www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001024.html
Ron Suskind's devastating critique of Bush b efore the last election titled "Without a Doubt." ", Jeffrey Goldberg coaxes Brent Scowcroft to delineate his diffe rences with the foreign policy proclivities of George W Bush, Condoleez a Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Cheney, and others. And in the piece, George HW Bush is interviewed about Scowcroft -- and while Bush 41's comments are more elliptical, he stands clearly by Scowc roft's side in clear criticism of the decisions his son made.
Lawrence Wilke rson, former State Department Chief of Staff under Colin Powell who spok e at the New America Foundation last Wednesday. Wilkerson's remarks have swept like wildfire through the media and are the subject of a Richard Holbrooke article today in the New York Times and also a core column of discussion on this morning's "Meet the Press." Jeffrey Goldberg's article is a devastating, serious critique of George W . I have read the entire article -- which I recommend that TWN readers acce ss as quickly as possible. I don't believe that The New Yorker provides links to articles, but buy this magazine. I am going to provide some longish excerpts to give insight into some of the most intriguing and useful commentary. ", Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker, 31 October 2005 Scowcroft on Iraq and Neocon Idealism A principal reason that the Bush Administration gave no thought to unsea ting Saddam was that Brent Scowcroft gave no thought to it. An American occupation of Iraq would be politically and militarily untenable, Scow croft told Bush. And though the President had employed the rhetoric of moral necessity to make the case for war, Scowcroft said, he would not let his feelings about good and evil dictate the advice he gave the Pre sident. It would have been no problem for America's military to reach Baghdad, h e said. The problems would have arisen when the Army entered the Iraqi capital. "At the minimum, we'd be an occupier in a hostile land," he sa id. "Our forces would be sniped at by guerrillas, and, once we were the re, how would we get out? I do n't like the term 'exit strategy' -- but what do you do with Iraq once you own it?" We were sitting in the offices of the Sc owcroft Group, a consulting firm he heads, in downtown Washington. He a ppeared to be weighing the consequences of speaking his mind. His speec h is generally calibrated not to give offense, especially to the senior Bush and the Bush family. He is eighty and, by most accounts, has been content to cede visibility to the larger personalities with whom he ha s worked. James Baker told me that he and Scowcroft got along well in part because Scowcroft let Baker speak for the Administration. I learned from peopl e who know Scowcroft that he finds it painful to be seen as critical of his best friends son, but in the course of several interviews prudenc e several times gave way to impatience. "This is exactly where we are n ow," he said of Iraq, with no apparent satisfaction. The first Gulf War was a success, Scowcroft said, because the President knew better than to set unachievable goals. Scowcro ft does not believe that the promotion of American-style democracy abro ad is a sufficiently good reason to use force. "I thought we ought to make it our duty to help make the world friendlie r for the growth of liberal regimes," he said. "You encourage democracy over time, with assistance, and aid, the traditional way. The neoconservatives -- the Republicans who argued most fervently for th e second Gulf war -- believe in the export of democracy, by violence if that is required, Scowcroft said. And no w, Scowcroft said, America is suffering from the consequences of that b rand of revolutionary utopianism. "This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism," he said. Scowcroft on Iraq & Israel In August of 2002, seven months before George W Bush launched the invas ion of Iraq, Scowcroft upset the White House with an opinion piece in t he Wall Street Journal. Scowc roft would have preferred something more nuanced, he told me, but the w ords accurately reflected his message. In the article, he argued that an invasion of Iraq would deflect America n attention from the war on terrorism, and that it would do nothing to solve the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, which he has long believed is the primary source of unhappiness in the Middle East. Unli ke the current Bush Administration, which is unambiguously pro-Israel, Scowcroft, James Baker, and others associated with the elder George Bus h believe that Israel's settlement policies arouse Arab anger, and that American foreign policy should reflect the fact that there are far mor e Arabs than Israelis in the world. is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Scowcroft wrote in the Journal. "If we were seen to be turning our bac k on that bitter conflict -- which the region, rightly or wrongly, perc eives to be clearly within our power to resolve -- in order to go after Iraq, there would be an explosion of outrage against us." Scowcroft we nt on to say that the United States was capable of defeating Saddam's m ilitary. On the contrary, it undoubted ly would be very expensive -- with serious consequences for the US an d global economy -- and could as well be bloody. In fact, Saddam would be likely to conclude he had nothing left to lose, leading him to unlea sh whatever weapons of mass destruction he possesses." Scowcroft's Frustration Communicating with Bush 43 Like nearly everyone else in Washington, Scowcroft believed that Saddam maintained stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, but he wrote that a strong inspections program would have kept him at bay. "There ma y have come a time when we would have needed to take Saddam out," he to ld me. His Army was weak, and the count ry hadn't recovered from sanctions." Scowcroft's colleagues told me tha t he would have preferred to deliver his analysis privately to the Whit e House. But Scowcroft, the apotheosis of a Washington insider, was by then definitively on the outside, and there was no one in the White Hou se who would listen to him. On the face of it, this is remarkable: Scow croft's best friend's son is the President; Condoleezza Rice, who was the national-security advi ser, and is now the Secretary of State, was once a Scowcroft protege; a nd the current national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley, is another pr otege and a former principal at the Scowcroft Group. Scowcroft on Cheney: "The Real Anomaly" "The real anomaly in the Administration is Cheney," Scowcroft said. "I c onsider Cheney a good friend -- I've known him for thirty years. He went on, "I don't think Dick Cheney is a neocon, but allied to the core of neocons is that bunch who thoug ht we made a mistake in the first Gulf War, that we should have finishe d the job. On George W Bush Not Hearing Dissent or Considering Alternative Views -- With A Nudge from Bush 41 A common criticism of the Administration of George W Bush is that it ig nores ideas that conflict with its aims. "We always made sure the Presi dent was hearing all the possibilities," John Sununu, who served as chi ef of staff to George H W Bush, said. "That's one of the differences between the first Bush Administration and this Bush Administration." I asked Colin Powell if he thought, in retrospect, that the Administrati on should have paid attention to Scowcroft's arguments about Iraq. Powe ll, who is widely believed to have been far less influential in policym aking than either Cheney or the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said, pointedly, "I always listen to him. He's a very analytic and thou ghtful individual, he's powerful in argument, and I've never worked wit h a better friend and colleague." When, in an e-mail, I asked George HW Bush about Scowcroft's most usef ul qualities as a national-security adviser, he replied that Scowcroft "was very good about making sure that we did not simply consider the 'b est case,' but instead considered what it would mean if things went our way, and also if they did not." Bush 41 Unable to Mend Fences Between Bush 43 and Scowcroft According to friends of the elder Bush, the estrangement of his son an...
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