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

by Glenn Greenwald

  Bush’s speech dismayed Iranians of all political stripes. Reformers and conservatives have been locked in a bitter power struggle, but they suspended their infighting to make common cause against a speech widely regarded here as bullying, ignorant, and counterproductive.

  As Anvari noted, Iranian leaders who were previously considered moderate and who had been spearheading cooperation with the U.S. had little choice but to return the rhetorical fire:

  Iran’s leaders fired back fiercely. The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, called the tone of the U.S. president’s speech “bloodthirsty.” President Khatami, leader of the reformers, was equally blunt.

  During his five years in office, Khatami has made a concerted effort to tone down hostile rhetoric toward the U.S. as part of a more pragmatic foreign policy, but he condemned Bush’s demonizing of Iran as “meddling, warmongering, insulting and a repetition of old propaganda.”

  It was perhaps the strongest language Khatami has yet used against the U.S., and belied his dismay at the abrupt change in the U.S. position towards Iran, which most observers believe has been softening in the past four years….

  The spokesman of the powerful Guardian Council, which oversees all legislation to make sure it adheres to the values of the Islamic Revolution, called for unity among Iran’s internal camps—an appeal that would have little chance of being heard before Bush’s speech.

  These results were hardly surprising. The dynamic whereby warring political factions in a country become united in opposition to hostility from an outside force is hardly unique to Iran. Quite the contrary, it is as close to a universal political phenomenon as one can find. The 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington elevated an American president who was elected with fewer votes than his opponent to one whose job approval rating skyrocketed near 90 percent.

  Bush’s hostile rhetorical attack on Iran in 2002 vindicated the worldview of the extremists there that the U.S. was Iran’s enemy ( just as an ever-new hostile pronouncement from Ahmadinejad emboldens hard-liners in the U.S.). Conversely, it severely undercut the worldview of the moderates that Iran could establish a mutually beneficial and peaceful relationship with the U.S. Anvari noted the “irony in the fact that what is good for a right-wing American president is also good for the right-wing Iranian administration.” As journalist Saiid Layaz put it: “For some bizarre reason, whenever the USA decides to talk about Iran, it accidentally ends up benefiting the hard-liners.”

  The president’s bellicose denunciations of Iran as an Evil enemy of the U.S.—which embolden Iranian extremists, and even provide justification for the Iranian nuclear program—are only intensifying. In April 2006, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Ray Takeyh lamented: “To properly address the complexities of the Iranian challenge, Washington should appreciate that its policy of relentlessly threatening Iran with economic coercion and even military reprisals only empowers reactionaries and validates their pro-nuclear argument.”

  In his 2005 State of the Union address, President Bush proclaimed: “Iran remains the world’s primary state sponsor of terror, pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve.” That declaration led the Iranians to announce that they were strengthening their military and preparing to defend against an attack from the United States. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in the aftermath of that speech, in February 2005:

  Iran has begun publicly preparing for a possible U.S. attack, as tensions mount between the Bush administration and this country’s hard-line leaders over Tehran’s purported nuclear weapons program….

  The Tehran government has announced efforts to bolster and mobilize recruits in its citizens’ militia and is making plans to engage in the type of “asymmetrical” warfare that has bogged down U.S. troops in neighboring Iraq, officials and analysts say.

  The Pentagon recently revealed that, as a matter of routine preparedness, it had upgraded its Iranian war plans, and the Washington Post has reported that unmanned U.S. drones have been flying over suspected nuclear sites in Iran.

  Iranian authorities, too, say they have been getting ready for a possible attack. Newspapers have announced efforts to increase the number of the country’s 7 million-strong “Basiji” volunteer militia, which was deployed in human-wave attacks during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Iranian military authorities have paraded long-range North Korean–designed Shahab missiles before television cameras.

  In October 2006, defense hawk and former Georgia senator Sam Nunn attributed Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons to this dynamic: “We started with Iraq in the ‘axis of evil’ side, when we thought they did not yet have nuclear weapons, and that sent the signal to others that they better get them quick.” Charles Wolfson, former Tel Aviv bureau chief for CBS News, similarly observed that “leaders in both capitals [Tehran and Pyongyang] saw what the Bush administration did to Saddam Hussein, their fellow axis of evil club member, and concluded, ‘Maybe we will not be invaded by the Americans if we have the bomb.’”

  For multiple reasons, led by American vulnerability from the occupation of Iraq, there has arisen a virtual consensus, across the ideological spectrum, that there is no such thing as a good—or even viable—military option for the U.S. to use against Iran. Republican senator Chuck Hagel said in April 2006, “A military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible, responsible option.” James Carafano of the right-wing Heritage Foundation acknowledged in 2005, “There are no good military options.”

  After retired Air Force Lt. Col. Sam Gardner, a simulations expert at the U.S. Army War College, oversaw various “war games” on Iran in late 2004, he warned, “After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers. You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work” (emphasis added).

  In 2006, David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and current president of the Institute for Science and International Security, was interviewed by the Mercury News concerning Iran, and the article summed up the dilemma that President Bush has created for himself:

  Iran “could cause all kinds of disruption clandestinely in Iraq.” For that reason, and several others, [Albright] said there are no good military options on the table for confronting Iran. He also said loud external threats, especially from the United States, tend to backfire by sending Iranian moderates and reformers running under the banners of the clerical regime that Washington opposes.

  Most disturbing, a military confrontation between Iran and the United States is becoming increasingly likely even if the president does not actively choose to attack. The proximity of Iran to Iraq, and the nature of the president’s rhetoric make an unintentional war—one that is sparked by miscalculation or misperception—increasingly likely.

  In December 2006, media reports of increasing U.S. military activity in the Persian Gulf aimed at Iran began to emerge. On December 21, the New York Times confirmed that “the United States and Britain will begin moving additional warships and strike aircraft into the Persian Gulf region in a display of military resolve toward Iran.” The buildup includes “a second aircraft carrier and its supporting ships to be stationed within quick sailing distance of Iran by early next year.”

  There is no doubt that these moves were intended to signal to the Iranians (as well as to what the Times describes as “Washington’s allies in the region who are concerned about Iran’s intentions”) that we are capable of an offensive military strike against Iran:

  Senior American officers said the increase in naval power should not be viewed as preparations for any offensive strike against Iran. But they acknowledged that the ability to hit Iran would be increased and that Iranian leaders might well call the growing presence provocative.

  One purpose of the deployment, they said, is to make clear that the focus on ground troops in Iraq has not made it impossible for the United States and its allies to maintain a military watch on Iran.

  Bush offic
ials cited two “justifications” for these maneuvers: (1) to enforce any sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council as a result of Iran’s refusal to comply with its resolutions, and (2) to deter Iran from a military blockade of oil shipments in retaliation for U.N. sanctions.

  According to the Times, Bush officials “view recent bold moves by Iran—and by North Korea as well—as at least partly explained by assessments in Tehran and North Korea that the American military is bogged down in Iraq and incapable of fully projecting power elsewhere.” There is undoubtedly truth in that.

  The same week the Times article reported on the planned military buildup in the Persian Gulf, U.S. soldiers in Iraq engaged in their most provocative action yet against Iran when they detained five senior Iranian military officials in Iraq, who were then detained for months.

  In light of the close ties the Iraq government is establishing with Iran, the detentions “deeply upset Iraqi government officials,” according to the Times account, because they “have been making strenuous efforts to engage Iran on matters of security.” The Iraqis, not the Iranians, took the lead in “appeal[ing] to the American military, including to Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American ground commander in Iraq, to release the Iranians.” A spokesman for Iraqi President Talabani said flatly, “The president is unhappy with the arrests.”

  National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe not only justified the detentions but claimed that they bolster the case that the U.S. has been making against Iran: “We suspect this event validates our claims about Iranian meddling.”

  The very idea that the Bush administration—which invaded Iraq, shattered its infrastructure, removed its government, and then settled in for a four-year (and counting) occupation—would accuse another country of “meddling” in Iraq achieves an entirely new level of irony. But the goal here plainly is to escalate tensions with the Iranians through a series of provocative acts, and thereby undermine the recommendation of the ISG that Iran be engaged in order to solve American problems in Iraq.

  Bush officials all but admitted that the objective of the detentions was to compel confrontation with Iran—either through the Iraqi government or directly—regarding its role in Iraq. One Bush official told the Times, “This is going to be a tense but clarifying moment.” Another claimed:

  It’s our position that the Iraqis have to seize this opportunity to sort out with the Iranians just what kind of behavior they are going to tolerate…. They are going to have to confront the evidence that the Iranians are deeply involved in some of the acts of violence.

  In early January 2007, on the same day President Bush delivered his Iraq surge speech to the country, an even more serious act of hostility toward the Iranians took place: The U.S. military stormed an Iranian consulate in the Kurdish town of Arbīl in Northern Iraq. As the BBC reported,

  One Iranian news agency with a correspondent in Irbil says five US helicopters were used to land troops on the roof of the Iranian consulate.

  It reports that a number of vehicles cordoned off the streets around the building, while US soldiers warned the occupants in three different languages that they should surrender or be killed.

  It all but amounts to a definitive act of war for one country to storm the consulate of another, threaten to kill them if they do not surrender, and then detain six consulate officers. Several days later, the Bush administration acknowledged that all of these offensives against the Iranians in Iraq were undertaken pursuant to an order signed by President Bush himself. The New York Times reported on January 13:

  A recent series of American raids against Iranians in Iraq was authorized under an order that President Bush decided to issue several months ago to undertake a broad military offensive against Iranian operatives in the country, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday.

  “There has been a decision to go after these networks,” Ms. Rice said in an interview with The New York Times in her office on Friday afternoon, before leaving on a trip to the Middle East.

  Any action that brings us even a small step closer to military confrontation with Iran should be, by definition, the most attention-generating news story. Any military conflict with Iran would be so disastrous for the United States that it cannot be adequately described. In contrast to the weakened, isolated, universally reviled Saddam regime, the Iranians are smart, resourceful, shrewd, and supported by scores of vitally important allies around the world. And that is to say nothing of the resources that are being drained away and the ever-increasing U.S. isolation that occurs every day we continue to occupy Iraq.

  The war advocates who unquestionably still have the president’s ear sought to transform the debate (prompted by the ISG Report) over whether we should negotiate with Iran into an argument that Iran is our real enemy. And they believe that Iran is our enemy not only in Iraq, but generally, and that Iran should therefore be attacked, not negotiated with. Dismissing out of hand these wild-eyed, war-loving elements who are wholly detached from reality is tempting, but they continue to occupy places of high influence with the president (both inside and outside of the White House).

  Worse, there are convincing signs that the president is one of them, i.e., that he now irreversibly shares their worldview that war with Islamic extremism requires a progressive series of wars with various states, the next of which is Iran. Beyond doubt, if the president is convinced that some sort of military action is necessary or even warranted, nothing—not public opinion nor his supposed lame-duck status nor the sheer insanity of the proposal—is going to stop him.

  Few things have been as disturbing as the president’s now implacable belief—which he has been decreeing with increased frequency—that he is the modern-day Harry Truman, fighting a necessary war even in the face of widespread opposition from weak and blind people in his own country and around the world, but that he is destined to be vindicated by history. And, as he sees it, the more he fights against antiwar headwinds and the bolder he is in the risks he takes, the greater his vindication will be.

  By 2007, it was alarmingly clear that geopolitical considerations do not determine what the United States will do vis-a-vis Iran. The president’s personality does.

  And even if the president and/or his top advisers are less than clear about their intent with regard to Iran, it may not matter. Military buildups of this sort, plainly aimed at one country in particular, can easily produce miscalculations or lead to unintended provocations. That danger is heightened incalculably when one of the parties to the increasing tensions has 150,000 troops occupying a country that borders the other.

  In response to U.S. provocations, Iran’s leaders may be incentivized, or feel pressure, to act against what they perceive is an inevitable attack. Independently, they may perceive that a restless antimullah movement can be quieted by uniting the country behind conflict with the U.S. It is an incomparably dangerous game and the consequences are almost certainly beyond the Bush administration’s capacity to predict, let alone manage.

  There are also myriad constitutional questions about the type of Congressional authorization that would be required in order for the president to act militarily against Iran. But those would almost certainly be swept aside—as most constitutional dilemmas have been—by an administration that would claim that it already has such authorization either “inherently” or as a result of Iran’s involvement in our war in Iraq. If the president were really intent on war with Iran, it is very difficult to envision Congressional Democrats, or really anything else, stopping him.

  The president is boxed into a corner. Having decreed Iran Evil, he cannot negotiate with that country. Having decreed the threat Iran poses to be tantamount to that posed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, he cannot ignore it or simply allow it to fester. Having committed virtually all U.S. military power to Iraq and Afghanistan—where still more, not less, resources are needed, and where the U.S. is highly vulnerable—the threat of military force is neither credible nor plausible. As disastrous as the next tw
o years in Iraq are certain to be, the situation with respect to Iran appears even grimmer.

  When the president declared in early 2002 that Iran was “Evil,” it all but sealed the fate of U.S.-Iranian relations for the duration of his presidency. The president’s Manichean prison precludes him from following any course other than unmitigated belligerence once he embraces that moralistic premise, and indeed, nothing—not a deeply unpopular war in Iraq, nor the stinging repudiation of his policies by the American voters nor the ISG—has convinced him to change course even slightly with regard to Iran. He placed himself, or allowed himself to be placed, inside the suffocating confines of this Manichean box, and despite the grave dangers and great harm it has engendered, he appears to have no ability, and worse, no incentive, to find an alternative for the last two years of his presidency.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Manichean Paradox:

  Moral Certitude Tramples Moral Constraints

  We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell.

  —SIR KARL POPPER, twentieth-century British philosopher of science

  One of the principal dangers of vesting power in a leader who is convinced of his own righteousness—who believes that, by virtue of his ascension to political power, he has been called to a crusade against Evil—is that the moral imperative driving the mission will justify any and all means used to achieve it. Those who have become convinced that they are waging an epic and all-consuming existential war against Evil cannot, by the very premises of their belief system, accept any limitations—moral, pragmatic, or otherwise—on the methods adopted to triumph in this battle.