Two Bushes, Two Iraq Wars

The key to understanding George Herbert Walker Bush and what made him tick was his sense of decorum. It was anything but axiomatic that the United States would decide to deploy half a million troops halfway around the world to rescue a country that few Americans could find on a map. A different president and set of advisors might have tolerated Iraqi control of Kuwait and limited the U.S. response to sanctions so long as Saddam did not go on to attack Saudi Arabia. But Bush was genuinely offended by the Iraqi invasion and then absorption of Kuwait. It was simply not how civilized countries behaved toward one another. It harkened back to a cruder era of international relations when might made right.

More than a decade later I worked for his son, President George W. Bush, as director of the State Department's policy planning staff under Colin Powell. Once again I found myself involved in a war with a President Bush and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. There, however, the resemblance ends.

From what I saw and heard then, the younger Bush's decisions were not, as some of his detractors claim, the result of any shortage of intelligence or because he was manipulated by his vice president and others. Bush is smarter, much smarter, than people generally understand. He also had a good fix on the attributes and weaknesses of those around him; Bush read people as well as you would expect from someone who succeeded in getting elected president. His fault was that he was quick to reach conclusions (be it about policy or people) and often viewed changing course as a sign of weakness, something a strong leader (to his way of thinking) would resist. He was attracted to do what was bold. Such big actions appealed to his competitive side—what better way to confound one's critics—and served the desire to distance himself from his father, who favored prudence and tended to eschew the dramatic.

As 2003 began, with Iraq the dominant issue, I decided to make a last-ditch effort at slowing down a war that seemed anything but prudent. I closed the door to my office and typed out a memo to Powell that argued that despite all the buildup it was not too late for the United States to back off using force. To be sure, there would be real costs, both actual and perceived, if we did stand down. Saddam would remain in place. Calling things off would raise questions among friend and foe alike as to what we were made of. There would even be some people in the Middle East, always a cauldron of conspiracy theories, who would conclude that the United States actually wanted Saddam to remain in power. But like all policy options, the costs of this one had to be weighed against the costs of continuing down the path we were on, which I believed were far larger.

I knew what I argued was explosive—if it leaked, it would be a major story and then some—so I handed the memo to Powell rather than send it to him through the formal secretariat. I told him to give it to the president on the off chance Bush was having second thoughts and was feeling trapped. Powell read it and put it in his pocket—literally. I didn't expect him to give it to the president, but to use the arguments if an opening presented itself. Apparently, none did. And even if one had, there was no real chance that the memo would have changed anything. I wrote it as much as anything for my own peace of mind. The president was too committed to turn back.

In contrast to the first President Bush, I would see this president only intermittently: at some relatively large interagency meeting, or when Powell would take me in tow for one of his regular Oval Office sessions. The longest conversation we had was in the conference room on board Air Force One flying back from the Northern Ireland summit a few months later, in April 2003. For more than an hour it was just the three of us—Bush, Powell, and me. What struck me more than anything was how comfortable Bush was with his decision to attack Iraq. Here we were, three weeks into the war, and he appeared totally at peace with what he had decided and how it was unfolding. It was real confidence, not bluster. But I was struck, too, by how unconcerned the president seemed to be with all the complications that I and others had predicted would come his and our way. He had a penchant for the big and dramatic and was not about to allow the doubts of others or the details to sidetrack him.

How did George W. Bush reach this point? I will go to my grave not fully understanding why. There was no meeting or set of meetings at which the pros and cons were debated and a formal decision taken. No, this decision happened. It was cumulative. The issue was on the table from the outset of the administration, but before 9/11, Iraq was simply one of many concerns on an evolving foreign policy agenda. After 9/11, the president and those closest to him wanted to send a message to the world that the United States was willing and able to act decisively. Liberating Afghanistan was a start, but in the end it didn't scratch the itch.

Iraq was fundamentally different. The president wanted to destroy an established nemesis of the United States. And he wanted to change the course of history, transforming not just a country but the region of the world that had produced the lion's share of the world's terrorists and had resisted much of modernity. He may have sought to accomplish what his father did not. The arguments put forward for going to war—noncompliance with U.N. resolutions, possession of weapons of mass destruction—turned out to be essentially window dressing, trotted out to build domestic and international support for a policy that had been forged mostly for other reasons.