A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

by Glenn Greenwald

  CONTENTS

  COVER PAGE

  TITLE PAGE

  PREFACE

  CHAPTER ONE Bush Agonistes

  CHAPTER TWO The Manichean Warrior

  CHAPTER THREE The Manichean Road to Baghdad

  CHAPTER FOUR Iran: The Next War?

  CHAPTER FIVE The Manichean Paradox: Moral Certitude Tramples Moral Constraints

  CHAPTER SIX The Tragic Legacy of George W. Bush

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ALSO BY GLENN GREENWALD

  COPYRIGHT

  PREFACE

  Let me just first tell you that I’ve never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions.

  —GEORGE W. BUSH, September 12, 2006,

  speaking to a group of right-wing pundits in the White House

  I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

  —ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  The attacks of September 11 presented George Bush with a rare opportunity of historic proportions. Virtually overnight, he led a suddenly unified and purposeful citizenry that was prepared—even eager—to set aside the petty though intense partisan wars which had plagued the country for the prior two decades, and once again focus on the nation’s core values and shared political principles, the ones which transcend ideological differences and which make America so worth defending.

  The president’s principled and eloquent post-9/11 rhetoric solidified this unity and ensured that the vast bulk of Americans—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—would loyally support both him and his policies over the course of the next two years. There are very few periods in American presidential history, if there are any, that compare to the widespread popularity and unchallenged power George Bush amassed—not only in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks but also up to, including, and for some time following the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Few presidents have soared as high or commanded such unthwarted power as did the post-9/11 George W. Bush.

  And yet, as the end of his presidency approached, historians and political figures from across the ideological spectrum—including many of his previously most fervent supporters—were speaking of the Bush legacy as one of colossal failure. As President Bush entered his lame-duck term, few presidents in American history had ever been as isolated or as unpopular for such a sustained duration. Democrats and Independents intensely and irreversibly disapproved of his presidency, and droves of previously loyal Republicans—both political leaders and rank-and-file—abandoned him as well.

  The sheer scope of the collapse of the Bush presidency is most dramatically illustrated by comparing the two midterm elections that took place during his tenure. In 2002, the Republican Party was able to ride President Bush’s potent personal popularity to a truly historic victory in the midterm elections, as it seized control of the Senate and increased substantially its control of the House—an extremely rare feat for a sitting president’s party. Yet the 2006 midterm election produced the precisely opposite outcome for Republicans: a crashing and shattering defeat, universally attributed to the country’s deep dislike of the president and his signature, legacy policy—the invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq. The heights to which George Bush ascended in the first few years of his presidency were matched only by the severe depths to which he plunged.

  How and why did the Bush administration squander its deep-seated and seemingly intractable popularity? How and why did the president tragically waste the opportunity to restore at least some enduring unity in the American populace and rejuvenate a shared sense of national identity and purpose? This book explores these questions by examining the Bush legacy—a legacy of profound failure, chaos, and incalculable, perhaps unprecedented, damage to the country.

  The Bush legacy is tragic because its outcome was far from inevitable. Historical circumstances created an opportunity for lasting achievement, but the president’s chosen Manichean worldview, accompanied by his suffocatingly rigid conviction in his own Rightness, steered the country on a course of disaster and literally prevented him from modifying that course, let alone choosing another, even as inescapable evidence of his own failures mounted.

  The steep and powerful rise of the Bush presidency, and its abrupt and cataclysmic collapse, are examined and documented in chapter 1. As that chapter demonstrates, it is genuinely difficult to overstate the extent to which the country has repudiated George Bush.

  Following the resounding 2006 midterm defeat, the president’s approval ratings neared the level of Richard Nixon’s when he was forced from office in disgrace. President Bush’s isolation and abandonment became so severe that even red-state Republican officeholders facing re-election were forced to offer their constituents proof that they vigorously opposed Bush and his policies, and even more tellingly, the movement that was most responsible for Bush’s twice being elected as president and that chose him as its standard-bearer—political conservatism—undertook a full-blown effort to disassociate George Bush from their ideology by suddenly claiming that, all along, Bush was never a “real conservative.”

  Elite political pundits who had supported both the president and his war literally began denying having done so. President Bush became such a radioactive commodity—such a clear consensus had arisen that he was one of the worst presidents, if not the single worst president, in American history—that disassociating oneself from him became a matter of political survival and a prerequisite for preserving any remnants of credibility.

  The core principles and decision-making patterns that drove George Bush and engendered the collapse of his presidency are examined in chapter 2. Despite the continuous and enthusiastic embrace of Bush by the vast bulk of political conservatives, it has long been vividly clear that the president ( just as was true for Ronald Reagan) simply does not govern in accordance with the claimed principles of political conservatism as they exist in their “pure,” abstract form. George Bush has presided over massive increases in domestic spending, the conversion of a multibillion-dollar surplus into an even larger deficit, the creation of vast new bureaucratic fiefdoms, an unprecedented expansion of the power of the federal government, governmental intrusions into multiple areas previously preserved for the states or off-limits altogether, and a wanton disregard for the rule of law. Whatever political philosophy has propelled George Bush’s governance, it is not the abstract tenets of Goldwater/small-government conservatism.

  Instead, what lies at the heart of the Bush presidency is an absolutist worldview capable of understanding all issues and challenges only in the moralistic, overly simplistic, and often inapplicable terms of “Good vs. Evil.” The president is driven by his core conviction that he has found the Good, that he is a crusader for it, that anything is justified in pursuit of it, and that anything which impedes his decision-making is, by definition, a deliberate or unwitting ally of Evil. This mentality has single-handedly prevented him from governing, changing course, and even engaging realities that deviate from those convictions. The president’s description of himself as “the Decider” is accurate. His mind-set has dominated the American political landscape throughout his presidency, and virtually all significant events of the Bush Era are a by-product of his core Manichean mentality.

  Chapter 3 examines how this mind-set led the United States into disaster in Iraq and subsequently ensured a brutal, entirely counterproductive and seemingly endless occupation. Chapter 4 details how precisely this same mind-set, clung to as tenaciously as ever before by the president, has also placed the country on a pot
entially even more disastrous, and seemingly inevitable, collision course with Iran.

  As those two chapters demonstrate, the president became convinced, by a variety of disparate factions which influenced him, that those countries and their leaders were literally the embodiment of “ultimate Evil”—the equivalent of Adolf Hitler—and that full-scale destruction of the “enemies” via unrelenting war was and is the only viable option. That single-minded conviction remained—and continues to remain—in place even as its obvious failures became glaringly evident and even as constraints of resources and other realities rendered pursuit of that militaristic course plainly disastrous. The discussion in these chapters includes an examination of how the country’s key political institutions—led by the national media—came to enable and even embrace the president’s moralistic mentality, thereby precluding any meaningful debate or rational examination for the courses he chose.

  Chapter 5 examines the ultimate tragic irony of George Bush’s Manichean morality—namely, that embracing a core, unshakable conviction of one’s own rightness legitimizes, and even renders inevitable, some of the most amoral and ethically monstrous policies, justified as necessary means to achieve a morally imperative end. The Bush presidency, awash in moralistic rhetoric, has ushered in some of the most extremist, previously unthinkable and profoundly un-American practices—from indefinite, lawless detentions, to the use of torture, to bloody preventive wars of choice, to the abduction of innocent people literally off the street or from their homes, to radical new theories designed to vest in the president the power to break the law.

  These measures were pursued not despite the moralistic roots of the president’s agenda, but because of them. Those who believe that they are on the path of righteousness, who are crusaders for the objective Good, will frequently become convinced that there can be no limitations on the weapons used to achieve their ends. The moral imperative of their agenda justifies—even requires—all steps undertaken to fulfill it. As the president ceaselessly proclaimed the Goodness at the heart of America’s destiny and its role in the world, his actions have resulted in an almost full-scale destruction of America’s moral credibility in almost every country and on every continent. The same president who has insisted that core moralism drives him has brought America to its lowest moral standing in history.

  The final chapter, chapter 6, places the Bush legacy in historical context, and finds that only one modern president can remotely be compared to Bush in terms of how isolated, weakened, and unpopular Bush has become: the Vietnam-plagued Lyndon Johnson. But whereas Johnson had a string of widely admired and long-lasting domestic achievements, Bush has virtually none.

  The damage of Johnson’s one-term presidency was contained by his decision not to seek re-election, a decision mandated by intense opposition from every sector of the country, including Johnson’s own party. Bush, however, will have wielded power for eight long, highly eventful years—fueled by a Congress controlled by loyalists in his party, a generally docile press, and a political movement that rarely opposed any decision he made. For that reason, and in stark contrast to the far more contained impact of the Johnson administration, the Bush presidency has transformed the national character of the United States and fundamentally altered how the world perceives our country.

  It is always crucial for a nation that has endured—and allowed—such radical change to understand why it has occurred. And, in every case, the value of understanding what drives an American presidency is self-evident. But in the case of the Bush presidency—undoubtedly one of the most consequential presidencies in American history—the task of examining its dynamics and its legacy is vital for an entirely separate reason.

  George W. Bush is a single individual, who will permanently leave the American political stage on January 20, 2009. But the political movement that transformed Bush into an icon—and which loyally supported, glorified, and sustained him—is not going anywhere. Bush is but a by-product and a perfect reflection of that movement, one which has been weakened and diminished by Bush’s staggering unpopularity but is far from dead. It intends to rejuvenate itself by finding a new leader, one who appears cosmetically different from the deeply unpopular Bush, but who, in reality, shares Bush’s fundamental beliefs about the world (which are the core beliefs of that movement) and who intends to follow the same disastrous course Bush has chosen for this country.

  To understand Bush and his presidency, then, is not merely a matter of historical interest. Examining the dynamic driving his presidency is also vital for understanding the right-wing political movement that has dominated our political landscape since the mid-1990s—a movement that calls itself “conservative” but which, as many traditional conservatives have themselves complained, has no actual allegiance to the political principles for which conservatism claims to stand. That is the movement that George Bush has come to embody, and the attributes of the Bush presidency, the ones which have spawned such a tragic legacy for our country, are the same attributes driving the movement that created, supported, and sustained that presidency.

  The values and principles on which America was founded are far greater than any single president. American ideals—those to which the country has long aspired (if not always perfectly followed)—transcend the damage that any one presidency can inflict, even in eight years. But a thorough understanding of the Bush era is indispensable in attempting to reverse and repair the damage wrought by the legacy of George W. Bush’s tragic presidency, to reaffirm the defining values of our country, and to restore America’s strength and credibility in the world.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Bush Agonistes

  86 • 66 • 59 • 48 • 39 • 32

  Those numbers designate the percentages of Americans who approved of George W. Bush’s performance as president in late 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, respectively. This data, from Washington Post–ABC News polls, demonstrate that every year George Bush has remained in office, fewer and fewer Americans have approved of the job he has done, and more and more Americans have become dissatisfied with his presidency.

  And it is not merely the quantity but also the intensity of the disapproval that has steadily increased. The percentages of Americans who “strongly disapprove” have risen dramatically from the end of 2001 to the end of 2006: 6, 20, 29, 38, 47, 53. And the group consisting of the president’s most enthusiastic supporters—those who “strongly approve” of his performance—has shrunk year after year: 64, 45, 39, 27, 20, 18.

  The dramatic shift in the public’s perceptions of George Bush is unsurprising in light of what a consequential presidency this has been. Among admirers and opponents of George Bush, there are exceedingly few grounds for agreement. But few Americans, regardless of their political leanings, would dispute that the impact of the Bush presidency on America will be both profound and long lasting.

  During Bush’s tenure, the United States suffered the first major foreign terrorist attack on its soil. The U.S. invaded two sovereign nations—one which had an integral connection to that attack and one which had none—followed by a violent and protracted occupation of both countries with no end in sight. Beyond Iraq, the Bush administration has been directing increasingly threatening rhetoric toward yet more countries, particularly Iran, the most powerful Middle Eastern nation other than Israel. Yet by the end of 2006, all of the demands on America’s armed forces had resulted in a military that was stretched so thin that new missions were and remain all but unthinkable. Prominent politicians in both parties were calling for a significant expansion of the U.S. military based on the expectation that far more missions lie ahead.

  Subsequent to 9/11, the Bush administration constructed a super–maximum security prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which it declared beyond the reach of any law, and the image of its orange-clad, bowed, and shackled prisoners became a symbol of anti-American resentment around the world. The president’s lawyers engaged in a series of legal battles to defend unprecedented theories of
virtually limitless presidential power, which the president applied not only to foreign nationals but also to American citizens, including those on U.S. soil. Immediately prior to being voted out of office, the Republicans who controlled Congress enacted a law vesting in the president sweeping new powers of indefinite detention and coercive interrogation.

  Throughout the Bush tenure, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies sent terrorist suspects to secret prisons, so-called black sites, throughout Eastern Europe. They abducted citizens off the streets of other nations—including those of America’s own allies—and sent them for interrogation to countries notorious for the use of torture. World opinion toward America underwent a fundamental shift as anti-American sentiment reached an all-time high, spreading throughout most countries and on every continent.

  Multiple bombing campaigns and other U.S. military assaults have undoubtedly killed scores of Al Qaeda members, along with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocents. Al Qaeda’s ability to operate freely in Afghanistan has surely been impeded, and—other than the now-forgotten though still-unsolved series of deadly anthrax attacks in 2001 aimed at political leaders and prominent journalists—there have been no further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, nor any convincing evidence of a serious, formidable plot to perpetrate one. However, the leader of Al Qaeda at the time of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, has been neither apprehended nor killed, at least to the administration’s knowledge. By all accounts, Al Qaeda’s Taliban allies are resurgent, and Al Qaeda has exploited the chaos caused by the removal of Iraq’s government to operate within a portion of Western Iraq. As the president entered lame-duck status, his vows to prosecute the “war”—encompassing not only Iraq but a whole host of other nations and groups—transformed into threats to escalate it further still.