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

by Glenn Greenwald

  Illustrative of these debate-stifling, deeply personal attacks on Baker is this December 2006 commentary from Marty Peretz, longtime editor of the allegedly sober and serious political and foreign policy magazine The New Republic:

  Yes, I can’t get over James Baker being the chairman of a civil commission on war and statecraft. The first reason is that he is primarily responsible for American policy in the first Bush administration. That policy was a strategic disaster and a moral enormity. On Baker’s head rests almost all of the responsibility for Saddam Hussein surviving in power after the first Gulf war.

  And, given that fact, also responsible for Saddam’s atrocities against the Shia and Kurds for which the deposed tyrant is at last being tried in the very context of this war. James Baker is actually an accessory to war crimes of the Iraqi Baath Party in a war fought entirely against civilians. The truth is that he trusted Saddam…just as he seems to trust Bashar Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be reasonable. If he truly trusts them on anything he is, well, as gullible as Chamberlain.

  Beyond branding Baker as a war criminal, neoconservatives are also smearing him as an anti-Semite—again. Peretz, in a separate post on his blog, accused Baker of using the ISG Report to wage what Peretz calls “Baker’s old war with the Israelis and with the Jews.” New York Post columnist John Podhoretz accused Baker of having only one central objective: “Get Israel.”

  Rush Limbaugh accused Baker of leading the “Iraq Surrender Group,” and at the right-wing blog site Pajamas Media, the AEI’s Michael Ledeen described Limbaugh’s glib formulation as “elegant” and himself pronounced the ISG Report “disgusting” because it recommended talks with Israel’s enemies. Podhoretz said the commission was composed of “doddering old fools,” while Charles Krauthammer mocked the report’s “instant irrelevance” and called it a “farce,” worthy only of “ridicule.” New York Post columnist Ralph Peters said that the biblical figure Baker most resembles is Pontius Pilate, except the “difference is that Pilate just wanted to wash his hands of an annoyance, while Baker would wash his hands in the blood of our troops.”

  One source for the anti-Semitism smears hurled at Baker was the ISG Report’s acknowledgment of the obvious connection between the United States’ blind and reflexive support for Israel regarding its conflict with the Palestinians on the one hand, and anti-U.S. resentment in the Middle East on the other. But the principal cause of these vicious accusations was Baker’s attempt to introduce into America’s public foreign policy debate the possibility that the U.S. may not need to wage war on Iran, but instead might be able to achieve constructive results, even rapprochement, by negotiating with Iran. That was plainly a top priority of the report—to expand and elevate the scope of the public debate that the U.S. is having over Iran specifically and its policies toward the Muslim world generally.

  But such an expansion in the scope of the debate is precisely what the president and his followers fear most. The single-minded, cartoon depiction of Iran as pure Evil is their greatest asset, their most closely guarded weapon. That is what prevents any meaningful examination of the premises of our hostile Middle East policies and of our war posture to Iran—by both the American public and the president himself.

  Plainly, the president is still firmly on board with this Manichean, war-driven view of the Middle East and of Iran. Before the ink was even dry on the Baker-Hamilton report, the White House made it unmistakably clear that the president would not even consider the report’s recommendation that the U.S. negotiate with Iran. That recommendation was identified as one of two proposals—along with the report’s attempt to set a target date for troop withdrawal from Iraq—which the president had, in advance, simply rejected out of hand.

  AN ALLIANCE WITH “PURE EVIL”

  The cartoonish depiction of Iran embraced by Bush and his supporters is nothing more than pure fiction, completely removed from reality. The view of the Iranian government as irrational, intractable, single-minded evildoers bent on threatening the United States and wreaking world destruction stands in stark contrast to their actions over the last several years.

  It is simply beyond dispute that Iran’s behavior since the 9/11 attacks empirically disproves the president’s assertions about what motivates them and how they behave. Indeed, the gap between reality and the president’s rhetoric concerning Iran is almost impossible to overstate. It is true that Iran—like most countries—pursues its own interests and security, and that has placed it at times in opposition to the United States. It is also true that, like many governments around the world, including some of our closest and most important allies, the Iranian government is repressive in many ways toward its citizens and is far from a model democracy. It is absolutely the case that intense anti-American rhetoric is commonly expressed by Iranian leaders; and, in particular, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, frequently issues ugly and threatening sentiments toward Israel.

  But it is equally true that since 2001 the interests of the U.S. and Iran have on multiple occasions converged significantly, and at those times, the two countries—particularly during the early years of the Bush presidency—worked together toward common goals as virtual allies. During this same period, Iran has cultivated new and important allies around the world and developed substantial commercial relationships with our own European allies. And it has maintained close and cooperative relations with many of its neighbors—including, most prominently, the newly elected government of Iraq.

  In short, the picture of Iran that emerges from its actions is one of a rational state actor with which the United States can cooperate toward common goals. Iran has invaded no other countries. While Iran’s military strength is greater than Saddam-led Iraq’s, its military spending and military power are a tiny fraction of those of the U.S. Iranian armed forces could not threaten the U.S. homeland in any meaningful way and the calculating behavior of its leaders leaves little doubt that they realize that.

  In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Iran was one of the single greatest sources of assistance in helping the United States to undermine the Taliban and stabilize the new Karzai government. The U.S. and Iran worked together through numerous channels and on numerous fronts in pursuit of the same goal in Afghanistan. To be sure, Iran’s cooperation with the U.S.—like America’s cooperation with Iran—was driven by self-interest. Iran viewed the Sunni militants who controlled the Taliban as oppressive to Shiites and hostile to Iran, and had long-standing tensions with the Taliban. The same dynamic accounts for long-standing and intense Iranian hostility toward the largely Sunni terrorists of Al Qaeda. And Iran perceived long-term benefits from a more cooperative relationship with the U.S.

  That Iran provided substantial assistance to the U.S. in Afghanistan is beyond serious dispute. The fiercely nonpartisan Congressional Research Service issued a June 2003 Report on Iran that noted, in its very first paragraph, that President Bush declared Iran to be one of three members of the “Axis of Evil…despite Iran’s tacit cooperation with the United States against the Taliban in the post–September 11, 2001, war in Afghanistan.” Even the Bush State Department, in its December 2006 Report on Afghanistan, expressly recognized Iran’s active—and ongoing—opposition to the Taliban, as well as its positive, stabilizing role in helping the Karzai government. The State Department provided the historical background that explains this cooperation:

  Following the emergence of the Taliban and their harsh treatment of Afghanistan’s Shi’a minority, Iran stepped up assistance to the Northern Alliance. Relations with the Taliban deteriorated further in 1998 after Taliban forces seized the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif and executed Iranian diplomats. Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s relations with Iran have improved. Iran has been active in Afghan reconstruction efforts, particularly in the western portion of the country.

  To facilitate this cooperation, Iran and the U.S., in late 2001 and 2002, engaged in direct, bilateral dialogue as part of the
long-standing (pre-9/11) “6+2” Multinational Framework sponsored by the U.N. That group included both the United States and Iran. The U.S. used the cover of that framework to engage Iran directly in high-level contacts in the months following the 9/11 attacks, so as to maximize cooperation between the two countries.

  The post-9/11 improvement in U.S.-Iran relations was actually a trend that began under the Clinton administration and was extended into the pre-9/11 Bush administration. Indeed, a more flexible posture toward Iran was one of the few significant Clinton policies that the Bush administration chose to continue.

  At the beginning of Clinton’s presidency, his administration took a hard line against Iran, implementing what it called a “dual containment” strategy of isolating both Iran and Iraq. In the mid-1990s, President Clinton imposed various new sanctions on Iran, including a 1995 ban on U.S. investment and trade and a 1996 law imposing sanctions on U.S. investment in Iran’s energy sector.

  But the 1997 democratic election of the moderate president Mohammad Khatami led Clinton officials to become more optimistic about positive relations with Iran. The remainder of the Clinton administration was marked by an incremental loosening of sanctions as a reward for conciliatory gestures by the Iranians, accompanied by an attempt, with the cooperation of the GOP-controlled Congress, to move toward further engagement with Iran. The last four years of the 1990s saw a steady improvement in U.S.-Iranian relations—a trend that continued, even accelerated, during the early stages of the Bush presidency.

  Ever since a U.S. national emergency concerning Iran was declared during the 1979 hostage crisis—a declaration that vests the executive with broad powers for dealing with the emergency in question—each American president has been legally required (in order to extend the emergency powers) to issue annual findings declaring that the emergency is ongoing. Under the Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton administrations, it was typical to use very harsh language about the Iranians when renewing the national emergency. The March 16, 1998, Clinton declaration was typical, as it proclaimed Iran to “present an extraordinary and unusual threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

  But on November 13, 2001, the first time President Bush was required to issue such a statement, that language was softened considerably to reflect the improving relations between the two countries. In the place of the standard decades-old hostile language toward Iran, President Bush merely declared, rather meekly: “Relations with Iran have not yet returned to normal.” That language was far more mild, and far less provocative, than any prior statement from any administration regarding Iran since 1979.

  The cooperation in Afghanistan between the two countries unmistakably signaled an overall improvement in relations. In November 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell shook hands with the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, at the U.N. headquarters in New York City. PBS’s Frontline described that event as “a simple yet historic gesture that seemed the most tantalizing hint of rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran since the Islamic revolution and the hostage crisis in 1979.” Thereafter, Powell himself said “that we may be able to talk to Iran, that we may be able to have a reasonable conversation with Iranian leaders.”

  The opportunities for U.S.-Iranian rapprochement in the wake of the 9/11 attacks were real and substantial. In their December 28, 2001, op-ed in the Washington Post, Middle East experts John Newhouse and Thomas Pickering identified Iran as the first and most important of what they called the “big opportunities” resulting from 9/11. Citing the various forms of cooperation between the two countries, they predicted that “the turmoil that has long agitated U.S.-Iranian relations could begin to give way, if only gradually, to a balanced and productive relationship between two societies that have more in common than either cares to admit.”

  The benefits from such a rapprochement were self-evident and potentially region changing. According to Newhouse and Pickering:

  Iran could become a stabilizing influence in a congenitally unstable region. It has attributes unique to the region: rudimentary but real politics based on free elections; a legitimate government; a history and culture all its own; and uncontested borders fixed by that experience, rather than imposed by other governments. Iran has had its revolution and never come close to imploding. Support for the hard-line Islamist clerics who came to power in that revolution has dwindled. Iran is a largely moderate and pro-American society.

  They explained that “Iran wants to be treated by the United States as a normal country and a respectable player within the international system” and identified multiple incentives the United States could offer that would be critical to the Iranians and which could serve as the basis for an overarching agreement. They concluded: “Friendly and productive relations between Iran and the United States can and should evolve.”

  The post-9/11 U.S.-Iranian rapprochement extended beyond Afghanistan. The 2003 Congressional Research Service Report also documented that “Iran was also quietly helpful in the U.S. effort to oust Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.” Saddam, of course, had invaded Iran in 1980 and then prosecuted a brutal and merciless war, including the savage use of chemical weapons, and he brutally repressed Iraqi Shiites in the south who maintained close ethnic and religious ties to Iran. Few countries could have expected to benefit more from the removal of Saddam than Iran, and with the planned U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Iranians and the U.S. thus once again found themselves with aligned interests.

  That Iran cooperated meaningfully and closely with the United States in the wake of the 9/11 attacks is not in dispute. There are, however, differing views of Iran’s motives for doing so. The Bush administration and its most vehement anti-Iranian supporters claim that Iran did this only because Iran perceived the fanatical Sunni Taliban regime as a threat and was motivated by its own interests to see that regime defeated. They make the same claim regarding Iran’s tacit acceptance of the American war to depose Saddam.

  Others, including Flynt Leverett, a former CIA analyst who became a senior director for Middle East policy on the Bush National Security Council, disagree with that assessment, arguing instead that Iran’s cooperation with the U.S. over Afghanistan was motivated by Iran’s desire for a closer and more constructive overall relationship with the U.S. As Leverett wrote in a December 2006 op-ed in the New York Times,

  The argument that Iran helped America in Afghanistan because it was in Tehran’s interest to get rid of the Taliban is misplaced. Iran could have let America remove the Taliban without getting its own hands dirty, as it remained neutral during the 1991 Gulf war. Tehran cooperated with United States efforts in Afghanistan primarily because it wanted a better relationship with Washington.

  But one does not need to resolve this dispute over Iran’s motives in order to draw the most important conclusion. Iran is a rational state actor, which, like most other countries in the world—including American allies—will eagerly cooperate with the United States when their interests converge with ours. It is empirically true that Iran and the U.S. are perfectly capable of working toward the same common goals, and it is empirically false that the Iranians are pursuing an agenda of pure anti-American Evil divorced from rational considerations of their own interests and/or driven by some sort of apocalyptic goal of destruction of the United States.

  To know that a country and its leaders act rationally is to take a huge and critical step toward realizing that that country—no matter how internally repressive it might be—cannot and will not be a threat to the U.S. As “evil” as the U.S. government always maintained the Soviet Union was, we did not wage war on the Soviets but instead relied upon their rationality—i.e., their knowledge that they could not wage war on the U.S. without suffering full-scale (albeit mutual) annihilation.

  The Iranians, with a military force that is a tiny fraction of the Soviet army, know this as well. That they are rational and that they act in their self-interest demonstrates by itself the absurdity of claiming that they are a threat to th
e security of the United States. Independently, to demonstrate a country’s rationality is to demonstrate that it is susceptible to negotiations and agreements when it perceives such matters to be in its interest (which is, of course, the only time anyone, individual or nation, enters into an agreement).

  Indeed, even after President Bush declared Iran to be a member of the “axis of evil” in January 2002, Iran continued to pursue a working relationship with the U.S. beyond the Afghanistan issue. The Financial Times reported that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, in April 2002, “has quietly authorised the Supreme National Security Council to assess the merits of starting talks with the U.S.”

  And in 2003, the Iranians made an extraordinary overture with the hope of achieving full-scale rapprochement with the U.S. In April of that year—almost immediately after the U.S. military had overrun Baghdad—the Iranian government made an unsolicited offer to the Bush administration with the hope of resolving all significant sources of conflict between the two countries, including the state of Iran’s nuclear program. In mid-2006, the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler obtained the Iranian document and reported:

  Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table—including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.