1 Boring Old Man

The war president "at peace" with himself
Bush’s 2003 conversation with the Spanish prime minister shows his smug determination to invade Iraq at all costs.

Yet Bush had very little patience with Aznar, let alone with the more recalcitrant leaders he encountered at the United Nations. Responding brusquely to the Spanish leader’s plea for serious diplomatic effort, he apparently sought to transmit thuggish threats via Spain to other nations. According to Harper’s correspondent Ken Silverstein’s translation, Bush said: "Countries like Mexico, Chile, Angola, and Cameroon should know that what’s at stake is the security of the United States … [Chilean President Ricardo] Lagos should know that the Free Trade Accord with Chile is awaiting Senate confirmation and a negative attitude about this could put ratification in danger. Angola is receiving Millennium Account funds [to help alleviate poverty] and that could be jeopardized also if [the Angolan president] is not supportive."

Equally striking are the echoes of the "cakewalk" talk that pervaded White House propaganda in the weeks before the invasion. "We can win [the war] without much destruction," burbled Bush, attempting to reassure Aznar that the future would be bright. "We’re planning for a post-Saddam Iraq and believe there is a strong base to build a better future. Iraq has a good bureaucracy and relatively robust civil society." Whatever Bush expected, the State Department’s attempt to plan for Iraq’s future would be discarded by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; the former Iraqi government would be disbanded and its offices looted and burned; and of course Iraq’s civil society would disintegrate into sectarian civil war.

If Aznar didn’t anticipate those multiple disasters, at least he had the wit to urge caution, and to wonder aloud why Bush sounded so confident and sunny on the eve of massive bloodshed. (The Spanish people soon ratified his foreboding by dismissing his right-wing government in the next election.)

"I’m optimistic because I believe I’m right," replied the obtuse Bush. "I’m at peace with myself." That smug statement — uttered by a man who had no idea what he was talking about and no interest in what anyone else believed — could be the epitaph for his presidency.