iraq policy. Some of this opposition is principled and derives from genuine and legitimate concerns that Bush is not fighting the war in the most effective way. A good deal of it is opportunistic, as left-leaning Democrats who opposed Bush’s war on terror from the outset found in Iraq a convenient occasion to go public with their opposition. It is the left, however, that provides the most coherent opposition to Bush’s war on terror. Moreover, with Iraq becoming the centerpiece of this war, the left has become the leader of the broad-based movement against America’s presence in that country.

The left’s position on Iraq has been clear from the outset: prevent Bush from getting into the war, and if this proves unsuccessful, then make sure that he loses the war. Having failed to achieve the first goal, the left is now explicitly promoting the second goal. Susan Watkins, editor of the
New Left Review,
affirms that “U.S.-led forces have no business in Iraq” and that “the Iraqi people have every right to drive them out.” Political scientist Robert Jensen claims the U.S. is losing the war in Iraq “and that’s a good thing. I welcome the U.S. defeat.” Leia Petty of the Campus Antiwar Network explains the purpose of her group’s demonstrations: “We’re here as part of a growing counter-recruitment movement that has the potential to stop Bush’s ability to carry out his agenda of war and terror.” Author James Carroll writes that the United States should not only “accept the humiliation” of withdrawal but “renounce any claim to power or even influence over Iraq.” Social scientist Nicholas De Genova argues that in Iraq and elsewhere, “The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military.”
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In a sense the left’s position flows directly from its premise: since America is the leading terrorist force in the world, the real war against terrorism is a war against America.

Again, one can see the benefits of the left’s position from Al Qaeda’s point of view. Bin Laden has said that a “third World War is now raging in Iraq,” where the outcome for both sides is “either victory and glory, or misery and humiliation.” Ayman al-Zawahiri has declared Iraq the location of “the greatest battle of Islam in this era.” Why is Iraq so important to these Islamic radicals? Because since the Khomeini revolution in 1979, Muslim fundamentalists have not captured a single Middle Eastern state. True, the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, but Afghanistan has always been peripheral to the Muslim world. Moreover, the Taliban was rudely ousted by American forces in the aftermath of 9/11.

Right now there is only one success story for radical Muslims, and that is Shia Iran. The problem is that Shia Muslims are a small minority in the Islamic world. More than 80 percent of Muslims are Sunni. Islamic radicals badly need a second success in the Middle East so that they can show that the Khomeini revolution was not an aberration. Moreover, they need to demonstrate the viability of a Sunni Islamic state that can serve as a model for most of the world’s Muslims. Although Iraq’s population is majority Shia, it is through the success of a Sunni insurgency that bin Laden and his allies seek to establish in that country their revolutionary model. That is why bin Laden sent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi into Iraq in the fall of 2002, before the American invasion. In a 2005 letter to insurgents, Ayman al-Zawahiri laid out the Al Qaeda strategy: “Expel the Americans from Iraq. Then establish an Islamic authority or emirate. Then extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.”
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With Iran and Iraq in their control, the Islamic radicals plan to wage war in the other Muslim states. First Jordan. Then Egypt. Then Saudi Arabia. Then Pakistan. Then Indonesia and Malaysia. Then Turkey.

If Iraq is vitally important to Islamic radicals, it is no less critical for President Bush. His success or failure there will largely determine his two-term legacy. Why, then, did Bush make Iraq a focal point of his war on terror? Today there is widespread liberal derision about Bush’s motives. Many liberals triumphantly note that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So Bush must have misled the American people about this. The left goes even further, asserting that “Bush lied.”
The Nation
claims that Bush went to war based on “falsehoods and deceptions.” Writing in
Dissent,
Jeff Faux refers to “the liar in the White House.” Al Franken goes so far as to say that “the President loves to lie.” Author Joe Conason insists that Bush’s deceptions on Iraq “will someday fill many volumes.” Activist Cindy Sheehan insists, “My son died for lies. George Bush lied to us and he knew he was lying.” The theme of Bush as a devious prevaricator has become absolutely central to the left-wing understanding. Of late even mainstream Democrats have started to talk this way. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration, faults Bush for going to war on “false pretenses.”
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Moreover, critics on the left charge that Bush lied by claiming a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. In fact, Senator Barbara Boxer points out there is “absolutely no connection” between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. Columnist Bob Herbert joins the chorus, reminding us that “the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001 by Al Qaeda, not Iraq.”
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Bush, however, never claimed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. He did suggest that the war against Saddam Hussein was part of the war against terror. We have here two conflicting views of that war. Many on the left want the war to be confined to getting “the guys who did 9/11.” But Bush never viewed the war on terror in this narrow way. For Bush, 9/11 was symptomatic of a new Islamic radicalism that threatened not only American lives but also vital American interests in the Middle East. From Bush’s perspective, Islamic radicalism and terrorism thrive because of the toxic political climate in the region, and that climate is fostered by the vicious and dysfunctional regimes in the Middle East. Iraq and Iran were part of what Bush called an “axis of evil” threatening the peace of the world. The solution, therefore, is to attempt to change the conditions in the Muslim world that give rise to terrorism.

Why Iraq? One reason is that after 9/11, a number of leading figures in the Bush administration came to the conclusion that, in the face of a catastrophe of this magnitude, it would not be sufficient to go to Afghanistan and shoot some people on the monkey bars. Rather, America needed to take action in the heart of the Middle East. Remember the old Western movies where John Wayne is called into town as the new sheriff to apprehend a bunch of cattle stealers? He goes into the bar, where the bad guys are shouting and jeering at him. He doesn’t know who the culprits are, but he finds a couple of obstreperous hoodlums and slams their head together, or pistol-whips them, and then he walks out of the bar. The message is that there is a new sheriff in town. After 9/11, I believe, the Bush administration wanted to convey this message to the Islamic radicals. In Saddam Hussein, Bush located an especially egregious hoodlum who would become the demonstration project for America’s seriousness and resolve.

The Bush administration also chose Iraq because of its strategic importance. Iraq borders on Iran, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Thus an American military presence in Iraq could be vital in preventing Islamic radicalism from overrunning the Middle East. Moreover, Iraq is an oil-rich country. By conquering Iraq, America would convince the entire oil-producing world that it has vital interests in the region and is willing to act to protect them. In addition, there was a legal pretext to invade Iraq. Saddam Hussein was openly violating his Gulf War commitments. The United States could invoke his treaty violations as a justification for action. So these were some of the unspoken reasons for the invasion. They were unspoken because in democratic societies nations frequently act on the basis of realpolitik but they cannot always defend their actions in these terms. Consequently democratic leaders have to give idealistic reasons for actions that frequently have both idealistic and Machiavellian motives.

Of course, the stated justification—the belief that Saddam Hussein was seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction—was also a genuine reason for the invasion. It is easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to fault Bush for being wrong about WMDs. But unlike pundits and rival presidential candidates, statesmen do not have the benefit of hindsight. They must act in the moving current of events, using information that is available to them. At the time there was little doubt across the political spectrum that Saddam Hussein was pursuing WMDs. Hussein himself acted as if he had such weapons, constantly evading the efforts of United Nations inspectors to monitor Iraqi weapons facilities. Bush had to weigh the risk of invading Iraq and being wrong, against the risk of not invading Iraq and being wrong. In the first case, he would be risking American troops in an unpopular war that would, nevertheless, result in the removal of a vicious dictator. In the second case, he would be risking Hussein acquiring a deadly weapon, which could end up in the hands of terrorists. If as a consequence a massive bomb exploded in Chicago killing half a million Americans, then who would take the responsibility? Weighing the risks, Bush decided it would be better to take preventive action and invade Iraq. Given what he knew at the time, it was the right decision.

In retrospect, Bush was wrong to invade Iraq at the time that he did, in the way that he did. With the benefit of hindsight, I think Bush might have done better to focus on Iran, which had nuclear aspirations of its own and was pursuing them—it turns out—with greater effectiveness. Statesmen, however, do not have the luxury of making decisions in retrospect. Consider a similar decision made by President Roosevelt. In the period leading up to World War II, a group of émigré German scientists warned Albert Einstein that the Germans were building an atomic bomb. The émigrés told Einstein that the German project was headed by that country’s greatest scientist, Werner Heisenberg. Acutely aware of the dangers of Hitler possessing an atomic bomb, Einstein took this information in the fall of 1939 to President Roosevelt, who commissioned the Manhattan Project. The United States built the bomb, and later dropped two of them on Japan. Many years later, Americans discovered that the Germans were nowhere close to building an atomic bomb. Their project was on the wrong track, and it seems to have stalled in its infancy. Some historians believe that Heisenberg was trying to thwart the project from the inside. Be that as it may, in retrospect we now know that the intelligence that led to the Manhattan Project was wrong. But no one goes around saying, “Einstein lied,” or, “FDR lied.” They didn’t lie; they used the information they had to make a tough decision in a very dangerous situation. The same is true of Bush. Acting against the somber backdrop of 9/11, he may have acted in haste, and he might have acted in error, but he did not act in bad faith. Therefore the claim that “Bush lied” is itself a lie.

IN THE DEBATE
leading up to the Iraq invasion, hardly anyone objected to the war on the grounds that Hussein was not trying to make weapons of mass destruction. Leading Democrats agreed with Bill Clinton’s 1998 assessment that Iraq had become “a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists.” During the Iraq debate, former presidential candidate Wesley Clark took it for granted that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs but argued that this fact did not justify an American invasion. “After all,” he said, “other nations have weapons of mass destruction. Are we going to invade them?” Others opposed Bush’s plan because of their fear that Saddam Hussein would use WMDs. Historian Arthur Schlesinger said, “The one thing that would very probably lead Hussein to resort to his ghastly weapons would be just this invasion of Iraq by the U.S.”
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This record is important because many liberals today fault Bush for his erroneous judgments while conveniently forgetting their own.

If we review the debate leading up to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, there was the leftist objection to the war and there was the mainstream liberal objection. Cindy Sheehan expressed the leftist view when she said, “Our country has been taken over by murderous thugs…war criminals…a pack of cowards and murderers who lust after fortunes and power…by spreading the cancer of imperialism in the Middle East.” In this view Bush didn’t really care about Saddam Hussein, any more than he really cared about bin Laden. In fact, Katha Pollitt and Chalmers Johnson pointed out, America used to support Saddam Hussein, just as America once supported bin Laden. I attended one rally in which a speaker said, “We probably sold Saddam those weapons of mass destruction.” More broadly, the left sensed the Iraq invasion was part of a larger plot, what Edward Said termed “an old-fashioned colonial occupation” of Iraq. Many on the left cheered Arundhati Roy’s claim that “Bush is far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein.” Writing in salon.com, Michelle Goldberg quoted anti-Bush activists predicting, “If bombs start falling on Iraq, expect insurgency at home.”
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The objective of the left was evidently to keep Saddam Hussein in power.