One thing the Chilcot Inquiry in the UK has made crystal clear [as if we didn’t already know it ], from the outset, it was the plan of our government to deal with Saddam Hussein by invading Iraq and deposing him – regime change. In their various testimonies, they talk about it in a matter of fact way, as if it were simply American foreign policy. Well, in my case, it’s taken me years to figure out that that’s exactly what it was – our policy. I was just a guy watching the evening news back then, and I thought it had to do with our intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, that he was involved with al Qaeda. I smelled a rat and was opposed to the invasion, but I had no idea that our President was simply acting on a policy that originated during his father’s Presidency some eight years before – a policy that his Vice President and others had been tweaking and expanding for a decade.
President George H. W. Bush hoped Saddam would not survive the first Gulf War. And when he did survive, Papa Bush authorized the CIA to organize some kind of overthrow support that ultimately resulted in the CIA’s formation of the Iraqi National Congress [by the Rendon Group, CIA Consultants] lead by Amhad Chalabi.
 Presidential Finding, May 1991
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The Foreign Policy document called the Defense Planning Guidance prepared by Bush’s Defense Department [Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, Paul Wolfowitz] formalizing the idea of pre-emptive unilateral military action was leaked, and Bush quickly withdrew it. It went underground until it emerged in 2002 as his son’s Bush Doctrine ten years later. Throughout the Clinton Presidency, the neoconservatives operated from the American Enterprise Institute, finally forming an offshoot – The Project for the New American Century. In 1998, they wrote President Clinton to suggest regime change in Iraq directly [notice the comments about the UN – "crippled" "misguided"]. They were ready to invade Iraq without further UN approval, without a traditional Casus Billi [case for war].
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Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy. We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council…
Project for the New American Century, January 1998
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The Clinton Administration didn’t do what they asked, but did act by passing the Iraq Liberation Act to fund groups trying to overthrow Hussein. Regime Change became our policy, though the use of our own military was not authorized…
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An Act To establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled…
SECTION 3. SENSE OF THE CONGRESS REGARDING UNITED STATES POLICY TOWARD IRAQ. It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime…
SECTION 8. RULE OF CONSTRUCTION. Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of United States Armed Forces (except as provided in section 4(a)(2)) in carrying out this Act.
Iraq Liberation Act, October 1998
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… and then bombed military sites in Iraq [Operation Desert Fox] in December 1998, justifying the military action by evoking the UN authorization for military action from the First Gulf War. The Road to the Invasion of Iraq after 911 has been documented ad nauseum in this blog and elsewhere, but the gist of things was most clearly laid out in the leaked Downing Street Memo of July 2002.
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C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
Downing Street Memo, July 2002
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Also clear in the Chilcot Inquiry, the British "Hawks" [Tony Blair, Jack Straw] had to struggle with the traditional grounds for military action and their UN Treaty obligations, while in the US, the only struggle was to create the illusion that there were grounds for war [WMD, al Qaeda ties with Iraq]. Likewise, our even going to the UN was equally an illusion – form without substance [our government was actually anti-UN, though I don’t think most of us knew it at the time]. Congress was clear in the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that we were to work through the UN.
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SUPPORT FOR UNITED STATES DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS: The Congress of the United States supports the efforts by the President to–
AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES: The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to–
Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq, October 2002
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The UN did act [UNSCR 1441], giving Hussein’s Iraq one more chance to comply, but stopped short of authorizing automatic military action.
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“2.Decides, while acknowledging paragraph 1 above, to afford Iraq, by this resolution, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council; and accordingly decides to set up an enhanced inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process established by resolution 687 (1991) and subsequent resolutions of the Council…
“4.Decides that false statements or omissions in the declarations submitted by Iraq pursuant to this resolution and failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq’s obligations and will be reported to the Council for assessment in accordance with paragraphs 11 and 12 below…
“11.Directs the Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC and the Director-General of the IAEA to report immediately to the Council any interference by Iraq with inspection activities, as well as any failure by Iraq to comply with its disarmament obligations, including its obligations regarding inspections under this resolution;
“12.Decides to convene immediately upon receipt of a report in accordance with paragraphs 4 or 11 above, in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all of the relevant Council resolutions in order to secure international peace and security;
United Nations Resolution 1441, November 2002
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Our Congressional AUMF prescribed acting through the UN and UN 1441 called for the question of military action to be brought back to Security Council if Iraq did not comply. How did the Bush Administration get around these injunctions to follow UN Mandates? They obtained a series of Opinion Memos from the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel – Memos we knew nothing about at the time…
| October 23, 2002 [John Yoo] iraq-opinion-final.pdf |
| AUTHORITY OF THE PRESIDENT UNDER DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL LAW TO USE MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ |
| The President possesses constitutional authority to use military force against Iraq to protect United States national interests. This independent constitutional authority is supplemented by congressional authorization in the form of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution.
Using force against Iraq would be consistent with international law because it would be authorized by the United Nations Security Council or would be justified as anticipatory self-defense. |
| November 8, 2002 [John Yoo] iraq-unscr-final.pdf |
| EFFECT OF A RECENT UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION ON THE AUTHORITY OF THE PRESIDENT UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW TO USE MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ |
| United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 does not alter the legal authority, under international law, granted by existing U.N. Security Council resolutions to use force against Iraq. |
| December 7, 2002 [John Yoo] materialbreach.pdf |
| WHETHER FALSE STATEMENTS OR OMISSIONS IN IRAQ’S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION DECLARATION WOULD CONSTITUTE A "FURTHER MATERIAL BREACH" UNDER U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1441 |
| False statements or omissions in Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction declaration would by themselves constitute a "further material breach" of United Nations Security Counsel Resolution 1441. |
… Memos that neutralized any requirement for President Bush to follow the Act of Congress or the UN Security Council Resolution.
The primary documents from the period after the First Gulf War when all of this was formulated are available in George Washington University’s National Security Archives. They tell a very consistent story. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Communist Bloc [1989] and after Desert Storm [1991], George H. W. Bush’s Defense Department saw something they thought was an opportunity. We would become the world’s Sole Superpower. We would essentially withdraw from the seeing the UN as responsible for the world order and take on the task ourselves. We were carrying most of the weight anyway, why not exercise it without having to "orchestrate" things at the UN. We could use our power to spread democracy throughout the world, nip any problematic states in the bud when they got out of hand, we could keep rival states in their place and avoid stand-offs like the Cold War, and we could open new economic markets for our businesses everywhere. The new policy would ignore the UN [unilateral, pre-emptive], and exercise benevolent control of the world with our power [strength without equal, evangelical democracy]. This plan [Defense Planning Guidance] was drawn up in Secretary Dick Cheney‘s Defense Department by Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, and Zalmay Khalilzad. In March 1992, it was leaked to the New York Times by someone who thought it ought to be debated publicly.
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U.S. STRATEGY PLAN CALLS FOR INSURING NO RIVALS DEVELOP
New York Times By PATRICK E. TYLER, March 8, 1992 WASHINGTON, March 7— In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting stage, the Defense Department asserts that America’s political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to insure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territory of the former Soviet Union. A 46-page document that has been circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for weeks, and which Defense Secretary Dick Cheney expects to release later this month, states that part of the American mission will be "convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests." The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy. Rejecting Collective Approach To perpetuate this role, the United States "must sufficiently account for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order," the document states. With its focus on this concept of benevolent domination by one power, the Pentagon document articulates the clearest rejection to date of collective internationalism, the strategy that emerged from World War II when the five victorious powers sought to form a United Nations that could mediate disputes and police outbreaks of violence. Though the document is internal to the Pentagon and is not provided to Congress, its policy statements are developed in conjunction with the National Security Council and in consultation with the President or his senior national security advisers. Its drafting has been supervised by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s Under Secretary for Policy. Mr. Wolfowitz often represents the Pentagon on the Deputies Committee, which formulates policy in an interagency process dominated by the State and Defense departments. The document was provided to The New York Times by an official who believes this post-cold-war strategy debate should be carried out in the public domain. It seems likely to provoke further debate in Congress and among America’s allies about Washington’s willingness to tolerate greater aspirations for regional leadership from a united Europe or from a more assertive Japan. Together with its attachments on force levels required to insure America’s predominant role, the policy draft is a detailed justification for the Bush Administration’s "base force" proposal to support a 1.6-million-member military over the next five years, at a cost of about $1.2 trillion. Many Democrats in Congress have criticized the proposal as unnecessarily expensive. Implicitly, the document foresees building a world security arrangement that pre-empts Germany and Japan from pursuing a course of substantial rearmament, especially nuclear armament, in the future. In its opening paragraph, the policy document heralds the "less visible" victory at the end of the cold war, which it defines as "the integration of Germany and Japan into a U.S.-led system of collective security and the creation of a democratic ‘zone of peace.’ " The continuation of this strategic goal explains the strong emphasis elsewhere in the document and in other Pentagon planning on using military force, if necessary, to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in such countries as North Korea, Iraq, some of the successor republics to the Soviet Union and in Europe. Nuclear proliferation, if unchecked by superpower action, could tempt Germany, Japan and other industrial powers to acquire nuclear weapons to deter attack from regional foes. This could start them down the road to global competition with the United States and, in a crisis over national interests, military rivalry. The policy draft appears to be adjusting the role of the American nuclear arsenal in the new era, saying, "Our nuclear forces also provide an important deterrent hedge against the possibility of a revitalized or unforeseen global threat, while at the same time helping to deter third party use of weapons of mass destruction through the threat of retaliation." U.N. Action Ignored The document is conspicuously devoid of references to collective action through the United Nations, which provided the mandate for the allied assault on Iraqi forces in Kuwait and which may soon be asked to provide a new mandate to force President Saddam Hussein to comply with his cease-fire obligations. The draft notes that coalitions "hold considerable promise for promoting collective action" as in the Persian Gulf war, but that "we should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished." What is most important, it says, is "the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S." and "the United States should be postured to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated" or in a crisis that demands quick response…
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When it became public, it was quickly withdrawn in response to the outrage. Then George H. W. Bush was not reelected, and Cheney’s Defense Planning Guidance was forgotten by the rest of us – but was still very alive in the Halls of the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for the New American Century. Here’s an amazingly clear article from Harper’s before the War that tells it like it was [I’d suggest reading the whole thing, particularly the part about Wolfowitz and Powell].
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Dick Cheney’s song of America: Drafting a plan for global dominance
An essay exploring the real origins of the Iraq War, written before the war started Harper’s Magazine By David Armstrong
January 2003 Few writers are more ambitious than the writers of government policy papers, and few policy papers are more ambitious than Dick Cheney’s masterwork. It has taken several forms over the last decade and is in fact the product of several ghostwriters (notably Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell), but Cheney has been consistent in his dedication to the ideas in the documents that bear his name, and he has maintained a close association with the ideologues behind them. Let us, therefore, call Cheney the author, and this series of documents the Plan. The Plan was published in unclassified form most recently under the title of Defense Strategy for the 1990s, as Cheney ended his term as secretary of defense under the elder George Bush in early 1993, but it is, like Leaves of Grass, a perpetually evolving work. It was the controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft of 1992—from which Cheney, unconvincingly, tried to distance himself—and it was the somewhat less aggressive revised draft of that same year. This June it was a presidential lecture in the form of a commencement address at West Point, and in July it was leaked to the press as yet another Defense Planning Guidance (this time under the pen name of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). It will take its ultimate form, though, as America’s new national security strategy—and Cheney et al. will experience what few writers have even dared dream: their words will become our reality. The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful. The Plan is disturbing in many ways, and ultimately unworkable. Yet it is being sold now as an answer to the “new realities” of the post-September 11 world, even as it was sold previously as the answer to the new realities of the post-Cold War world. For Cheney, the Plan has always been the right answer, no matter how different the questions. Cheney’s unwavering adherence to the Plan would be amusing, and maybe a little sad, except that it is now our plan. In its pages are the ideas that we now act upon every day with the full might of the United States military. Strangely, few critics have noted that Cheney’s work has a long history, or that it was once quite unpopular, or that it was created in reaction to circumstances that are far removed from the ones we now face. But Cheney is a well-known action man. One has to admire, in a way, the Babe Ruth-like sureness of his political work. He pointed to center field ten years ago, and now the ball is sailing over the fence…
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Regime Change was our policy, though I doubt that the Clinton Administration saw regime change in Iraq as part of some kind of dramatic reformulation of foreign policy that withdrew us from the UN. I expect he saw it as a way to deal with the pesky Saddam Hussein. But during the Clinton years, Cheney and his cohorts learned something. Under Papa Bush, they wrote down the foreign policy plan and people didn’t like it. So they stopped saying it in public. When they got in the driver’s seat, they effected the policy without talking about it. They hid behind 911 and WMD and al Qaeda, but the old goal of world dominance and the demise of the UN never changed. And as for the NSC Adviser Colin Powell’s involvement:
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Powell and his staff believed that a weakened Soviet Union would result in shifting alliances and regional conflict. The United States was the only nation capable of managing the forces at play in the world; it would have to remain the preeminent military power in order to ensure the peace and shape the emerging order in accordance with American interests. U.S. military strategy, therefore, would have to shift from global containment to managing less-well-defined regional struggles and unforeseen contingencies. To do this, the United States would have to project a military “forward presence” around the world; there would be fewer troops but in more places. This plan still would not be cheap, but through careful restructuring and superior technology, the job could be done with 25 percent fewer troops. Powell insisted that maintaining superpower status must be the first priority of the U.S. military. “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do,” he said at the time. He also insisted that the troop levels he proposed were the bare minimum necessary to do so.
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No wonder Colin Powell was chosen to be Secretary of State. No wonder we eavesdropped on the UN Security Council members. No wonder John Bolton, a man who hated the UN, was appointed to be UN Ambassador. And no wonder the British thought it was a major accomplishment to get us to even go to the UN at all. In the full article, the author discusses the problem of military funding during George H. W. Bush’s Administration which explains why we went to Iraq with an inadequate force in the first place and hid the cost of the war by keeping it out of the Budget.
It was all part of a grand plan, a plan to eliminate the annoying haggles with the United Nations; a plan to assert our dominance in the world and preventing the emergence of any rivals; a plan to turn the world into an increasing number of democratic, free market allies who depended on the US for protection – an American Empire for the 21st Century. Who needs the UN when you have us? Regime Change in Iraq was much more than a simple solution to a particular problem, it was the dawning of a new world order with a benevolently dominant United States and and end to the UN experiment. Was that George H. W. Bush’s plan? I don’t think so. From his speech after the First Gulf War:
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Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order. In the words of Winston Churchill, a "world order" in which "the principles of justice and fair play … protect the weak against the strong …" A world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfil the historic vision of its founders. A world in which freedom and respect for human rights find a home among all nations.
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I don’t believe it was even a plan that George W. Bush was fully on board with, but that’s just my guess. It was the plan of Dick Cheney and his neoconservative henchmen. And it was an active assault on the United Nations as we envision it. It was certainly an ill-fated plan from the start by any criteria and became a massive failure in all dimensions.
In time, the Bush Doctrine, American Exceptionalism, the Unitary Executive, and the New American Century will join the the Edsel, World Communism, the Third Reich, and New Coke in the annals of really bad ideas…
Postscript: As I read over these articles and documents, I couldn’t help thinking about the path of another world leader. In Mein Kampf ["my struggles"], written while he was in prison for political crimes, Hiltler realized that he had approached things the wrong way. He knew his ideas were right, but he hadn’t gone about things sensibly. His ideas were hard to sell. The correct path was to first get himself into power in the government, then put his ideas into action. That’s what Cheney did. In the campaign with George W. Bush, neither one of them mentioned anything about this grand plan for foreign policy. Even as he put the plan into action, he didn’t much talk about it – only as an aside to the front burner claims of Hussein’s dangerousness. He talked about the issues of the moment, and left out the grand plan for American Dominance over the world and his contempt for the UN. He’d learned his lesson under President George H. W. Bush – work behind the scenes [Signing Statements, OLC Memos, Publicity Campaigns about something other than the plan, secret prisons]. It’s the Hitler method…
Dr. Blix’s words from 2008 impress me as those of a reasonable man who takes a middle course between the extremes of Bush the Master Criminal on one hand and Bush the Bumbling Idiot on the other. I suspect Blix is very close to the truth. My distaste (and disgust) for all things Bush make it hard (read “impossible”) for me to be anywhere near objective in assessing that recent past. Even though part of me demurs violently, I’m almost willing to split the difference, as expressed by the good doctor, so as to be able to move on. But I neither forgive nor forget.
Cheney, though, is something else altogether. The very idea of establishing the US as the earth’s sole superpower, so we can grind the rest of the world into dust – or not – simply because it suits us, is an iconic example of what the word “overweening“ means. Help me out here – isn’t that precisely why the names of Euripides, Aeschylus & Sophocles are still known at all to us, because they shouted from their Attic rooftops a few millennia ago their discovery that pride leads to destruction? Why is it so hard for our species to learn anything?
[…] that paper was leaked, all hell broke loose and Cheney and Powell had to scramble to soften it [Cheney’s Kampf and the war on the UN…]. But it was Cheney’s shop, and Cheney did become the guy who put it into action as "The […]