by Curt Smith
11. George and Barbara Bush with English springer spaniel Millie on August 8, 1989, at Walker’s Point, estate and home bought and built in the early twentieth century by Bush’s family in Kennebunkport, Maine. It became Bush’s Summer White House. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
12. The author, on first floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (née Old EOB). Next to the White House, it is noted for extremely high ceilings. Since 1969 the writers’ corridor in this former State, War, and Navy Building has been called Writers’ Row. COURTESY OF AUTHOR
13. On December 1, 1989, Bush held his first meeting as president with Soviet Union general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on USS Forrestal off Malta. Bush also spoke to five thousand sailors, quoting Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s D-day address. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
14. In late 1989 Smith was summoned to Bush’s office to discuss the response to his speech at the Catholic University of America dinner. It had concluded, “God can live without man, but man cannot live without God.”
OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO
15. On December 19, 1989, no one knew when the president hosted speechwriters in his residence that he had already sent forces to capture Panama’s drug duce Manuel Noriega. Only the author, to Bush’s left, heard him say, “I feel a thousand years old.” OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO
16. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Margaret Thatcher told Bush, “Now, George, this is no time to go wobbly.” In March 1991 he gave her the Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian award. Smith (left) wrote Bush’s speech about “the greengrocer’s daughter.”
OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO
17. In November 1990 Mrs. Thatcher was ousted from power by a coup d’etat by her Conservative Party. That week the author got her response to a letter he had written with several other writers vowing support for the Iron Lady, who had shaped a nation to her will. COURTESY OF THE THATCHER FOUNDATION
18. At Thanksgiving 1990 President and Mrs. Bush flew to Saudi Arabia to meet with troops of the greatest allied armada since World War II. Their mission: to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Bush told them, “This aggression will not stand.” GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
19. On March 6, 1991, Operation Desert Storm complete, Bush addressed a joint session of Congress. The president stood, as Edmund Burke once said of a peer, at “the summit. . . . He may live long. He may do much. But he can never exceed what he does this day.” GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
20. The president boarding Marine One, the presidential helicopter. In March 1991 he left the White House for a weekend at the presidential getaway at Camp David. Aides held signs saying “91,” meaning Gallup’s historic high 91 percent approval rating. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
21. In spring 1991 President Bush gathered speechwriters and other aides in the Oval Office to discuss what the administration should do next. The quest for a “domestic Desert Storm” proved elusive as legislative proposals and the economy stalled. OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO
22. On June 8, 1991, the commander in chief was saluted by the armed services which that year helped free a nation. The parade to hail the victorious Gulf War was held on Constitution Avenue in Washington and attracted a half a million spectators. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
23. Bush hated politics’ incivility. What he liked was on display on July 4, 1991, at Mount Rushmore, showing how four nation builders—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and TR—their likenesses completed half a century earlier, embodied America’s core. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
24. The 1992 campaign hung over a November 1991 luncheon of Bush with presidential speechwriters. “We need a formulation for placing the blame on Congress for the economy without losing their support,” the president said. It was like squaring a circle. OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO
25. Friends of Bush died at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Half a century later, he gave perhaps his presidency’s most emotional speech there. “Every fifteen seconds a drop of oil still rises from the [sunken] Arizona and drifts to the surface,” he said, voice breaking. “It is as though God Himself were crying.” GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
26. Christmas at the White House was magical. In 1992, 120,000 visitors saw decorations that included thirty trees with icicles, tinsel, and white lights; needlepoint; toy trains; eleven-foot-tall toy nutcracker soldiers; and a gingerbread house turned Santa’s Village. OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO
27. Improbably, Bush lost the 1992 election, getting only 37.5 percent of the vote. On October 19 he debated victorious Democratic nominee Bill Clinton (center) and third-party candidate H. Ross Perot. Perot lured 18.9 percent of the vote, most of it from Bush. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
28. Five U.S. presidents—the current (Clinton), three past (Bush, Carter, and Ford), and one future (George W. Bush)—shared November 1997’s dedication of the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M University at College Station, Texas. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
29. On June 12, 2009, to honor two crewmates killed when the Japanese destroyed their Avenger plane in 1944, Bush did a tandem parachute jump in Kennebunkport with the U.S. Army Golden Knights to mark his eighty-fifth birthday. Amazingly, he encored at ninety in 2014. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
30. The former First Couple at the Bush Presidential Library and Museum in 2002. In 2013 President Obama invited them back to the White House for the five thousandth daily Point of Light Award, an honor given by the famed volunteer program begun by Bush. GEORGE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY FOUNDATION. Chandler Arden, photographer
31. In 2001 Bush learned that the author and his wife were about to adopt two very young children from Ukraine, a country that the president, helped by others here and abroad, had helped to liberate. Unsolicited, he wrote each child a letter that they received upon arriving in America. COURTESY OF PRESIDENT GEORGE H. W. BUSH
A fourth lesson concerned the future size of the U.S. armed forces: smaller because “the threat to our security is changing,” said Bush, with American defense capacity greater—“a lean, mean fighting machine.” When it comes to national defense, “finishing second means finishing last,” he argued, noting that more than half of all VFW members fought in World War II. “Half a century ago, the world had the chance to stop an aggressor, and missed it,” the president said. “I pledge to you: Unlike isolationists here and abroad, we will not make that mistake again.”
This was the first speech in which Bush likened Hussein to Hitler. It wasn’t easy. Bush’s writers, like the president, tried to include the comparison, prompting the National Security Council to erase it, at which point writers reinstated it. In this speech, I put it in, the NSC took it out, then Bush ad-libbed it—all in the name of exquisitely named reconciliation. Next month he spoke to Congress, setting four immediate goals: “Iraq must leave Kuwait . . . Kuwait’s legitimate government must be restored. The security and stability of the Persian Gulf must be assured. And American citizens abroad must be protected.” Bush also foresaw a new world order. More tangibly, Congress okayed the use of military force.
For 166 days Bush tried to peacefully remove Hussein from Kuwait. The president knew what he meant to say and said it. I often arrived at the White House, checked my mailbox, and found page after page of text “self-typed” by him the previous night. I retyped it; fixed grammar, spelling, and punctuation; used the president’s text as the first draft; and seldom deviated from its spine. Bush was involved at every level of Gulf War speech preparation. By contrast, his explanation of the budget process in the 1990 midterm campaign was considerably less thorough. “The budget agreement was as good as we could get,” he said. “It would have been better with a GOP Congress.” Looking back, it would have been best if Congress didn’t treat fiscal discipline like malaria or beriberi.
With the election over—essentially a wash in e
ach house—the president turned wholly to foreign policy, i.e., the Persian Gulf. He flew in Air Force One with Mrs. Bush and General Norman Schwarzkopf, head of U.S. Central Command, escorted by F-15 Eagle fighter jets, to spend Thanksgiving Day with U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia. As White House Ghosts relates, Bush found the day’s remarks, written movingly by McNally, too personal. “Dave,” he asked Demarest, “what are you trying to do to me?”—he was afraid he would break down. The communications head began to delete text. Bush joined him. Next day editing continued. Finally, Marines encircling Bush, Demarest saw the light: “The power of him [Bush] being with the troops really was the message.” Less was more.
Bush returned to an America less of war fever than the sheer intention to see war through—January 15, 1991, was the UN-set deadline for Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait. “No one wanted war less than I, but we will see it through,” Bush wrote in his diary. On Sunday, January 13, he added, “It is my decision—my decision to send these kids into battle, my decision that may affect the lives of innocence [sic]. . . . It is my intention to step back and let the sanctions work. Or to move forward. . . . I know what I have to do. . . . This man is evil, and let him win and we rise again to fight tomorrow,” as after Munich, appeasement bred World War II.
“There is no way to describe the pressure,” said the man who, almost killed at twenty, knew war perhaps as well as any U.S. president. The bombing would begin at 7 p.m. on January 16. The president would address the nation two hours later. Dan McGroarty wrote two initial drafts. Bush—saying, “I want to write this speech myself”—did, referencing parts of McGroarty’s text. The president’s draft asked the question, “Why act now?”
He answered, “While the world waited, Saddam Hussein systematically raped, pillaged, and plundered a tiny nation, no threat to his own. . . . While the world waited, Saddam sought to add to the chemical weapons arsenal he now possesses, an infinitely more dangerous weapon of mass destruction—a nuclear weapon. And while the world waited, while the world talked peace and withdrawal, Saddam Hussein dug in and moved massive forces into Kuwait.”
Five months earlier Hussein had started this “cruel war against Kuwait,” Bush said. “Tonight, the battle has been joined.”
At 10:45 that night, Bush again wrote in his diary: “I am about to go to bed. I didn’t feel nervous about it at all. . . . I knew what I wanted to say, and I said it. And I hope it resonates.”
Victory would ensure it did.
TEN
Bush at the Summit
On January 17, 1991, Operation Desert Shield turned Desert Storm. The first attack included more than four thousand bombing runs by coalition aircraft against Saddam Hussein’s forces and locales. For the next five weeks, CNN TV showed the first high-tech war, mesmerizing viewers raised on Mission Impossible, Star Trek, and Luke Sykwalker in an America that had stormed Normandy, split the atom, and beat the Ruskies to the moon. Night after night we witnessed smart bombs and Scuds and Patriot missiles. It was captivating—also distant, therefore safe. Though no troops were in combat, some in Congress, plucking a figure from the air, prophesied 100,000 “body bags.” Ignoring Hussein’s brutality, Bush’s own presiding bishop said force would be immoral. Said the New York Times, “War never leaves . . . a President where it found him.” Yellow ribbons dotted America. Church attendance spiraled. At the National Hockey League All-Star Game at Chicago Stadium, the crowd sang the National Anthem so wildly as to give “the roof came off” new connotation.
At a time like this, it is not unusual for a president to try to crush his opposition. In a 1936 speech, Franklin Roosevelt said of businessmen, “They are united in their hatred of me—and I welcome their hatred.” The reaction at Madison Square Garden was primal, almost atavistic. In 1969 Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority speech demonized elite hostility. In 2012 Barack Obama, aiming to shred conservatism, said, “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends.” Bush’s response to the Gulf War was antipodal. At the peak of his career, he respected his critics enough to tell them how, and why, he had reached his decision to use force. Bush didn’t need to. In January 1991 his opposition was as strong as Charles Atlas’s ninety-eight-pound weakling. He did it anyway—a sublimely civil gesture by a supremely civil man.
Clerics, educators, and policy experts debated what constitutes a “just war”—how could force be used and “still uphold,” as our text said, “moral values like tolerance, compassion, faith, and courage”? Delivered January 28 in Washington, the address quoted the clergyman Richard Cecil: “There are two classes of the wise: the men who serve God because they have found Him, and the men who seek Him because they have not found Him yet.” Bush’s task, he said, was to “serve and seek wisely”—e.g., Saddam Hussein vs. the world. Hussein had “tried to cast this conflict as a religious war—but it has nothing to do with religion per se.” It had “everything to do with what religion embodies,” said Bush. “Good versus evil. Right versus wrong. Human dignity and freedom versus tyranny and oppression.” The Gulf War was “not a Christian war or a Jewish war—or a Muslim war. It is a Just War—and it is a war in which good will prevail.”
The principles of a “just war” originated with classical Greek and Roman philosophers like Plato and Cicero, later expounded by such Christian theologians as Ambrose, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, I wrote. Their first principle, Bush said, was that it support a just cause. To Bush, the Gulf War was ennobling. It would free Kuwait, end Iraq’s brutal occupation, and ensure that “naked aggression will not be rewarded.” A just war must also be declared by legitimate authority—here, by nonpareil UN solidarity; the principle of collective self-defense; twelve Security Council resolutions; and twenty-eight nations from six continents united—resolute. “We’re not going it alone,” Bush said of America, “but believe me, we are going to see it through.”
A just war, he continued, was fought for right reasons—moral, not selfish. Bush told of a family whose two sons, eighteen and nineteen, reportedly refused to lower the Kuwaiti flag in front of their home. “For this crime, they were executed by the Iraqis. Then, unbelievably, their parents were asked to pay the price of the bullets used to kill them.” Was it moral for force to stop such slaughter? Said Bush: “It would be immoral not to use force.” A fourth principle was that a just war would be a last resort when all else had failed. Seeking peace, James Baker had more than two hundred meetings with foreign dignitaries, ten diplomatic missions, six congressional appearances, and more than 103,000 miles traveled to talk with, among others, members of the UN, Arab League, and European community. Hussein “made this Just War an inevitable war.”
Finally, if war must be fought, the fifth principle was to conduct it in proportion to the threat, making “every effort possible to keep casualties to a minimum.” We would try to avoid harming the innocent, not bomb civilian areas, yet have “total commitment to a successful outcome.” The Gulf War would not be “another Vietnam.” Bush knew that “some disagree with the course that I have taken. I have no bitterness in my heart about that, no anger. I am convinced that we are doing the right thing—and tolerance is a virtue, not a vice.” Abraham Lincoln was once asked if he thought the Lord was on his side. He said, “My concern is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God’s side.” More than ever, Bush closed, he could not imagine being president without trust in Him.
One year earlier Bush had sent a “self-typed” note for a speech introducing a lecture on Lincoln and the presidency, asking me to “work in” that “I have been President for less than a year, but I am [“personally,” written by hand] more convinced than ever that one cannot be President of this country without believing in God, without a belief in prayer. . . . Lincoln talked about spending times on one’s knees. Though not tested as Lincoln was tested, I know now how true those words were.”
The Gulf War was Bush’s test. Among the most telling pictures shows the First Couple, eyes closed, deep in
prayer, at a service in the chapel at Camp David two days before Bush announced the air war. He had always worried about showing tears in public—“the emotion.” Now, tears streaming down his cheeks, George Bush thought more about “those young men and women overseas.” Looking up, Poppy saw his home minister—Claude Payne of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston—“smiling back. And I no longer worried about how I looked to others.”
Bush gave the “just war” speech to provide a moral framework for his decision almost a month before UN ground forces invaded Kuwait on February 24. The Allies broke Iraqi lines, moved toward Kuwait City, and in the country’s western part, intercepted Hussein’s retreating army—Saddam’s Mother of Battles soon his Orphan of Defeats. Israel so trusted Bush that it abided Iraqi bombing sans response, preserving UN and Arab solidarity against Hussein. On February 27 Bush addressed the nation to report that the United States and its allies would “suspend” combat operations after only one hundred hours. The president acted to minimize U.S. casualties—also because he had spectacularly fulfilled the UN mandate to boot the bully from Kuwait.
At the time carpers knocked Bush for not pursuing Hussein back to Baghdad, removing him from power. Bush replied, “We would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.” Many disagreed. They—I among them—were wrong. In a twist worthy of Dostoyevsky, President George W. Bush declared war in 2003 against the very leader that Bush père had demolished a decade earlier. “You break it. You own it,” said Colin Powell, Bush 41’s chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Bush 43’s secretary of state. W. invaded Iraq, removed Hussein, and became the occupier. To many it took the son’s risk to redeem the father’s caution.