Rove returns to re-litigate the past

Posted By Peter Feaver Friday, March 12, 2010 - 10:03 AM Share

Karl Rove is back in the news with his memoirs doing something that he claims the Bush administration did not do vigorously enough: re-litigating the past. I will have more to say when I finish reading the book, but for now I want to talk about one of the highlights flagged in several interviews: Rove's claim that if the administration had known the true extent of Iraq's WMD stockpile and programs it would not have pushed the use of force resolution in October 2002 and invaded in 2003.

This claim leapt out at me because I remember President Bush giving a somewhat different answer a few years ago. For instance, in December 2005 Bush was asked more or less this exact same question and he gave this response:

HUME: Can you say today that if you had known then what you know now about the weapons, that you would have made the same decision.

BUSH: I said it today, and I said it at the last speech I gave. And I've said it throughout the campaign to the American people. I said I made the right decision. Knowing what I know today, I would have still made that decision.

HUME: Now if you had this -- if the weapons had been out of the equation, because the intelligence did not conclude that he had them, it was still the right call?

BUSH: Absolutely.


In a valedictory interview, he was asked this question again and his answer was less dogmatic:

GIBSON: You've always said there's no do-overs as President. If you had one?

BUSH: I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?

BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.

GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn't.

BUSH: Oh, I see what you're saying. You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate.


At some level, of course, this is an impossible hypothetical counter-factual and so there is nothing sinister in the fact that one of Bush's key advisors would give a different answer from the president nor even in the fact that the President would give a different answer at different times. Bush is at work on his own memoirs and so doubtless he is wrestling with this very issue himself and so his views may evolve still further.

And we should not exaggerate the contradictions in these various answers. Both Bush and Rove say that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein and both would say that if Iraq continues on the basically positive trajectory it has been on since the surge decision the war will have been "worth it."

But I think Rove's point is important and basically right. There were good reasons to promote regime change in Iraq and good reasons to oppose it. But the strongest case for the urgency of dealing decisively with Iraq in 2002 hinged on Iraq's WMD arsenal and its pursuit of capabilities to expand that arsenal. Had the true condition of that arsenal (limited) and the true status of the pursuit (ongoing but slower than suspected and put on a somewhat slower track deliberately pending the final collapse of the sanctions regime) been known by the Bush administration, the president's national security team would have pursued other more urgent priorities in the war on terror. And had it been known more widely in Congress, there would not have been such strong bipartisan support for the use of force resolution; all of the major Democratic senators in 2002 with ambitions for the 2004 presidential run supported the use of force resolution because they agreed with the consensus view that Iraq had a formidable WMD arsenal and was seeking to expand it still further. And had it been known more widely in the international community, the argument with our allies would have been over the existence of an Iraqi threat rather than over the best strategy for dealing with it.

There were a few iconoclasts who guessed more accurately the truth about the Iraqi WMD program in 2002, but they were outliers -- not unlike the outliers today who claim that Iran has no nuclear weapons ambitions whatsoever. Then, as now, it would seem quite a gamble to base an entire security strategy on an iconoclastic view that, if wrong, would be disastrously wrong. And, of course, we only know these truths because  the Duelfer report provided the intrusive fact-finding that was impossible while Hussein was in power. The situation in mid-2002 was one of a non-existent inspection regime and a collapsing sanctions regime; those and other dots pointed to the consensus that formed the basis of the Bush policy.

Rove's point is important in one further respect -- it rebuts a core tenet of the most fervent Bush-haters, those who believe that Bush wanted war in Iraq for any number of reasons, none of them having to do with the threat Bush claimed Iraqi WMD posed to the national interest of the United States. Those who think the Iraq war was about some Freudian impulse to best the father, or about seizing Iraqi oil, or about boosting Halliburton's profits, or what-have-you must believe that Rove is wrong -- that Bush would have figured out some other way to generate a war. These canards live on and, in some circles, may even enjoy the status of conventional wisdom. Given those circumstances, Rove is right to litigate the matter again.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

EXPLORE:BUSH ADMINISTRATION, BUSH'S LEGACY, IRAQ, POLITICS, TERRORISM
 

ITONLYSTANDSTOREASON

8:32 PM ET

March 12, 2010

Don't ever take Rove's word for it

Rove was a specialist in dirty tricks and spin. But Feaver expects us to take his words in the hagiography for the administration of his creation, George W Bush, at face value? Good Lord!

Second, I will point out that there is a lot of evidence that Bush was already looking for an excuse for war in Iraq before 9/11. (Have you ever read Russell Baker's interview with Mickey Herskowitz which shows Bush wanted a war even before elected for the partisan political advantages of playing Commander in Chief?)

Third, while the consensus was that Saddam had WMD programs, it was based on convention and group-think rather than evidence. All the evidence - aluminum tubes, mobile labs, was deeply flawed and even I, Joe Sixpack, knew it from reading on-line. The Bush administration use spin to push the falsehood, and ignored the evidence coming through inspectors about the lack of WMD in order to rush to invade. Rove's statement only applies in the most trivial sense, that if the WMD excuse had broken down, the administration would have had to find another justification.

I reject your characterization that the only ones who could reject this rationalization are "Bush-haters". Disgust, yes. Pity, yes. Hate - he's too flawed to hate, and not quite evil enough.

Multiple actors had multiple reasons for invading Iraq, more and less noble. Come to grips with it, and quit snatching at straws such as Rove's deeply flawed history to try to repair your reputation.

 

SCOTT MONJE

10:28 PM ET

March 12, 2010

Still wrong, and still twisting the facts

"BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld."

Iraq did let the inspectors go in, after the vote but before the invasion, and the inspectors reported that they were not finding weapons of mass destruction in the places where the administration said they would be.

 

ZATHRAS

11:53 PM ET

March 12, 2010

When Ross Perot talked about

When Ross Perot talked about a "giant sucking sound" years ago, he was referring to the specter of American jobs being drawn down to Mexico as a result of NAFTA. Don't know why that phrase occurred to me as I was reading the main post here.

Anyway. I'm wondering if that post doesn't go a little off-message for Shadow Government?

The theme of this blog since its inception has been history beginning sometime in the 2005-06 period, when the foreign policy of the Bush administration was in full damage-control mode after the disasters it had caused during Bush's first term. Peter Feaver and his associates have sought credit for the damage control, and even offered praise for the Obama administration when it has pursued policies consistent (more or less) with those Bush did in his second term. Toward the first term's record of failure and fiasco, Shadow Government has mostly adopted a tone of decorous silence.

Now Feaver is getting away from that. The first Bush term, including the decision to invade Iraq, was all right after all. In particular, not invading Iraq and getting an American army stuck there for the better part of a decade would have been a risky gamble; the way Bush handled it worked out much better.

It could be worse, I guess. At least Feaver isn't arguing that Bush's negligence toward the terrorist threat after he took office was justified because the World Trade Center wasn't attacked until September 11, 2001. I just wonder whether the Republican Party going forward will adopt this as its official posture. For example, will Republican candidates for national office campaign on a platform of going "back to Bush"? Will they be telling Americans that George W. Bush was a great President who left America better off than he found it? That they intend to govern as he did, with the same policies and the same people?

I'm no expert on politics; maybe this would work. I'm just asking.

 

WOLFBOY

12:53 PM ET

March 14, 2010

Re-litigating the past

Do you really believe, Dr. Feaver, that Mr. Rove's statements should be taken as serious evidence against the proposition that the Bush administration could have had less-than-fully-pure motives in invading Iraq?

This notion rebuts itself, and I am embarassed for your, Dr. Feaver, to imagine that this may reflect the standards of evidence you apply in your scholarly work.

As I have pointed out in connection with previous posts, you are yourself re-litigating the past, Dr. Feaver, in suggesting that the decision to invade Iraq somehow necessarily hinged on "[t]he situation in mid-2002." Of course the war was not launched in mid-2002, but in March 2003, when an intrusive inspection regime was in place in Iraq, rapidly chipping away at the supposition that Saddam must have WMD. Frankly, it is dishonest of you to gloss over this critical distinction.

You stretch the truth further in suggesting that Saddam had a "limited" WMD arsenal in 2003. The Duelfer report you cite found nothing more than "a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions."

Your discussion of "iconoclasts who guessed more accurately the truth about the Iraqi WMD program in 2002" obscures a key point. If you allow the various WMD allegations to be considered individually, rather than as a monolith, then these iconoclasts included the CIA - who did not believe Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium - and the centrifuge experts in the DoE, who determined that the famous aluminum tubes were not suitable for gas centrifuges.

As for Bush's intentions, we know that Bush declined to entertain an offer by Saddam to leave the country. This speaks volumes about whether the the administration would have been satisfied by an effective inspection regime, a UN-compliant Iraq, or Saddam's departure. For whatever reason, Bush wanted not just these things but also that the US have its conquering/liberating army in Baghdad.

 

THEOLDSCHOOL

4:40 AM ET

March 17, 2010

Wow!

This is my first visit to this site, and I've got to say that Dr. Feaver appears to have been living in an alternate universe.

He states: "There were a few iconoclasts who guessed more accurately the truth about the Iraqi WMD program in 2002, but they were outliers....

If by iconoclasts, he means "the sane people of the world," he'd be right.

And if by "guessed," he means -- looked at the ludicrously feeble evidence posited by the Bush administration; saw how desperate Bush and Cheney were to launch this unnecessary, illegal war; observed how Saddam had in fact allowed the inspectors back in, only to have Bush order pull them out again, and then concluded that Saddam not only didn't have WMD, but that Bush didn't want to that fact wreck his plans to be a war president -- then, Dr. Feaver has the right to use the word, "guessed."

How much Bush/Cheney Kool-Aid does one have to drink to be able to state these absurdities with a straight face? Good God!

Surely, Dr. Feaver, the opinions you're espousing are all just tongue-in-cheek satire, right?

If not, I'd suggest you go back to school and take some courses in critical thinking.

 

THEOLDSCHOOL

4:58 AM ET

March 17, 2010

P.S.

By "outliers," I assume that Dr. Feaver is distinguishing us from the "out and out liars" to whom he is obviously so devoted.

If you've got blood on your hands, Dr. Feaver, it does you no good to try to rationalize it away with "everybody thought that" type excuses.

Everybody didn't think that way -- then or now.

With each lame argument you offer in defense of your actions, you appear increasingly weaker and almost desperate.

Not even the war criminals at tried at Nuremburg went beyond the "just following orders" excuse. They had enough sense not to try to justify their crimes.

Dr. Feaver, with hundreds of thousands (millions?) of innocent Iraqi civilians dead, wounded, or displaced by this unnecessary illegal war of aggression, I think that if I were you, I'd be far more humble and far less cavalier in regard to the unholy havoc I'd helped bring about.

 

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.

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