Fishing for a Way to Change the World

By mid-2002, Cheney had become a down-the-line ally of the neoconservatives. But that does not mean he had turned into some sort of democratic idealist. He never cited Bernard Lewis's theory in any of his public advocacy for the war. For the congenitally pessimistic vice president, transforming the political culture of the Middle East can't have been more than a castle in the sky, a long-shot best-case scenario. But the vice president surely recognized that the grandiosity of the neocon vision of a new Arab world would resonate with the president. For Bush, boldness had a constant allure. Remaking the Middle East via Iraq was just the kind of game-changing idea he went for.

After the invasion, as the WMD mirage melted away, Bush's retrospective case for the war shifted, and his theory of foreign policy along with it. Bush Doctrine 4.0 became Democracy in the Middle East (11/6/03–1/19/05). Bush's November 6, 2003, speech at the National Endowment for Democracy framed a new theory of international relations around the way he now hoped to justify his war. The United States, he announced, "has adopted a new policy," which he described as "a forward strategy for freedom in the Middle East." Bush argued that excusing and accommodating tyranny over the previous sixty years hadn't made Americans safe "because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." Stability was one of Scowcroft's watchwords. Bush called liberty "the design of nature" and "the direction of history."

Here finally was the grand vision Bush had been looking for. Democratizing the Arab world was a clear, moral goal, the ambitious work of a consequential presidency. Like compassionate conservatism, it was a form of social evangelism, a mission inspired by faith but secular in application. Bush's new formulation had the added advantage of extending the term of evaluation. If we were witnessing what Rice called "the birth pangs of a new Middle East," the first report card wouldn't be in for some time.

But Bush's stirring words underscored the difficulty with his ever-changing foreign policy. The problem wasn't that he wanted to spread democracy and human rights—a goal that in other contexts unites liberal hawks and doves with many conservatives—but his relentless ebb into abstraction, incompetent execution, and glaring inconsistency. Had he been someone capable of acknowledging error, Bush's misjudgment in invading Iraq might have been mitigated by skillful improvisation. How might such a person have reacted? He would have told his Secretary of Defense that the spectacle of looters stripping government buildings down to their concrete skeletons wasn't the kind of untidy freedom the United States could tolerate. As the Pentagon failed to create viable structures, he might have shifted control to the State Department and devolved power to the United Nations, instead of trying to fend it off.

He could have acknowledged the emergence of an insurgency, and adopted a different strategy to combat it before 2007. He should have blocked, reversed, or at least understood the significance of Paul Bremer's two first and most disastrous orders, to disband the Iraqi army and bar those with Ba'ath Party connections from serving in the government. (Bush later told author Robert Draper that disbanding the army wasn't his policy, and that he wasn't sure why it had happened.) He would have fired Rumsfeld after Abu Ghraib, if not sooner. He would have taken steps to dismantle the echo chamber around him, instead of adding layers of insulation. None of that would have ensured a better outcome, but it surely would have diminished the harm from his original mistake.

Why couldn't Bush respond in a more supple fashion, even after his reelection? Partly, his inability to adjust reflects his limitations as an executive. Despite his MBA training, Bush emphasizes leadership and decision-making to the exclusion of administration and management. He delegates manfully, but doesn't solicit feedback, evaluate results, or hold people accountable, except in extraordinary circumstances. Unlike his father, he isn't comfortable entertaining inconclusive debate. Bush sees reconsidering decisions or openly changing course as evidence of weak leadership. This stubbornness was born of a success that came from not giving in to his parents' doubts about him and not listening to their advice.