Two new books shed light on the thinking and modus operandi of President
Bush and his neocon allies.
By Michael Flynn
(See entire column at:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0401flynn-week.html.)
According to Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary for the Bush
administration who was forced out of office in late 2002, President George
W. Bush ran Cabinet meetings "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people."
The president, said O'Neill in an interview about a new book by Pulitzer
Prize-winning reporter Ron Suskind, demonstrated little interest in taking
on challenging questions and forced his staff to make policy based on
"little more than hunches about what the president might think."
According to the Washington Post (January 10, 2003), the book, titled The
Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul
O'Neill, chronicles the first two years of the Bush administration as seen
through the eyes of the former Cabinet member. To write the book, Suskind
recorded hundreds of hours of conversations with O'Neill and had access to
some 19,000 White House and personal documents the former secretary put at
the author's disposal.
Although the book had not been released as of this writing, some details of
it were made available to the Post by CBS, which aired an interview with O'
Neill on "60 Minutes" on January 11. O'Neill, who was largely responsible
for crafting the administration's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001,
was pushed out of office after publicly criticizing the president's position
on steel tariffs and opposing the administration's efforts to eradicate
taxes on corporate dividends.
In the 60 Minutes interview, O'Neill recounts his first Cabinet meeting with
the president: "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I
thought, to engage [him] on. And as the book said, I was surprised that it
turned out to be me talking and the president just listening. ... As I
recall it was mostly a monologue."
O'Neill also claims in the book that plans to remove Saddam Hussein from
power began taking shape long before the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks: "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam
Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go. For me, the notion of
preemption--that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide
to do--is really a huge leap."
During early discussions at the National Security Council about Iraq, said O
'Neill, no one questioned the rationale behind an invasion. "It was all
about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying,
'Go find me a way to do this.'" (Washington Post, January 11, 2003)
In contrast to O'Neill's description of a disengaged and oftentimes
inscrutable president, David Frum opined at a January 9 luncheon at the
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) that the president is able to
simultaneously assess a massive panorama of issues, a fact that Frum thinks
ticks off lots of people. Responding to a reporter's query about whether the
United States was able to take on all the trouble spots across the globe in
its war on terror, Frum said that this new war was different from the Cold
War in that the enemy had no center--"a Moscow"--but was an extremist
ideology that had taken hold in much of the world. He contended that in any
case, Bush was able to see "the big picture," and that this was precisely
what "irritates a lot of his critics--his ability to see all of it at once
as one big problem."
The luncheon was to promote the release of a book coauthored by Frum, a
former Bush speechwriter who is an AEI fellow, and Richard Perle, the former
chairman of the Defense Policy Board and current AEI fellow who is widely
credited with having helped shape Bush policy in Iraq and the Middle East.
The book, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, is billed as a
"manual for victory" in the war on terror that proposes "reinvigorating
homeland security with a new security agency; waging a global campaign
against the terrorist ideology by promoting democracy, open trade, and the
rights of Muslim women; and transforming the U.S. government to ensure that
all its agencies and parts dedicate themselves to fighting and defeating
terror."
Among the book's specific policy proposals:
a.. Aiding Iranian dissidents in their efforts to overthrow their
government;
b.. Creating a national identification card in the United States;
c.. Pushing Syria to adopt "Western" economic and political policies by
threatening to cut off Syrian access to arms supplies and Iraqi oil and
pursuing suspected terrorists into the country's territory;
d.. Promoting the secession of Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province;
e.. Preparing a preemptive strike against North Korea's nuclear
infrastructure, despite the fact that "we do not know where all these
facilities are";
f.. Rejecting the jurisdiction of the United Nations Charter unless it is
modified to accommodate the doctrine of preemption.
Frum and Perle argue that militant Islam has replaced communism as the main
threat to U.S. and global security, and that "there is no middle way for
Americans. It is victory or holocaust." The authors warn that the "will to
win" is beginning to wane in Washington. "We sense the reversion to the bad
old habits of complacency and denial." They see their book as a way to
reinvigorate the debate about the war and to push the country to take on the
challenge of toppling its enemies.
According to Jim Lobe (IPS, January 10, 2004), the authors "categorically
reject, albeit often defensively, any notion that the loss in momentum may
be due more to the over-optimistic predictions by them and their friends in
Cheney's and Rumsfeld's offices about the ease with which the United States
could occupy Iraq without significant international support. More than once,
they insist that if only the White House had installed their hero, Iraqi
National Congress chief Ahmed Chalabi, as president of a provisional
government before the invasion, all would be well today."
Lobe contends that the book is chock-a-block with factual errors, including
the assertion that "Saudi-inspired extremists" launched wars against
Christian communities in Sulawesi and the Malaku islands. Writes Lobe, "They
are apparently referring to Laskar Jihad, a militia that most experts
believe was not only inspired, but armed, by elements in the Indonesian
military. [Perle and Frum] make similar assumptions about the indigenous
insurgency in Aceh and what are predominantly ethnic, rather than religious,
clashes in northern Nigeria."
Concludes Lobe: "The neocons may be down but they are most certainly not
out. They and their administration allies, notably Cheney, have shown they
retain sufficient influence for now to prevent any major softening in the
hard lines on North Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If Bush wins
a second term with Cheney at his side, neoconservatives like Perle may well
find themselves back on top."
(Michael Flynn is an IRC Research Associate.)
Yahoo! Groups Links
To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/progchat_action/
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
progchat_action-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/