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archived: 23 - 29 Jan, 2005 Back Next UPDATED 27, 2005 BYRD ON RICE TPJ are aware that the US Senate confirmed Condoleezza Rice as Bush’s Secretary of State. Thirteen Democrats voted against confirmation. In opposing Bush’s nomination, Senator Robert C. Byrd delivered the most reasoned statement in opposition to her confirmation and most damning indictment of Bush’s policy of preemptive war. It should be read by every American: That view of America is one which encourages our Nation to flex its muscles without being bound by any calls for restraint. The most forceful explanation of this idea can be found in "The National Security Strategy of the United States," a report which was issued by the White House in September 2002. Under this strategy, the President lays claim to an expansive power to use our military to strike other nations first, even if we have not been threatened or provoked.
There is no question that the President has the inherent authority to repel attacks against our country, but this National Security Strategy is unconstitutional on its face. It takes the checks and balances established in the Constitution that limit the President’s ability to use our military at his pleasure, and throws them out the window.
This doctrine of preemptive strikes places the sole decision of war and peace in the hands of the President and undermines the Constitutional power of Congress to declare war. The Founding Fathers required that such an important issue of war be debated by the elected representatives of the people in the Legislative Branch precisely because no single man could be trusted with such an awesome power as bringing a nation to war by his decision alone. And yet, that it exactly what the National Security Strategy proposes.
Not only does this pernicious doctrine of preemptive war contradict the Constitution, it barely acknowledges its existence. The National Security Strategy makes only one passing reference to the Constitution: it states that "America’s constitution" -- that is "constitution" with a small C -- "has served us well." As if the Constitution does not still serve this country well! One might ask if that reference to the Constitution was intended to be a compliment or an obituary?
As National Security Advisor, Dr. Rice was in charge of developing the National Security Strategy. She also spoke out forcefully in support of the dangerous doctrine of preemptive war. In one speech, she argues that there need not be an imminent threat before the United States attacks another nation: "So as a matter of common sense," said Dr. Rice on October 1, 2002, "the United States must be prepared to take action, when necessary, before threats have fully materialized."
But that "matter of common sense" is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. For that matter, isn’t it possible to disagree with this “matter of common sense?” What is common sense to one might not be shared by another. What’s more, matters of common sense can lead people to the wrong conclusions. John Dickinson, the chief author of the Articles of Confederation, said in 1787, “Experience must be our only guide; reason may mislead us.” As for me, I will heed the experience of Founding Fathers, as enshrined in the Constitution, over the reason and “common sense” of the Administration’s National Security Strategy.
We can all agree that the President, any President, has the inherent duty and power to repel an attack on the United States. But where in the Constitution can the President claim the right to strike at another nation before it has even threatened our country, as Dr. Rice asserted in that speech? To put it plainly, Dr. Rice has asserted that the President holds far more of the war power than the Constitution grants him.
This doctrine of attacking countries before a threat has “fully materialized” was put into motion as soon as the National Security Strategy was released. Beginning in September 2002, Dr. Rice also took a position on the front lines of the Administration’s effort to hype the danger of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.
Dr. Rice is responsible for some of the most overblown rhetoric that the Administration used to scare the American people into believing that there was an imminent threat from Iraq. On September 8, 2002, Dr. Rice conjured visions of American cities being consumed by mushroom clouds. On an appearance on CNN, she warned: “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he [Saddam] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Dr. Rice also claimed that she had conclusive evidence about Iraq’s alleged nuclear weapons program. During that same interview, she also said: “We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into… Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes… that are really only suited for nuclear weapons programs.”
We now know that Iraq’s nuclear program was a fiction. Charles Duelfer, the chief arms inspector of the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group, reported on September 30, 2004: “Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. [The Iraq Survey Group] found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.”
But Dr. Rice’s statements in 2002 were not only wrong, they also did not accurately reflect the intelligence reports of the time. Declassified portions of the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate from October 2002 make it clear that there were disagreements among our intelligence analysts about the state of Iraq’s nuclear program. But Dr. Rice seriously misrepresented their disputes when she categorically stated, “We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.”
Her allegation also misrepresented to the American people the controversy in those same intelligence reports about the aluminum tubes. Again, Dr. Rice said that these tubes were “really only suited for nuclear weapons programs.” But intelligence experts at the State Department and the Department of Energy believed that those tubes had nothing to do with building a nuclear weapon, and made their dissent known in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. This view, which was at odds with Dr. Rice’s representations, was later confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and our own CIA arms inspectors.
Dr. Rice made other statements that helped to build a case for war by implying a link between Iraq and September 11. On multiple occasions, Dr. Rice spoke about the supposed evidence that Saddam and Al Qaeda were in league with each other. For example, on September 25, 2002, Dr. Rice said on the PBS NewsHour:
“No one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on September 11, so we don’t want to push this too far, but this is a story that is unfolding, and it is getting clear, and we’re learning more…. But yes, there clearly are contact[s] between Al Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented; there clearly is testimony that some of the contacts have been important contacts and that there is a relationship there.”
What Dr. Rice did not say was that some of those supposed links were being called into question by our intelligence agencies, such as the alleged meeting between a 9-11 ringleader and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague that has now been debunked. These attempts to connect Iraq and Al Qaeda appear to be a prime example of cherry-picking intelligence to hype the supposed threat of Iraq, while keeping contrary evidence away from the American people, wrapped up in the red tape of top secret reports.
Dr. Rice pressed the point even further, creating scenarios that threatened tens of thousands of American lives, even when that threat wasn’t supported by intelligence. On March 9, 2003, just eleven days before the invasion of Iraq, Dr. Rice appeared on “Face the Nation” and said:
“Now the al-Qaida is an organization that's quite dispersed and --and quite widespread in its effects, but it clearly has had links to the Iraqis, not to mention Iraqi links to all kinds of other terrorists. And what we do not want is the day when Saddam Hussein decides that he's had enough of dealing with sanctions, enough of dealing with, quote, unquote, "containment," enough of dealing with America, and it's time to end it on his terms, by transferring one of these weapons, just a little vial of something, to a terrorist for blackmail or for worse.”
But the intelligence community had already addressed this scenario with great skepticism. In fact, the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate from October 2002 concluded that it had “low confidence” that Saddam would ever transfer any weapons of mass destruction – weapons that he did not have, as it turned out – to anyone outside of his control. This is yet more evidence of an abuse of intelligence in order to build the case for an unprovoked war with Iraq.
And what has been the effect of the first use of the reckless doctrine of preemptive war? In a most ironic and deadly twist, the false situation described by the Administration before the war -- namely, that Iraq was a training ground for terrorists poised to attack us -- is exactly the situation that our war in Iraq has created.
But it was this unjustified war that created the situation that the President claimed he was trying to prevent. Violent extremists have flooded into Iraq from all corners of the world. Iraqis have taken up arms themselves to fight against the continuing U.S. occupation of their country. According to a CIA report released in December 2004, intelligence analysts now see Iraq, destabilized by the Administration’s ill-conceived war, as the training ground for a new generation of terrorists. [Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council’s 2020 Project, pp. 94] It should be profoundly disturbing to all Americans if the most dangerous breeding ground for terrorism shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq, simply because of the Administration’s ill-advised rush to war in March 2003.
Dr. Rice’s role in the war against Iraq was not limited to building the case for an unprecedented, preemptive invasion of a country that had not attacked us first. Her role also extends to the Administration’s failed efforts to establish peace in Iraq. In October 2003, five months after he declared "Mission Accomplished," the President created the Iraq Stabilization Group, headed by Dr. Rice. The task of the Iraq Stabilization Group was to coordinate efforts to speed reconstruction aid to help bring the violence in Iraq to an end.
But what has the Iraq Stabilization Group accomplished under the leadership of Dr. Rice? When she took the helm of the stabilization efforts, 319 U.S. troops had been killed in Iraq. That number now stands at 1,368 as of today (Tuesday 1/25). More than 10,600 troops have been wounded. The cost of the war has spiraled to $149 billion, and the White House is on the verge of asking Congress for another $80 billion. Despite the mandate of the Iraq Stabilization Group, the situation in Iraq has gone from bad to worse. More ominously, the level of violence only keeps growing, week after week, month after month, and no Administration official, whether from the White House, the Pentagon, or Foggy Bottom, has made any predictions about when the violence will finally subside.
Furthermore, of the $18.4 billion in Iraqi reconstruction aid appropriated by Congress in October 2003, the Administration has spent only $2.7 billion. With these funds moving so slowly, it is hard to believe that the Iraq Stabilization Group has had any success at all in speeding the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. For all the hue and cry about the need to speed up aid to Iraq, one wonders if there should be more tough questions asked of Dr. Rice about what she has accomplished as the head of this group.
There are also many unanswered questions about Dr. Rice’s record as National Security Advisor. Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism advisor, has leveled scathing criticism against Dr. Rice and the National Security Council for failing to recognize the threat from Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in the months leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In particular, Mr. Clarke states that he submitted a request on January 25, 2001, for an urgent meeting of the National Security Council on the threat of al Qaeda.
However, due to decisions made by Dr. Rice and her staff, that urgent meeting did not occur until too late: the meeting was not actually called until September 4, 2001. Mr. Clarke, who is widely acknowledged as one of the leading authorities on terrorism in government at that time, told the 9-11 Commission that he was so frustrated with those decisions that he asked to be reassigned to different issues, and the Bush White House approved that request.
Dr. Rice appeared before the 9-11 Commission on April 8, 2004, but if anything, her testimony raised only more questions about what the President and others knew about the threats to New York City and Washington, D.C. in the weeks before the attacks, and whether more could have been done to prevent them.
Why wasn’t any action taken when she and the President received an intelligence report on August 6, 2001, entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States?” Why did Dr. Rice and President Bush reassign Richard Clarke, the leading terrorism expert in the White House, soon after taking office in 2001? Why did it take nine months for Dr. Rice to call the first high-level National Security Council meeting on the threat of Osama bin Laden? As the Senate debates her nomination today, we still have not heard full answers to these questions.
In addition to Mr. Clarke’s criticism, Dr. David Kay, the former CIA weapons inspector in Iraq, also has strong words for the National Security Council and its role in the run up to the war in Iraq. When Dr. Kay appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on August 18, 2004, to analyze why the Administration’s pre-war intelligence was so wrong about weapons of mass destruction, he described the National Security Council as the "dog that didn’t bark" to warn the President about the weakness of those intelligence reports. Dr. Kay continued: “Every president who has been successful, at least that I know of, in the history of this republic, has developed both informal and formal means of getting checks on whether people who tell him things are in fact telling him the whole truth.… The recent history has been a reliance on the NSC system to do it. I quite frankly think that has not served this president very well.”
What Dr. Kay appears to state was his view that the National Security Council, under the leadership of Dr. Rice, did not do a sufficient job of raising doubts about the quality of the intelligence about Iraq. On the contrary, based upon Dr. Rice’s statements that I quoted earlier, her rhetoric even went beyond the questionable intelligence that the CIA had available on Iraq, in order to hype the threats of aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds, and connections between Iraq and September 11.
In light of the massive reorganization of our intelligence agencies enacted by Congress last year, shouldn’t this nomination spur the Senate to stop, look, and listen about what has been going on in the National Security Council for the last four years? Don’t these serious questions about the failings of the National Security Council under Dr. Rice deserve a more through examination before the Senate votes to confirm her as the next Secretary of State?
Accountability has become an old-fashioned notion in some circles these days, but accountability is not a negotiable commodity when it comes to the highest circles of our nation’s government. The accountability of government officials is an obligation, not a luxury. And yet, accountability is an obligation that this President and his administration appear loath to fulfill.
Instead of being held to account for their actions, the architects of the policies that led our nation into war with Iraq, policies based on faulty intelligence and phantom weapons of mass destruction, have been rewarded by the President with accolades and promotions. Instead of admitting to mistakes in the war on Iraq and its disastrous aftermath, the President and his inner circle of advisers continue to cling to myths and misconceptions. The only notion of accountability that this President is willing to acknowledge is the November elections, which he has described as a moment of accountability and an endorsement of his policies. Unfortunately, after-the-fact validation of victory is hardly the standard of accountability that the American people have the right to expect from their elected officials. It is one thing to accept responsibility for success; it is quite another to accept accountability for failure.
Sadly, failure has tainted far too many aspects of our nation’s international policies over the past four years, culminating in the deadly insurgency that has resulted from the invasion of Iraq. With respect to this particular nomination, I believe that there needs to be accountability for the mistakes and missteps that have led the United States into the dilemma in which it finds itself today, besieged by increasing violence in Iraq, battling an unprecedented decline in world opinion, and increasingly isolated from our allies due to our provocative, belligerent, bellicose, and unilateralist foreign policy.
Whether the Administration will continue to pursue these policies cannot be known to Senators today, as we prepare to cast our votes. At her confirmation hearing on January 18, Dr. Rice proclaimed that “Our interaction with the rest of the world must be a conversation, not a monologue.” But two days later, President Bush gave an inaugural address that seemed to rattle sabers at any nation that he does not consider to be free. Before Senators cast their vote, we must wonder whether we are casting our lot for more diplomacy or more belligerence? Reconciliation or more confrontation? Which face of this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde foreign policy will be revealed in the next four years?
Although I do not question her credentials, I do oppose many of the critical decisions that Dr. Rice has made during her four years as National Security Advisor. She has a record, and the record is there for us to judge. There remain too many unanswered questions about Dr. Rice’s failure to protect our country before the tragic attacks of September 11, her public efforts to politicize intelligence, and her often stated allegiance to the doctrine of preemption.
To confirm Dr. Rice to be the next Secretary of State is to say to the American people, and the world, that the answers to those questions are no longer important. Her confirmation will most certainly be viewed as another endorsement of the Administration’s unconstitutional doctrine of preemptive war, its bullying policies of unilateralism, and its callous rejection of our long-standing allies.
The stakes for the United States are too high. I cannot endorse higher responsibilities for those who helped set our great country down the path of increasing isolation, enmity in the world, and a war that has no end. For these reasons, I shall cast my vote in opposition to the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice to be the next Secretary of State. – Senator Byrd (emphasis added) What more could be said? _____________________________________________ January 25, 2004 BUSH’S UNENDING TAX Now that the election is over, the US Dollar has resumed its fall against other currencies. Investment guru Warren Buffet has been sounding the alarm bells for nearly over a year. This week, Buffet waded in again: The dollar cannot avoid further declines against other major currencies unless the US trade and current account deficits improve, legendary investor and businessman Warren Buffett said.
"I think, over time, unless we have a major change in trade policies, I don't see how the dollar avoids going down," the world's second-richest individual told CNBC television.
"I don't know when it happens. I don't have any idea whether it will be this month or this year or next year, but we are force-feeding dollars on to the rest of the world at the rate of close to a couple billion dollars a day, and that's going to weigh on the dollar." – Yahoo A falling dollar represents a tax on every American. First, a falling dollar means that the massive amounts of goods we buy from other nations, particularly oil, costs you more. Bush’s own Treasury Secretary John Snow labeled the rising cost of goods as a tax: ``Energy is one of those things that is holding back global growth,'' Treasury Secretary John Snow said yesterday. ``It acts as a tax on everyone because you have less disposable income available.'' – Bloomberg It is a “consumption tax.” Jeffrey E. Garten makes the point clearly: It is more likely instead to act as a consumption tax. – New York Times [emphasis added] Second, other countries are financing Bush’s staggering federal deficits. Because the value of the US Dollar is falling, the value of the US Dollar to repay the loan is worth less and less. As a consequence, our foreign creditors are pressuring for higher interest rates to load even more money to finance Bush’s deficits. YOU will pay the higher interest rates over time. Of course, the Bush administration noted that goods exported oversees would be cheaper for foreigners to buy, reducing the massive trade imbalance. Well, that has not happened yet. The United States trade deficit for November ballooned to $60.3 billion in November, the Commerce Department recently reported. The figure confounded predictions that the deficit would diminish with the weakening of the dollar. Economists have been fretting that as the US Dollar falls, other nations will reduce the amount of Bush’s deficit spending they are willing to finance. This news story emerged on Monday: [European] Central banks are shifting reserves away from the US and towards the eurozone in a move that looks set to deepen the Bush administration's difficulties in financing its ballooning current account deficit.
In actions likely to undermine the dollar's value on currency markets, 70 per cent of central bank reserve managers said they had increased their exposure to the euro over the past two years. The majority thought eurozone money and debt markets were as attractive a destination for investment as the US. . . .
Any rebalancing of central bank reserve portfolios has serious implications for the global financial system as the US has become increasingly dependent on official flows of funds to finance its current account deficit, estimated at $650bn in 2004. . . .
Any reluctance to increase exposure to dollar assets further could cause the greenback to plunge on currency markets. . . .
In a further worrying sign for the greenback, 47 per cent of reserve managers surveyed said they expected the growth of official reserves to slow to less than 20 per cent over the next four years. Between the end of 2000 and mid-2004, official reserves had increased by 66 per cent.
Slower reserve accumulation growth implies the supply of official finance is likely to become more limited but few expect the demand from the US for finance to slow. The consensus among economists is that the US current account deficit will increase to $694bn in 2005. . . .
For these managers, dollar assets have become less attractive because the fall in the dollar since 2002 has reduced the yield they received and, in some cases, has led to negative real returns. – Financial Times In short, Bush is the first US President who has not defended the US Dollar. The economic chickens are coming home to roost and YOU will pay the price. Democrats should be making these points:
1.
Bush is
the first US President not to defend the US Dollar against other
currencies.
2.
Bush’s
weak US Dollar means you are paying more for gas, clothes and every
other item people buy from oversees.
3.
Bush’s
weak US Dollar is fueling upward pressure on interest rates. 4. The increase in foreign goods and higher interest rates is, even according to Bush’s own Secretary of the Treasury, a tax – and YOU are paying that sales tax every day. _____________________________________________ THE ADDRESS Bush’s Inaugural speech is generating prolific scrutiny. The various points of view being expressed are simply too numerous for republication. TPJ highlights the observations of one commentator that struck TPJ as profoundly accurate. It comes from an unusual source. Takeshi Igarashi, a professor at Tokyo University and an expert on U.S. politics and diplomacy, said: "It was very clear the speech was from a wartime president. It was more like a speech by a pastor than a president. . . .
"But he didn't mention any actual policies at all. He cried out his ideal but shied away from facing problems that lie there. I actually think he may not have any measures to deal with the issues, that he is lost and still trying to find ways." -- Washington Post Igarashi’s view of Bush’s address highlights an article published exclusively in TPJ in November 2003 by a former US Ambassador. – TPJ, “An Insider’s View” While obviously not written in response to Bush’s 2004 inaugural address, the Ambassador’s analysis below eerily predicted the subsequent failures in Iraq over 2004. More prophetically, the former Ambassador correctly presages Igarashi’s view that Bush has no coherent strategy in Iraq, which represents a true crisis of leadership.
The war council in
Washington appears to have ended. It was framed by the Nov. 12 guerrilla
attack on Italian forces in Iraq and a report from the CIA saying that
the U.S. political position in Iraq is deteriorating while opposition to
the United States is intensifying. Thus, as we discussed Nov. 11, the
main intelligence evaluation has flipped extremely negative -- the
proper default setting when you just don't know and the guerrillas are
continuing a Ramadan offensive.
The question
confronting the Bush administration is whether it has the depth and will
to think its way out of the crisis. Indeed, in a certain sense it is
absurd to compare the battle in the Sunni Triangle with Singapore,
Moscow or Tet. The scale is simply not there. But the responsibility for
that rests with the administration. The Bush team so vastly
underestimated the insurgents' capabilities and so consistently
deprecated their enemy that the administration itself has been stunned
to encounter resistance. It is not the critics of the administration
that have it tied up in knots. Rather, it has tied itself up in knots.
The administration left itself psychologically unable to deal with what
is inevitable in any war: unpleasant surprises.
The problem is not
in Iraq. The problem is in Washington, where there is an intellectual
and spiritual crisis. Intellectually, President George W. Bush's team
appears unable to conceptualize a war plan to deal with the guerrillas.
Spiritually, the team appears to be exhausted, lacking the will to
accept the guerrilla war and maintain its momentum in other theaters in
spite of it. It is not just
Iraq: The United States is on the defensive in Afghanistan and has
failed to mount expected attacks in Africa. The broader war on al Qaeda
appears to have shifted to the defensive.
There does not appear to be a B team in the wings. Another solution is to decide that the particular campaign was an error and withdraw. Bush has already said that that isn't an option, and the results of a withdrawal after having invaded would be far worse than never having invaded at all.
The leaked CIA report
indicates that the White House is going with the worst-case scenario. In
war, accepting the worst -case scenario is frequently the first step to
wisdom. The second step is accepting that radical action must be taken
and taking that action, even in the face of danger. That is the hard
part. And that is the crisis of the war. Having accepted that things
have not turned out as expected and that the current situation requires
radical change, taking risky, radical steps is the next logical process. And that -- not the guerrilla movement in Iraq -- is the defining crisis of this war. (emphasis added) Bush’s inaugural address promising to bring democracy to the world as “divine will” and delivered with the tone of a sermon reflects that Bush is staggering forward in Iraq with no clear direction but resting on the fundamental religious faith in which he is comfortable. For the millions of Americans who do not share Bush’s fundamental religious precept of leadership by divine will, Bush’s inaugural address reflects the Ambassador’s view of a President who will not “get out.” It also reflects a President who has fired the “A Team” but who has substituted a “B Team” that not only lacks new ideas, much less the radical ideas suggested by the Ambassador, but who will not question the President’s reliance on faith. LESSONS OF WAR & A WARNING UNHEEDED Comparisons of Iraq to the American experience in Viet Nam are commonplace. They usually focus on the quagmire that both represent. Perhaps a far more interesting perspective is to view Viet Nam and Iraq from the aspect of how intelligent and well intentioned people commit the errors that produce the policies leading to Iraq. James C. Thompson, Jr. served in the White House and State Department from 1961 to 1966. He witnessed America’s leaders commit the errors. In 1968, Thompson authored an essay entitled, How Could Vietnam Happen? Below are excerpts taken directly from Thompson’s work and numbered for clarity. As you read the major points of his work, substitute “Iraq” for “Vietnam.”
1.
In the first place, the American government
was sorely lacking in real Vietnam or Indochina expertise.
2.
In due
course, to be sure, some Vietnam talent was discovered or developed. But
a recurrent and increasingly important factor in the decisionmaking
process was the banishment of real expertise. Here the underlying cause
was the "closed politics" of policy-making as issues become hot: the
more sensitive the issue, and the higher it rises in the bureaucracy,
the more completely the experts are excluded while the harassed senior
generalists take over (that is, the Secretaries, Undersecretaries, and
Presidential Assistants).
3.
Despite
the banishment of the experts, internal doubters and dissenters did
indeed appear and persist. Yet as I watched the process, such men were
effectively neutralized by a subtle dynamic: the domestication of
dissenters.
4.
A
related point -- and crucial, I suppose, to government at all times --
was the "effectiveness" trap, the trap that keeps men from speaking out,
as clearly or often as they might, within the government. . . . The
most important asset that a man brings to bureaucratic life is his
"effectiveness," a mysterious combination of training, style, and
connections. The most ominous complaint that can be whispered of a
bureaucrat is: "I'm afraid Charlie's beginning to lose his
effectiveness." To preserve your effectiveness, you must decide where
and when to fight the mainstream of policy; the opportunities range from
pillow talk with your wife, to private drinks with your friends, to
meetings with the Secretary of State or the President. The inclination
to remain silent or to acquiesce in the presence of the great men -- to
live to fight another day, to give on this issue so that you can be
"effective" on later issues -- is overwhelming.
5.
Another
factor must be noted: as the Vietnam controversy escalated at home,
there developed a preoccupation with Vietnam public relations as opposed
to Vietnam policy-making.
6.
Here I
would stress the paramount role of executive fatigue. No factor seems to
me more crucial and underrated in the making of foreign policy. The
physical and emotional toll of executive responsibility in State, the
Pentagon, the White House, and other executive agencies is enormous;
that toll is of course compounded by extended service.
7.
Below
the level of the fatigued executives in the making of Vietnam policy was
a widespread phenomenon: the curator mentality in the Department of
State. By this I mean the collective inertia produced by the
bureaucrat's view of his job.
8.
To
fatigue and inertia must be added the factor of internal confusion. Even
among the "architects" of our Vietnam commitment, there has been
persistent confusion as to what type of war we were fighting and, as a
direct consequence, confusion as to how to end that war. (The
"credibility gap" is, in part, a reflection of such internal confusion.)
9.
Of
course, one force -- a constant in the vortex of commitment -- was that
of wishful thinking. I partook of it myself at many times. I did so
especially during Washington's struggle with Diem in the autumn of 1963
when some of us at State believed that for once, in dealing with a
difficult client state, the U.S. government could use the leverage of
our economic and military assistance to make good things happen, instead
of being led around by the nose by men like Chiang Kai-shek and Syngman
Rhee (and, in that particular instance, by Diem). If we could prove that
point, I thought, and move into a new day, with or without Diem, then
Vietnam was well worth the effort. Later came the wishful thinking of
the air- strike planners in the late autumn of 1964; there were those
who actually thought that after six weeks of air strikes, the North
Vietnamese would come crawling to us to ask for peace talks. And what,
someone asked in one of the meetings of the time, if they don't? The
answer was that we would bomb for another four weeks, and that would do
the trick. And a few weeks later came one instance of wishful thinking
that was symptomatic of good men misled: in January, 1965, I encountered
one of the very highest figures in the Administration at a dinner, drew
him aside, and told him of my worries about the air-strike option. He
told me that I really shouldn't worry; it was his conviction that before
any such plans could be put into effect, a neutralist government would
come to power in Saigon that would politely invite us out.
10.
AS A
further influence on policy-makers I would cite the factor of
bureaucratic detachment. By this I mean what at best might be termed the
professional callousness of the surgeon (and indeed, medical lingo --
the "surgical strike" for instance -- seemed to crop up in the
euphemisms of the times).
11.
There is
an unprovable factor that relates to bureaucratic detachment: the
ingredient of cryptoracism. I do not mean to imply any conscious
contempt for Asian loss of life on the part of Washington officials. But
I do mean to imply that bureaucratic detachment may well be compounded
by a traditional Western sense that there are so many Asians, after all;
that Asians have a fatalism about life and a disregard for its loss;
that they are cruel and barbaric to their own people; and that they are
very different from us (and all look alike?).
12.
The key
here is domestic politics: the need to sell the American people, press,
and Congress on support for an unpopular and costly war in which the
objectives themselves have been in flux. To sell means to persuade, and
to persuade means rhetoric. As the difficulties and costs have mounted,
so has the definition of the stakes.
13.
Crucial
throughout the process of Vietnam decision-making was a conviction among
many policy-makers: that Vietnam posed a fundamental test of America's
national will. 14. Finally, no discussion of the factors and forces at work on Vietnam policy- makers can ignore the central fact of human ego investment. Men who have participated in a decision develop a stake in that decision. . . . To put it bluntly: at the heart of the Vietnam calamity is a group of able, dedicated men who have been regularly and repeatedly wrong -- and whose standing with their contemporaries, and more important, with history, depends, as they see it, on being proven right. These are not men who can be asked to extricate themselves from error. From the public record alone, the Bush administration’s decisions leading America into Iraq have striking similarities to the process that Thompson observed. There is a reason for the similarities; American involvement in Viet Nam gave birth to the neoconservatives. Thompson warned: There is a final result of Vietnam policy I would cite that holds potential danger for the future of American foreign policy: the rise of a new breed of American ideologues who see Vietnam as the ultimate test of their doctrine. I have in mind those men in Washington who have given a new life to the missionary impulse in American foreign relations: who believe that this nation, in this era, has received a threefold endowment that can transform the world. As they see it, that endowment is composed of, first, our unsurpassed military might; second, our clear technological supremacy; and third, our allegedly invincible benevolence (our "altruism," our affluence, our lack of territorial aspirations). Together, it is argued, this threefold endowment provides us with the opportunity and the obligation to ease the nations of the earth toward modernization and stability: toward a fullfledged Pax Americana Technocratica. In reaching toward this goal, Vietnam is viewed as the last and crucial test. Once we have succeeded there, the road ahead is clear. In a sense, these men are our counterpart to the visionaries of Communism's radical left: they are technocracy's own Maoists. They do not govern Washington today. But their doctrine rides high. From Thompson’s warning, it should be apparent that Bush’s inaugural address has coupled the neoconservative doctrine and substituted civil altruism with the fundamental precept of divine will. Now, revisit Bush’s inaugural address from Thompson’s perspective.
Last Update: 03/27/2006 |