Like Wilson’s half-baked assertion of an American security requirement to install a League of Nations, facilitate universal self-determination, and fight wars to end wars, Mr. Bush’s assertion is false and fatuous, and where applied as policy it can only lead to a grievous and unnecessary squandering of American lives and treasure.
Finally, it remains to say that the proper future use of the U.S. military against our Islamic enemies has been suggested repeatedly throughout this book. The force that we will have to employ will be far in excess of anything most Americans have seen in their lifetimes, as will the resulting casualties and physical damage. Writing in 2007, the peerless Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld explained that fighting Islamist insurgents can be done with a discriminate use of military power only if excellent intelligence is available about them. As this would not usually be the case, Dr. van Creveld went on to make the case for the indiscriminate and overwhelming force that America will have to employ in the future:
The other method [the indiscriminate use of military power] will have to be used when good intelligence is not available and discrimination is therefore impossible and, in case things reach the point where they run completely out of control. The first rule is to make your preparations in secret or, if that is not feasible, to use guile and deceit to disguise your plans. The second is to get your timing right; other things being equal, the sooner you act, the fewer people you must kill. The third is to strike as hard as possible in the shortest possible time; better to strike too hard than not hard enough. The fourth is to explain why your actions were absolutely necessary without, however, providing any apology for them. The fifth is to operate in such a way that, in case your blow fails to deliver the results you expect and need, you will still have some other cards up your sleeve.12
EPILOGUE
An Abiding Uniqueness
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors; they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an ever lasting mark of infamy on the present generation, as enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.
Samuel Adams, 1771
The single most important lesson to be drawn from America’s defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq is really an exercise in relearning a reality that has gradually become nearly opaque since 1945: American democracy and republicanism are unique and largely nonexportable. In saying that the American experience is unique, an idea often described and derided as “American exceptionalism,” one is merely stating what should be obvious to all. While the Founders certainly drew on the workings and experiences of earlier republican polities—Sparta, Athens, Carthage, Rome, the Italian city-states, etc.—they studied republics not only to see how they functioned but also, more important, to understand why each one inevitably failed.
The package the Founders ultimately put together for their republic in the U.S. Constitution took what they thought was best from the history of republicanism and reinforced it with a bracing dose of Machiavellianism and a central focus on the most important point of the American Enlightenment, that man is deeply flawed and not a perfectible creature. Thus, American constitutionalism to this day is infused with precepts drawn from the Bible, the history of other republics, the American Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, the hard-headed common sense of the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the successes and tragedies of the now four-hundred-year-old American national experiment. Composed of these varied influences, the uniqueness of American constitutionalism became more prominent because it was tucked safely away in North America and for centuries developed with minimal influence from the outside world, save those entering due to the never-changing American lust and talent for business and commerce—a sort of profit-seeking insularity, but certainly nothing remotely akin to isolationism.
To be sure, America has prospered because of the Founders’ design, and one must assume they would be pleased that others in the world are inspired to emulate the system they hoped would be imitated. But no set of men was ever more confident that they were creating a unique system than the Founders: they intended to produce a scheme of self-government applicable to Protestant, English-speaking America, not to all the world’s cultures and religions. The American model is what it is, the American model. There is no boast or sense of superiority in that claim, but rather an estimate of the very real limitations on the applicability of the American model outside America and especially outside what has historically been called Christendom. So clear are these limits that only the willfully blind or the politically reckless can miss them—both of which strike me as excellent descriptors for the contemporary American governing elite.
At base, the United States has been defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan because U.S. leaders forgot or ignored the history of their country. The Founders clearly saw the undoing of their republic if its government became involved in efforts to install the American model abroad, even if such an endeavor was launched in response to requests for help from foreign champions of liberty and democracy. The memorization of John Quincy Adams’s 1821 warning to Americans should be required as a condition of graduation from all American high schools and as a recitation from each presidential candidate preceding each presidential debate:
She [America] well knows that by once enlisting herself under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. She might become dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.1
The results for America of “enlisting under banners other than her own” are now being played out in the mountains, deserts, and cities of Afghanistan and Iraq. In trying to install America’s system in devoutly Islamic lands, U.S. leaders display an arrogance derived from an odd combination of ignorance and naïveté. Ignorance, in not recognizing America’s uniqueness or accepting that our political experience is not reproducible in a society characterized by the powerful pervasiveness of the Islamic faith, a creed whose believers hear a recommendation that they adopt secular democracy as an urging that they turn their back on God. And naïveté, in not realizing that people like Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai and Iraq’s Ahmed Chalabi are quintessential representatives of what Adams called men of “individual avarice, envy, and ambition” who can be counted on to “assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.” As has so often been the case since 1945, Karzai and Chalabi used U.S. leaders who confidently assumed that their foreigner friends were in sync with American interests and ideals.
Adams and the Founders knew the power of religion and the uniqueness of what they were creating; they successfully accommodated the devout and pervasive Protestantism of their countrymen in a way that allowed religious dissent and freedom, and they warned against the dangers of allying the unique new nation with foreigners, even those who claimed to be championing the same ideas. Had Messrs. Bush, Powell, Cheney, and Rumsfeld and Ms. Rice spent a prewar weekend or two with Washington’s Farewell Address, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and The Federalist Papers, they would have quickly recognized the utter impossibility and irresponsibility of what they were about to undertake as a political project in Iraq and Afghanistan and across the entire Islamic world. Or they might have simply recalled the late George Kennan’s 1995 warning, based on Adams’s 1821 argument, “that it is very difficult for one country to help another by intervening directly in its domestic affairs or in its confl
icts with neighbors. It is particularly difficult to do this without creating new and unwelcome embarrassments for the country endeavoring to help. The best way for a larger country to help smaller ones is surely by the power of example.”2
The George W. Bush administration’s failure to learn and apply the Founders’ wisdom is different only in degree, not in kind, from that of its two predecessors. Together the three administrations have left a legacy of disaster abroad and insecurity at home. Their behavior, ahistorical thinking, and lack of common sense have, alas, put the American experiment at risk. In 1936 Winston Churchill posed a question about whether the political and cultural inheritance of Britons was being protected; the same question can serve as an appropriate and hopefully haunting query for U.S. leaders who seem bent on squandering the heritage of Americans. “We must recognize,” Churchill said in September 1936, in words echoing those of Samuel Adams in 1771,
that we have a great treasure to guard; that the inheritance in our possession represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries; that there is not one of our simple uncounted rights today for which better men than we are have not died on the scaffold or the battlefield. We have not only a great treasure; we have a great cause. Are we taking every measure within our power to defend that cause?3
Are we? We clearly are not.
Notes
Preface
1.Tim Russert, “Interview of Vice President Cheney,” Meet the Press, NBC Television, September 10, 2006.
2.Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 2006), 464.
Introduction
1.The 9/11 Commission Report provides numerous examples of this refusal to doubt the utter perfection of U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world. “American [foreign] policy choices have consequences,” the commissioners wrote. “Right or wrong it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.” So far, so good, but this promising start fades into complete support for the foreign-policy status quo and the implication that Muslims are too stupid to understand what is best for them. “This does not mean U.S. policy choices have been wrong,” the commissioners continue, cementing their places in the governing elite. “It means that those choices must be integrated with America’s message of opportunity to the Arab and Muslim world…The United States must do more to communicate its message.” See Thomas H. Kean et al., The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2003), 376–77.
2.Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 (New York: Mariner Books, 1997), 206, 218.
3.I spent nearly twenty years managing CIA covert-action operations, and when discussing whether or not to proceed with—or even to propose—a particular operation, the first question always asked by the Agency’s seniormost managers was, “Will it pass the Washington Post giggle test?” That is, no operation aimed at protecting Americans or furthering U.S. interests abroad could be considered if the Post and other media would ridicule it if it failed and became public knowledge. Again, The 9/11 Commission Report is helpful on this issue. Quoting a cable I wrote on the instruction of DCI George Tenet explaining why a May 1998 operation to capture bin Laden was canceled, the commissioners note that the bottom line was that the Clinton administration preferred to let the killer of Americans remain free to plan additional attacks rather than risk bad press. At Mr. Tenet’s direction I wrote that the Clinton cabinet had stopped the operation because “the purpose and nature of the operation would be subject to unavoidable misinterpretation—and probably recriminations—in the event that bin Laden, despite our best intentions and efforts, did not survive.” See Kean et al., 9/11 Commission Report, 114.
Worries about what others would think seemed, at times, to be taken rather far. When planning the operation to capture bin Laden, for example, CIA engineers were required to produce an ergonomically correct chair for bin Laden to be seated in after he was captured. Likewise, well-padded restraint devices were manufactured to avoid chafing his skin, and a full medical suite was acquired in case he was wounded. The crowning glory of the Executive Branch’s tender concern for this killer of Americans was a session held at the National Security Council’s offices of lawyers from several Intelligence Community components. Their task? To examine rolls of masking, duct, and medical-adhesive tape and determine which had the right amount of stickiness to ensure that bin Laden’s face and beard would not be excessively irritated if his mouth had to be taped shut after capture.
4.Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. N.H. Thompson (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1999), 79.
Author’s Note
1.Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, rev. ed. (Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2005), and Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism (Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2004).
2.James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, co-chairs, The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward—A New Approach (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), xvii.
3.Notwithstanding the urgent tone in which The Iraq Study Group Report is written—“The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating,” for example—the authors present the Iraq debacle as mainly a Cold War–style problem produced by Washington’s sub-standard planning and management.
There is no magic formula to solve the problems of Iraq. However, there are actions that can be taken to improve the situation and protect American interests…Our [U.S.] political leaders must build a bipartisan approach to bring a responsible conclusion to what is now a lengthy and costly war…The United States has long-term relationships and interests at stake in the Middle East and needs to stay engaged…What we recommend in this report demands a tremendous amount of political will and cooperation by the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government. It demands skillful implementation. It demands unity of effort by government agencies. And its success depends on the unity of the American people in a time of political polarization.
This policy prescription could have been applied to almost any issue during the Cold War. The resolution in Iraq needs the help of the Iraqi regime—the Report stresses this—but at bottom it is up to the United States to draft and implement better policies, improve U.S. interagency coordination, teach the Iraqis to adopt less corrupt and more Western-style policies in budget planning and taxes, and train them to build a law-enforcement system that mirrors America’s. For the Baker-Hamilton commission, when Washington gets the bureaucratics right, success will be just around the corner, and it appears that the enemy will not have a voice in the outcome. Ibid., ix, x, xiii.
4.Kean et al., 9/11 Commission Report, 108–43.
5.Ibid., xvi.
6.The members of each of the three investigatory panels were served by a large and competent staff. The staff of the Kean-Hamilton 9/11 Commission, however, stood head and shoulders above the others. The intellect, work ethic, determination, and integrity of that staff cannot be too highly praised. The many failings of the final 9/11 Commission report must therefore be ascribed to the political objectives of the commissioners and their most senior lieutenants—and most especially to the moral cowardice evident in their decision not to “point fingers”—and not to the work of the staffers. My impression is that the staffers found the truth but the commissioners balked at telling it.
7.All of us recalled, for example, that then-DCI George Tenet fired a young and just-married CIA contract employee after the U.S. Air Force mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 8, 1999. The discharged employee had provided information on the target but was unaware that it was the embassy. Mr. Tenet volunteered the CIA to take the blame for the bombing, but every IC officer knew that the U.S. military was responsible for the mistake. In wartime situations the U.S. military routinely solicits target suggestions from several IC components. These suggestions are presente
d in files called target packages. U.S. military intelligence reviews and independently verifies them as legitimate targets, then forwards them to a senior U.S. commander for a decision on whether an attack is to be made. The Chinese embassy in Belgrade was attacked, therefore, either because military intelligence failed to do its job or because the demand for targets from senior commanders was too strong to permit a complete evaluation. No target is ever attacked simply because the CIA tells the U.S. military it should do so. In the same way, in early 2004, the 9/11 commissioners indicated that they were intending to name an even younger CIA officer as the only individual to be publicly identified for a pre-9/11 failure. A group of senior CIA officers, however, let it be known that if that officer was named, information about the pre-9/11 negligence of several very senior U.S. officials would find its way into the media. The commissioners dropped the issue. For the 1999 Belgrade attack, see Alva McNicol, “NATO hits Chinese Embassy,” BBCNEWS.com, May 8, 1999.
It also should be noted that the commissioners mislead readers throughout their report by saying that the CIA withheld information from the FBI. A number of junior and senior FBI officers were assigned to the bin Laden unit after it was formed in 1996, and each had access to all of the information that came into the Agency. When I was the unit chief, the FBI officers who served there read all the mail I read, except for fitness reports for CIA officers overseas. The FBI officers were in the unit for two specific reasons: (a) so that they could cull incoming messages for information pertinent to U.S. domestic security, and (b) so that they could take action on such information because the CIA could not operate inside the United States.
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