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

by Glenn Greenwald

  After meeting with Mubarak, Cheney was expected to travel to Saudi Arabia later Tuesday for talks with King Abdullah….

  Saudi Arabia and Egypt—both key U.S. allies—are the two Arab powers behind an Iraqi national reconciliation conference that is expected to convene next month in Iraq to clear the way for a larger Sunni participation in the political process.

  Both of those close U.S. allies regularly commit human rights abuses equally as egregious as those of the Iranians. Neither country has established anything close to the democratic processes that allow Iranians to elect many of their leaders. Criticisms of leaders of the type voiced regularly about President Ahmadinejad are strictly prohibited in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where citizens sit in prison for years for far more mild dissent.

  Yet George Bush has entertained both tyrants—the one ruling Egypt and the one ruling Saudi Arabia—at his Texas ranch, a distinction which, as we are so often told, is reserved only for Bush’s closest and most important friends in the world. If internal repression is the metric for determining the new Hitlers in the Middle East, there are several countries (at least) ahead of Iran on that list, including some of the closest friends the Bush administration has in that region.

  Indeed, a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is a dependence upon our alliances with some of that region’s most repressive dictators. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum, who helped craft the president’s speeches touting the need to promote democracy in the Middle East, complained on his National Review blog in January 2007 about the fact that the president has failed to adhere to his own claimed doctrine:

  Having declared war on tyranny, it hardly makes sense to expect the help and cooperation of the tyrants in question. Right? And yet, the foreign policy of the Bush administration has been founded on the assumption that the military regime in Pakistan wishes the US to succeed in Afghanistan and that the authoritarian regimes of the Persian Gulf wish the US to succeed in Iraq.

  President Bush’s ostensible veneration of democracy as a measuring stick for the morality of other countries suggests that Iran is far from the top of the list of repressive tyrannies. While the mullahs who exercise true power are beyond the reach of the democratic processes, President Ahmadinejad himself was voted for by Iranians in an election widely considered imperfect though generally legitimate. Lower political officeholders in Iran are routinely chosen via the democratic process, and an independent and spirited opposition movement has flourished in that country.

  In addition to the partial democratic rights, Iranian society is far more pluralistic than most other Middle Eastern nations. With some minor exceptions (such as a prohibition on becoming army officers), Jewish Iranians have full rights of citizenship and even have an elected representative in the Iranian Parliament. Many Iranian Jews have relatives in Israel and travel freely between the two countries. Tehran hosts a Jewish charity hospital, one of only four such worldwide. If there is a threat against any synagogue, Iranian security forces protect them. Unees Hammami, a Jewish community leader in Iran, told the BBC in 2006, “Because of our long history here, we are tolerated.”

  Additionally, multiple other non-Islamic religions are practiced openly and freely in Iran. The country is home to several Armenian Orthodox churches, where congregants worship openly and without restriction.

  In addition to diverse religionists, Iranian women enjoy far greater civic rights than their peers in most Middle Eastern and/or Muslim countries. In 2005, 60 percent of university students and 38 percent of government administrators were female. According to Julie Hill of the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, a third of all Iranian physicians are female, and literacy among women improved from 5 percent at the time of the Islamic Revolution to 55 percent today. Fertility rates have decreased to near-Western levels. And women are elected to Parliament and serve in important appointed positions.

  None of this is to suggest that Iran is some sort of beacon of egalitarianism and pluralism or a haven for human rights. As noted, the human rights abuses by its repressive theocratic government are pervasive and severe, and should neither be minimized nor excused. Women are denied numerous, fundamental rights by law. And much of the rhetoric emanating from some Iranian leaders is reprehensible.

  But, particularly when compared to other countries in that region, including many with whom the U.S. maintains extremely friendly relations, Iran is far from the bastion of pure Nazi-like Evil it has been depicted to be. Just as those who wished to invade Iraq persuaded Americans to support that war by portraying Saddam as a unique threat and pure Evil, the demonization of Iran is being perpetrated in order to mislead Americans into accepting war against that nation. Put simply, the cartoon picture of Iran painted by those—including the president—who seek belligerence against Iran is simply misleading.

  Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons highlights a substantial incoherence with the claim of pure Evil. Iran chose to be a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the framework used to prevent additional countries from acquiring nuclear capabilities, and nobody has claimed that Iran has violated its treaty obligations in any way.

  By rather stark contrast, several of the United States’ most critical allies—India, Pakistan, and Israel—not only refused to sign the NPT but have built nuclear weapons, and in Israel’s case developed one of the world’s largest stockpiles, estimated somewhere between three hundred and five hundred nuclear bombs. Several of Iran’s neighbors—who are close allies of the United States—refused to take part in the world’s efforts to stem the tide of proliferation of nuclear weapons, and instead have secretly acquired those weapons and continue to expand their capabilities.

  None of the foregoing is to deny that it is preferable for Iran not to acquire nuclear weapons. And particularly since the U.S. president publicly declared Iran to be one of three Evil countries in the world which would henceforth be treated as America’s enemy, it is certainly the case that Iran’s pursuit of its interests has frequently been at odds with America’s pursuit of its own interests. But none of that amounts to anything resembling a picture of pure fanatical Evil.

  PROHIBITED DEBATES

  Just as the cartoonish demonization of the evil Saddam precluded a meaningful national debate about the consequences of invading Iraq, so, too, is the president’s embrace of the same caricature of the Iranians precluding meaningful debate about our policy toward Iran, as well as concerning the Middle East generally. Complex questions that the United States must resolve regarding our overall Middle East policy are urgent and pressing. Yet, in a virtual repeat of the debate-stifling war march into Iraq, arguments that treat these matters as nothing more complex than League of Justice cartoons—in which the Good heroes must and will defeat the Evil villains—dominate discourse, ensuring that no meaningful debate occurs.

  The president and his supporters have spent the last several years insisting that the reason it is too dangerous to leave Iraq prior to the “completion of the mission”—whatever that might mean—is because premature withdrawal would create a “vacuum” that would enable Al Qaeda to use Iraq as a base for training and other activities. And it is possibly true that that could happen. But that (according to the U.S. military) is exactly what we already created in a substantial portion of Iraq, the Anbar province, where Sunni insurgents who at least claim the “Al Qaeda” name have all but exerted full dominion.

  Worse still, the power vacuum we are told is so dangerous already exists not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan—the one great success of the Bush administration—the country we rid of the evil Taliban and where we denied Al Qaeda free rein?…Except we have not done any of that. Quite the opposite, as the Washington Post documented in November 2006:

  Al-Qaeda’s influence and numbers are rapidly growing in Afghanistan, with fighters operating from new havens and mimicking techniques learned on the Iraqi battlefield for use against U.S. and allied troops, th
e directors of the CIA and defense intelligence told Congress yesterday.

  Five years after the United States drove al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the CIA, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that both groups are back, waging a “bloody insurgency” in the south and east of the country. U.S. support for the Kabul government of Hamid Karzai will be needed for “at least a decade” to ensure that the country does not fall again, he said.

  Americans have been inundated with endless happy talk about how the U.S. shattered Al Qaeda’s infrastructure and has them on the run, impotently hiding in caves with no leadership. Excluded from that depiction are the rather striking exceptions of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the group’s two top leaders for the last decade. Yet all of that rosy rhetoric about how much the U.S. has crippled Al Qaeda is greatly exaggerated, as even the president’s handpicked CIA director acknowledged according to the same Post article:

  Hayden told the Senate panel that the Taliban, aided by al-Qaeda, “has built momentum this year” in Afghanistan and that “the level of violence associated with the insurgency has increased significantly.” He also noted that Karzai’s government “is nowhere to be seen” in many rural areas where a lack of security is affecting millions of Afghans for whom the quality of life has not advanced since the U.S. military arrived in October 2001….

  Hayden said yesterday that “the group’s cadre of seasoned, committed leaders” remains fairly cohesive and focused on strategic objectives, “despite having lost a number of veterans over the years.” Bin Laden himself, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, continue to play a crucial role while hiding out somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

  Hayden said the organization had lost a series of leaders since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But the losses have been “mitigated by what is, frankly, a pretty deep bench of low-ranking personnel capable of stepping up to assume leadership positions.” Hayden said the lower ranks are dominated by men in their early 40s with two decades of experience fighting.

  Shortly before the November 2006 midterm elections, a CIA assessment was leaked to David Rohde and Jim Risen, who wrote an article in the New York Times describing the CIA’s concerns about the inability of the “Afghan Government” to “exert authority beyond Kabul,” as well as the corruption of the Afghani police force and army that is so pervasive that they likely must be rebuilt from scratch. Even Bush officials, on the record, are voicing extremely grim assessments of Afghanistan:

  Ronald E. Neumann, the American ambassador in Kabul, said in an interview recently that the United States faced “stark choices” in Afghanistan. Averting failure, he said, would take “multiple years” and “multiple billions.” “We’re going to have to stay at it,” he said. “Or we’re going to fail and the country will fall apart again.”

  What is the United States going to do about all of this? The remaining hard line, pro-Bush war advocates insist that all we need in Iraq are just some more troops and some more time. Except we do not have many more troops (according to the military itself), and the ones we do have are spread thin and are exhausted from multiple tours of duty. Even if we did have some magic troops materialize for Iraq, what would the U.S. do about Afghanistan, which—according to Bush’s own ambassador—requires a commitment of enormous additional resources over many years just to prevent the country from “fall[ing] apart again”?

  And even if these severe and dangerous problems could be solved with a massive increase in resources (money and troops)—an extremely dubious premise—how would we pay for such an increase? The Bush propaganda machine has made even the mere mention of tax increases politically toxic, and the U.S. is swamped by massive federal deficits and dangerous levels of debt to foreign countries, particularly China. “Imperial overstretch” does not begin to describe the untenability of our predicament, and yet Bush and his movement endlessly call for still more and more military expansion and adventure.

  The fundamental problem is that as a nation we do not actually debate the real issues because they are too politically radioactive, and because the simplistic appeals to victory over Evil obscure, by design, the genuine limits on American power and the drain these conflicts are placing on finite American resources. The real issue is whether the U.S. wants to maintain its presence and controlling influence in the Middle East and, if so, (a) why the U.S. wants to do that, and (b) what Americans are willing to sacrifice to preserve its dominance.

  But Americans during the Bush presidency have had no significant, constructive discussion of whether the U.S. has any real interests in continuing to exert dominance in the Middle East, primarily because doing so requires a debate about the role of oil and our commitment to Israel, both of which are strictly off-limits, as the president himself told us in a January 2006 speech:

  The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right [emphasis added].

  It may be the case that the United States should seek to preserve its influence in the Middle East. Perhaps we want to control oil resources or assume primary responsibility for ensuring a steady and orderly world oil market. Or perhaps we want to commit ourselves to defending Israel as the only real outpost of Middle Eastern democracy and/or an ally of one degree or another in protecting our vital strategic interests, if any, in that region.

  There are coherent (if not persuasive) arguments, pro and con, for all of those positions, but these issues have been embargoed by social and political orthodoxy, and no examination of them is allowed (if one wants to continue to be heard in the mainstream). So we dance around the real questions and are stuck with superficial and contrived “debates” about what we are actually doing—about all the new Hitlers and the “Evil” we must confront and our need to be Churchill instead of Chamberlain—all of which obscures our choices, our limits, and basic reality.

  If preserving our dominance of the Middle East is a goal we want to prioritize, then we need to decide what sacrifices we are willing to bear in order to reach it. We must determine whether and how we will massively expand our military, the increase in indiscriminate force we are willing to accept, and how we are going to pay for our imperial missions. Because as long as we are committed to dominating that region, we are going to be engaged in a long and likely endless series of brutal wars against religious fanatics and various nationalists who simply do not want us there and are willing to fight to the death—making all sorts of sacrifices themselves—to prevent us from dominating their countries.

  If we, the American people, want to fight the wars necessary to maintain our dominance in the Middle East, then we should do so. And if we do not, then we should not. But this middle course—where we plod along aimlessly, starting wars and constantly threatening new ones that we are not really committed to winning—is not only the most incoherent course but also the most destructive one.

  Indisputably, the course charted by President Bush is totally unsustainable. That is just reality. It is not merely that things have progressed too slowly in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is that the situation has deteriorated in both countries to the point where Al Qaeda now has not one but two countries (not counting a nuclear-armed Pakistan) in which it can operate.

  And the stronger they get, the more of our resources are needed to keep up. Yet we lack the willingness—and perhaps the ability—to make the sacrifices necessary to sustain imperial domination in that region. The president has literally pretended that this is not the case by insisting on our divine entitlement to magical victory over Evil, and depicting those who claim otherwise as people who hate the troops and do not want to win.
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br />   The damage done to the United States by the Bush administration over the last six years is truly severe. It is fundamental damage, and it requires much, much more than some tinkering around the edges. America urgently needs to debate and re-examine the core premises of our foreign policy and our role in the world. That, in turn, requires a willingness to transcend the taboos and most sacred orthodoxies and to dispense with the Manichean delusions that have substituted for rational debate.

  “EVIL” IRAN: A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY

  The president’s rhetoric of threats and demonization severely exacerbates almost every Iran-related problem. By refusing even to negotiate with Iran and directing unambiguous threats to it, the president is(a) emboldening the very Iranian extremists whom the administration claims pose the real threat, (b) forcing the Iranians into an increasing militaristic posture, and (c) moving the U.S. ever closer to a military confrontation which—whether commenced deliberately or accidentally—could not possibly be in America’s interests under any conceivable scenario.

  Since the mid-1990s, Iran has been torn by internal divisiveness between its ruling fundamentalist mullahs and its more reform-minded moderates. It is not an exaggeration to say that few things have solidified the power of Iran’s religious extremists more than President Bush’s treatment of that country. Such a result is tragic in its own right, but particularly so considering that the president himself has identified the promotion of Islamic moderates as one of the centerpieces to defeating the terrorist threat.

  Writing in Salon in February 2002, Iranian journalist Haleh Anvari described the almost immediate sociopolitical changes in Iran resulting from the president’s inclusion of Iran in the “axis of evil,” beginning with a newfound unity between previously warring moderate and extremist political factions: