Worldmaking

by David Milne

  The Senate confirmed Wolfowitz’s appointment unanimously after an illuminating hearing in which he clearly established his priorities. On the Middle East, he observed that the “whole region would be a safer place, Iraq would be a much more successful country, and the American national interest would benefit greatly if there were a change of regime in Iraq.”135 He quickly pushed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on how the United States might assist opposition groups in Iraq. As Saddam Hussein had ordered the draining of Iraq’s southern marshes to deny Shiite rebels a safe haven, Wolfowitz asked the military brass if air strikes could destroy dams to flood the region and re-create them. Lawyers in the Pentagon stymied Wolfowitz’s proposal as being inconsistent with “the rules of war.” Wolfowitz countered that reinstating a sanctuary for Saddam’s opponents was quite clearly a “humane” option.136

  Wolfowitz appointed Douglas Feith, whose views on Iraq closely mirrored his own, as his deputy. Feith was even less organized than Wolfowitz, according to his critics, and was a believer in the necessity of deposing Saddam Hussein come what may—to the frustration of many in the military. General Tommy Franks, commander of the United States Central Command, memorably described Feith as “the stupidest fucking guy on the planet.”137 Colin Powell was more temperate in his language but, like Franks, he did not share Wolfowitz and Feith’s obsession with Saddam Hussein. During his own confirmation hearings, Powell had observed that the sanctions against Iraq should be strengthened but a change of regime was not essential: “As long as we are able to control the major source of money going into Iraq, we can keep them in the rather broken condition that they are in now. Mr. Saddam Hussein can put a hat on his head and shoot a rifle in the air at an Army Day parade, but it is fundamentally a broken, weak country … His only tool, the only thing he can scare us with are those weapons of mass destruction, and we have to hold him to account.”138 Powell was clear that this would be achieved through enhanced sanctions and the return of UN weapons inspectors. State and Defense were not on the same page. They were not even reading the same book.

  Wolfowitz was broadly impressed by the first eight months of the Bush presidency. Bush withdrew the United States from the 1972 ABM treaty and moved forward with the development of a national missile defense program, resurrecting Reagan-era hopes of invulnerability to missile attack. He immediately repudiated Clinton’s engagement policy and unveiled a hard line toward North Korea, undermining Seoul’s so-called sunshine policy of courting Pyongyang with the prospect of greater economic interaction. On a personal level, Wolfowitz grew ever more admiring of Bush’s simple, direct style. During a discussion about the relative merits of economic interests—focused engagement versus principled opposition to an authoritarian regime, Wolfowitz recalled (although he did not disclose the identity of the nations under discussion) that Bush interjected with real moral clarity: “We’re talking about them as though they were members of the Chevy Chase Country Club. What are they really like?… How brutal are these people?”139 In Wolfowitz’s opinion, Bush’s words brought to mind Reagan at his best.

  But there was an unevenness in implementation similar to Reagan’s when it came to human rights. Bush declined to condemn Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, or Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, or indeed China’s leadership for their many human rights deficiencies. Bush’s favorable snap appraisal of Russia’s increasingly hard-line president, Vladimir Putin—“I looked the man in his eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy … I was able to get a sense of his soul”—appeared alarmingly naïve to close observers of Putin and Russia.140 Bush also contravened one of the central tenets of the 1992 DPG when he privileged a $1.2 trillion tax cut ahead of increased defense spending. William Kristol’s The Weekly Standard, the most influential conservative weekly in Washington, editorialized that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should resign.141 This was a particularly painful episode for Wolfowitz, who was one of the staunchest advocates of military preparedness in Washington.

  One issue that was very much on Bill Clinton’s radar when he departed office, but that appeared not to elicit the same interest in Bush, was the growing threat posed by al-Qaeda, a global terrorist network dedicated to confronting Western encroachments in the Muslim world and, ultimately, to the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate. In 1993, Ramzi Yousef, an al-Qaeda operative, had detonated a truck bomb in the basement of tower one of the World Trade Center in New York City. Yousef’s plan was that one tower would fall onto the other, killing upwards of 250,000 people. But the World Trade Center absorbed the explosion and the attack killed only 9. In August 1998, al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for simultaneous bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 223 and injured more than 4,000. Two years later, al-Qaeda militants used a small vessel loaded with explosives to launch a suicide attack on the USS Cole, docked in Aden, Yemen. The blast ripped through the ship’s galley, killing 17 and injuring 39. On December 19, 2000, Clinton met Bush in the White House and asked if his campaign literature was correct—that his two primary foreign-policy priorities were national missile defense and regime change in Iraq. When Bush replied yes, Clinton suggested that he instead address a wider range of challenges, with al-Qaeda at the top.142

  Bush did not reply to Clinton, but he and Wolfowitz clearly did not share Clinton’s concerns with stateless Islamist terrorism. During a deputies meeting on April 30, 2001, Wolfowitz pushed hard against those who identified terrorism as a major threat: “Well, I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden … You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don’t exist.” Richard Clarke, the national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and national security, became instantly irritated by Wolfowitz’s narrow focus on nation-states and his complacency on the threat posed by al-Qaeda. The CIA had discovered no link between Iraq and the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, but Wolfowitz was talking as if such a link existed and the CIA simply hadn’t detected it yet. “I could hardly believe it,” Clarke later recalled. The low opinion Wolfowitz formed of the CIA during the Team B exercise clearly remained; the agency should not be trusted on matters of importance. Wolfowitz was also upset that foreign-policy focus appeared to be shifting away from America’s primary adversary: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

  Clarke replied that al-Qaeda’s ambition to attack America was clearly expressed and entirely plausible. “Al Qaeda plans major acts of terrorism against the U.S.,” Clarke warned. “It plans to overthrow Islamic governments and set up a radical multinational Caliphate, and then go to war with non-Muslim states.” To illustrate this point he deployed a clumsy analogy: “They have published all of this and sometimes, as with Hitler in Mein Kampf, you have to believe that these people will actually do what they say they will do.” Had Clarke referenced Brezhnev’s speeches rather than Hitler, he might have struck a nerve. Instead, Wolfowitz replied testily, “I resent any comparison between the Holocaust and this little terrorist in Afghanistan.”143

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  On the morning of September 11, 2001, Wolfowitz met with a congressional delegation at the Pentagon. They were discussing an issue that would soon appear beside the point: national missile defense. A colleague interrupted the meeting to inform the group that a passenger jet had crashed into the World Trade Center. They turned on the television and watched in horror as a plane struck the second tower. Black smoke enveloped lower Manhattan as an inferno, fed by thousands of gallons of aviation fuel, raged inside the towers. “There didn’t seem to be much to do about it immediately and we went on…,” Wolfowitz recalled, “then the whole building shook. I have to confess my first reaction was an earthquake. I didn’t put the two things together. Rumsfeld did instantly.”144

  What felt to Wolfowitz like an earthquake was a Boeing 757 crashing into the west side
of the Pentagon, killing everyone on board and 125 in the building. Al-Qaeda terrorists had hijacked the plane, subdued or killed its pilots using primitive box cutters, and crashed it into the Pentagon. The plane was traveling at approximately 530 mph at the moment of impact.145 It was one of a four-part suicide attack using hijacked commercial aircraft that had been many years in the making. The strikes on the WTC that Wolfowitz had observed on television were part of the same assault—this is what Rumsfeld had “put together.” A fourth hijacked aircraft, destined for a second target in Washington—the Capitol or the White House, most likely—crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, following a struggle between the hijackers and the passengers. After learning through cell-phone conversations of what had happened in lower Manhattan, the thirty-three people on board bravely decided to author their own fate, saving hundreds of lives in the capital and preventing the destruction of another iconic building.

  The revolt on Flight 93 was an inspiring act of defiance on a dark day—2,977 people were murdered. As the World Trade Center—where the majority died following the fire-induced collapse of both towers—was an international place of business, some 12 percent of those killed were foreign nationals: 373 people in total. One single company, Cantor Fitzgerald, whose offices were based above the impact zone in the north tower, lost two-thirds of its entire workforce, or 658 people. The New York City Fire Department lost 343 men and women, “the largest loss of life of any emergency response agency in history.”146 The scale and murderous intent of the attack took a long time to process; the harrowing images of that day, broadcast live on television, were searing. It was a traumatic event for the United States, the deadliest ever attack on its soil.

  After the attack on the Pentagon, Wolfowitz had been separated from Rumsfeld, to ensure continuity at the Defense Department in the event of subsequent lethal attacks, and taken to a nuclear bunker for safekeeping outside the capital. In separate locations, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz arrived at similar conclusions. According to Lewis Solomon, “On the afternoon of 9/11, Rumsfeld mused about going after not only Osama bin Laden, but also Saddam Hussein. He asked one of his aides, a Pentagon attorney, to talk to Wolfowitz about Iraq’s connections with bin Laden.”147 Wolfowitz was thinking much the same thing:

  I think what September 11th to me said was this is just the beginning of what these bastards can do if they start getting access to so-called modern weapons, and that it’s not something you can live with any longer. So there needs to be a campaign, a strategy, a long-term effort, to root out these networks and to get governments out of the business of supporting them. But that wasn’t something that was going to happen overnight.148

  Getting governments out of the business of supporting terrorism meant one thing: invading Iraq and deposing Saddam. Yet this reasoning was problematic, to put it mildly, given that no evidence existed connecting Iraq’s emasculated, secular leader to the Islamist 9/11 attacks. And indeed, none would ever be found.

  But the Bush administration pushed this line so insistently—Dick Cheney was a particularly effective salesman—that by the summer of 2003, seven out of ten Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was implicated in the 9/11 attacks.149 Wolfowitz’s post-9/11 push for regime change in Iraq was predicated on evidence that did not exist. But in those fearful circumstances, with the nation on a war footing and dissent steamrollered as unpatriotic, the public was willing to give him and the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt. Walter Lippmann and George Kennan’s misanthropic views regarding the incompatibility of democracy with the making of a temperate foreign policy never looked more plausible than from 2001 to 2004. Let down by its politicians and print and television media—The New York Times later apologized for its supine coverage of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 foreign policies—the U.S. public sphere became perilously misinformed.150

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  On September 12, the debate began in earnest on how to respond to al-Qaeda’s brutal attack. Over the course of a fractious NSC meeting, Donald Rumsfeld echoed Wolfowitz in recommending Iraq as the primary retaliatory target. Colin Powell queried this reasoning, observing that the American people would expect—indeed, demand—its military to attack the actual perpetrators al-Qaeda, not Iraq, whose leader, while noxious, was hostile to radical Islam. Richard Clarke was pleased to have the secretary of state’s support, observing privately to Powell that “for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor.” Powell replied, “It’s not over yet,” and so it would prove. That evening, President Bush took Clarke aside for a quiet word. “Look,” Bush said, “I know you have a lot to do and all … but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way.” Clarke replied, “But Mr. President, al Qaeda did this.” Bush said, “I know, I know but … see if Saddam was involved. Just look.” Clarke tried (and failed) to be “more respectful, more responsive,” replying, “Absolutely, we will look … again. But, you know, we have looked several times for state sponsorship of Al Qaeda and not found any real linkages to Iraq. Iran plays a little, as does Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Yemen.” Bush cut him off, saying, “Look into Iraq, Saddam,” and walked away. Clarke recalled that one of his staff members, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, “stared after him with her mouth hanging open.” Paul Kurtz, a counterterrorism adviser, arrived at the scene, noticed the ashen faces, and asked, “Geez, what just happened here?” “Wolfowitz got to him,” replied Gordon-Hagerty.151

  The essentials of America’s military response to the 9/11 attacks were thrashed out at Camp David on September 15. During a long day of meetings, it became clear that Bush’s principal foreign-policy advisers held diverging views on how to respond. Colin Powell’s preference was to attack al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan, which would likely necessitate a full-scale war against the Taliban regime that hosted them. The secretary of state believed that this course was just and proportionate. Wolfowitz argued that the Afghan option was perilous and uncertain. Fighting in mountainous terrain was challenging and the Taliban was firmly entrenched. He countered that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a much more inviting target and that there was at least a 50 percent possibility that Saddam was involved in the attacks.152 During a coffee break, Wolfowitz lobbied President Bush directly on the merits of his plan, observing that it “would be very simple to enable the Iraqi opposition to take over the southern part of the country and protect it with American air power.” This area would include the bulk of Iraq’s oil fields, which could eventually be used to finance the costs of the operation.153

  Secretary of State Powell and Vice President Cheney were not convinced by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld’s prioritization. Powell observed that the attacks had created a huge reservoir of international goodwill toward the United States—the headline in France’s Le Monde on September 12 read “Nous sommes tous Américains” (We are all Americans), and NATO had invoked Article 5 of its treaty for the first time, committing its signatories to America’s defense in this time of war. This reservoir would quickly dissipate, Powell reasoned, if the administration targeted Iraq ahead of al-Qaeda. Afghanistan first made sense on every conceivable level. “If we do that,” Powell observed with a nod to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, “we will have increased our ability to go after Iraq—if we can prove that Iraq had a role [in 9/11].”154 Cheney agreed with Powell: “If we go after Saddam Hussein, we lose our rightful place as the good guy.”155 The director of the CIA, George Tenet, agreed with Powell and Cheney: “Don’t hit now. It would be a mistake. The first target needs to be al Qaeda.”156 The vice president took Wolfowitz to one side and bluntly told him to “stop agitating for targeting Saddam.”157

  During an NSC meeting on September 17, President Bush announced his decision: “I believe Iraq was involved, but I’m not going to strike them now. I don’t have the evidence at this point.”158 The president’s decision was a short-term disappointment to
Wolfowitz, but there was little doubt that regime change in Iraq remained on the to-do list—and that his contribution to putting it there had been important. As Donald Rumsfeld wrote in his memoir, “Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz helped conceptualize the global war on terrorism as being broader than just Afghanistan. At that Camp David discussion Wolfowitz raised the question of Iraq, but Bush wanted to keep the focus on Afghanistan.”159 While strictly true, President Bush himself made it clear that Afghanistan was only the first stage of what he christened the “global war on terror.” “This crusade, this war on terrorism,” Bush declared in a televised speech, “is going to take a while, and the American people must be patient.” The president subsequently retracted the clumsy reference to a crusade—which evoked civilizational, religious conflict between the West and Islam, of a type that Harvard’s Samuel Huntington had prophesized in his book The Clash of Civilizations—but the speech honestly communicated the extent of his ambitions. On September 26, Wolfowitz spelled some of them out during a press conference in Brussels: “As the president has said over and over again, it’s not about one man or one organization. It’s about a network of terrorist organizations. It’s about the support and sanctuary and harboring they receive from some states. And while we are going to try to find every snake in the swamp that we can, the essence of the strategy is to try to drain the swamp.”160

  Wolfowitz had in fact alluded to this broader strategy on September 13 during an interview on Fox News, when he talked of “ending states who sponsor terrorism.” When later asked if the state he had in mind was Iraq, Wolfowitz replied that Saddam Hussein “is one of the most active supporters of state terrorism.”161 Wolfowitz was incisive and proactive in the week following the attacks, and his success in setting agendas would later become clear. His next task was to provide a coherent rationale for a second American war on Iraq, with all the complexities this posed in terms of locating a casus belli that didn’t disintegrate upon first skeptical touch. This vexing task consumed Wolfowitz’s intellectual energies through the fall of 2001, while the department he served prepared for war against another enemy in a different theater.