20 Years On, a Question Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade?, rumbles “Interpreter” (that’s what they call him) Max Fisher, subjecting us to a shitload of obscurantist chin-stroking before reaching an all too convenient non-answer/confession of ignorance, topping off this banal exercise in disingenuosity with this laughable quote as a closer:
“I will go to my grave not knowing that. I can’t answer it,” Richard Haass, a senior State Department official at the time of the invasion, said in 2004 when asked why it had happened.
Well, I think I can do a little better than the slow-witted Mr. Fisher or the aass-covering Mr. Haass. The Bush administration went to war because the Republican Party had been frothing at the mouth at the prospect of invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein from power immediately after the “contact high” of invading Iraq the first time under George I wore off, only this time we would do it “right”, we would turn Iraq into an explicit client state, unable to stand without us, and establish ourselves as the military rulers of the Middle East, giving us sole control of the world oil supply and guaranteeing the security of Israel “forever”. And the Bush administration was able to “sell” the American people on this grandiose exercise in realpolitik and cynicism as the acme of altruism with the sometimes wide-eyed and sometimes artfully conniving assistance of 90% of the “mainstream media”, the New York Times in particular. Media Matters offers an excellent rundown/rogue’s gallery of the leading lying heads involved, but I naturally want to focus on the crimes of the Times alone.
The Times record on Iraq was so bad that the Times itself was forced, thanks to continued public ridicule as the stunning cost and chaos in Iraq rose and rose with each passing day, to run a mea culpa of sorts a year after the invasion, FROM THE EDITORS; The Times and Iraq, which Max fails to mention in his piece, nor does he mention my piece, The Judith Miller Show: Weaving new false narratives to replace the old, which, if he had bothered to read it, would have enlightened him greatly as to the hypocrisies of both the Times and its lead gal in the Middle East, one time super star Judith Miller, the Pulitzer Prize mouthpiece for intervention.1
There is, however, one crime of the Times which, now 20 years later, that I feel is very much in danger of slipping from the public memory entirely, the recollection of which was, in fact, my primary motivation for writing this piece, though my now customary garrulousness has delayed its mention until now, an occasion when the Times actually got it right regarding Iraq and then was bullied into retracting its own truthfulness.
On August 12, 2002, Henry Kissinger wrote a piece for the Washington Post, Our Intervention In Iraq. In the piece, Henry, with many a Metternichian swirl of his magic cape, alternately builds up and then undermines the case for “intervention”, noting that, among other things, we might inadvertently give “permission” to “bad” nations to follow our, um, good example, trampling on the rights of other nations just because Uncle Sam did so. And we can’t let other nations think they can behave as unscrupulously unselfishly as we do:
To find our way through this thicket [of committing naked, unprovoked aggression without encouraging others to do so], the administration needs to establish a comprehensive strategy for itself and a clear policy for the rest of the world. Nor can a conflict of such import be sustained as an expression of executive power alone. A way must be found to obtain adequate congressional and public support for the chosen course.
The administration should be prepared to undertake a national debate, because the case for removing Iraq's capacity of mass destruction is extremely strong. The international regimen following the Treaty of Westphalia was based on the concept of an impermeable nation-state and a limited military technology which generally permitted a nation to run the risk of awaiting an unambiguous challenge.
Well, not everything Henry had to say was, you know, wrong, though a hell of a lot of it was. He bought entirely into both the myth that chemical and biological weapons are, you know, weapons of mass destruction, which they motherfuckingly are not, and the myth that Saddam still had them, which he did not, and used this totally manufactured “threat” to allow the violation of his beloved Treaty of Westphalia, carefully dancing around the fact that Iraq had no involvement in the attack on the Twin Towers, and making no mention of the nuclear “threat” at all. Still, the overall effect, as I read it at the time, was that Henry was pretending to agree with the administration’s entirely hypocritical case that we “had” take Saddam out and only wished to make sure that the validity of the administration’s case was clear to all—even though what was really clear is that the Bush administration was already committed to making war on Iraq regardless of any “facts” or anything anyone might do or say, making war for little more than to show that we could, and in fact, would. wreak utter destruction on any nation in the world just to demonstrate both our absolute power and our utter lack of scruple (and also, quite incidentally, to assume control of the world’s oil supply and guarantee the security of Israel).
But Henry pretended he didn’t know all this—didn’t know that everything was already all decided and indeed set in motion—and also pretended he didn’t think it was a terrible idea. Instead, he quite earnestly—perhaps even a bit desperately—sought to set up so many pre-conditions “necessary” for the unprincipled deluge of “shock and awe” that Bush et al. were determined to unleash—the “national debate”, for example, which is exactly what the Bush administration was determined not to have—that it would prove impossible to actually launch the attack. Henry, in other words, hoped to damn the whole operation via faint (faint though verbose) and entirely hypocritical “praise”.
A couple of days later, on August 16, the Times featured a long piece, Top Republicans Break With Bush On Iraq Strategy, ably written by Todd S. Purdum and Patrick E. Tyler (not sure why Timesmen were so fussy about middle initials back then, but I guess it was a thing), which began with these three pregnant paragraphs:
Leading Republicans from Congress, the State Department and past administrations have begun to break ranks with President Bush over his administration's high-profile planning for war with Iraq, saying the administration has neither adequately prepared for military action nor made the case that it is needed.
These senior Republicans include former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, the first President Bush's national security adviser. All say they favor the eventual removal of Saddam Hussein, but some say they are concerned that Mr. Bush is proceeding in a way that risks alienating allies, creating greater instability in the Middle East, and harming long-term American interests. They add that the administration has not shown that Iraq poses an urgent threat to the United States.
At the same time, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who summoned Mr. Kissinger for a meeting on Tuesday, and his advisers have decided that they should focus international discussion on how Iraq would be governed after Mr. Hussein -- not only in an effort to assure a democracy but as a way to outflank administration hawks and slow the rush to war, which many in the department oppose.
This was followed the next day by another piece, by Elizabeth Bumiller, President Notes Dissent On Iraq, Vowing To Listen, which sounds pretty, you know, conciliatory, but did list Henry (with his middle initial intact, though God knows why) as a part of a “growing chorus of concern” among Republicans that Georgie boy didn’t know what the fuck he was doing.
Say what? Say what? Important Republicans questioning the will of Bush? We can’t have that! Hawkland exploded in fury at this apostasy, and shrewdly exploited Kissinger’s silk stocking full of shit2 worthy dissembling in particular, insisting that Henry the A damn well was on board—way on board—with the invasion, despite whatever those goddamn sissy britches West Side fairies unfortunately misinformed reporters at the New York Times seemed to think.
What ensued was very well limned in real time by the New York Observer in this excellent piece by Sidhar Pappu, The Times and Kissinger: Explanation or Apology?. As Pappu put it
Critics howled, arguing that Mr. Kissinger held no such position, and speculating that The Times had misrepresented the former Secretary of State’s words in an effort to unsettle G.O.P. leadership on the war effort. A controversy ensued, with the country’s major conservative voices-including the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and columnist George Will-weighing in against The Times . Mr. Will dismissed the paper as a “factional broadsheet.” The Journal quoted Mr. Kissinger’s take and asked, “This is opposition?”
While the usual conservative blowhards fulminated at the supposed misrepresentation of Henry’s impeccably hawkish views. Kissinger himself remained impeccably silent, which I find quite “suggestive”. If Henry really was on board for the invasion—which, clearly, he wasn’t—it would have cost him nothing to have said so, and if he had said so, he surely would have ingratiated himself with the Bush people. The fact that he wouldn’t bend the knee—something he was pretty good at—was, I think, a quiet—very quiet—signal to those inside State not to give up the fight.
But while Henry didn’t surrender, the Times did. On September 4, the paper ran an Editors’ Note that “explained” as follows:
The Aug. 16 article described Mr. Kissinger's expressed concerns about the need for building an international coalition before waging war and his doubts about the Bush administration's plan to make ''regime change'' the center pole of its policy. But it should have made a clearer distinction between his views and those of Mr. Scowcroft and other Republicans with more categorical objections to a military attack. The second article listed Mr. Kissinger incorrectly among Republicans who were warning outright against a war.
Yet, while half surrendering, at the end of the “note” took half of it back, concluding
Most centrally, Mr. Kissinger said that removing Mr. Hussein from power -- Mr. Bush's justification for war -- was not an appropriate goal. He said an attack on Iraq should be directed toward a more limited aim, eradicating weapons of mass destruction.
“Most centrally”? “Most centrally”? Denying the Bush administration’s God-given and God-like right to rearrange the world according to its every whim and fancy? Unsurprisingly, the “Right” reacted to this, this accuracy as a veritable stick in the eye. In his article, Mr. Pappu quotes—who else—William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer as thoroughly outraged:
“It succeeded in misstating Kissinger’s argument even further,” said William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard . “The core of Kissinger’s argument is disarmament is a goal, and regime change is a means, a necessary means, to this goal.”
“It was grudging, inaccurate and tortured,” Mr. Krauthammer said. “It got one thing right-it said it was wrong in the second story-but then tried to cover its tracks on the original story.”
So that was then, and this is now: In its supposed “looking backwards” at why the U.S. invaded Iraq, the Times has conveniently erased its own shameful complicity in the disaster.
Special Haass-covering Afterwords
To get back to “Dick” Haass, quoted in the second paragraph as expressing bewilderment over the genesis of an event in which he took a very active role, well, the man does seem confused. (Appropriately enough, after leaving government he took over as head of the Council on Foreign Relations, the holy of holies of the American military intellectual complex, aka the Blob). In an interview in 2009 with National Public Radio following the publication of his book War of Necessity; War of Choice, he said he had been “60% against” invading Iraq, whatever the hell that meant—though, naturally, he didn’t do anything about it.
A decade later, in 2022, when retiring from the Council, he had more to say, faulting the Biden administration for leaving Afghanistan and for not explicitly guaranteeing the independence of Taiwan against possible Chinese threats, a predictably Blobby criticism that makes an interesting contrast with what he said in 2009. According to 2009 Dick , back in 2002, senior members of the Bush administration thought that, since the Taliban had been removed from power in Afghanistan, further military operations in that country were pointless. “I remember sitting at the National Security Council meetings, making the case that we could do more, and it was essentially no sale. It was seen as helpless and as hopeless.” But, somehow, 20 years later, apparently, not so hopeless. Also curious: Haass told NPR that (referring rather strangely to the Bush administration as “they” rather than “we”) “If you recall, they did not follow the "Powell doctrine"; they went in with a very small number of troops. They did very little planning.” Haass’s job at the State Department? Head of “Policy Planning”.
Perhaps it isn’t only the New York Times that needs to look in the mirror. Perhaps Mr. Haass should take a peek as well.
1. Back in the day, Franklin Foer wrote a long piece on Miller for New York magazine that is largely excellent but contains a bit too much gossip, probably inevitable in Miller’s case, because she started her career at the Times as a very young, very attractive, and very ambitious young woman back when the Times was about 90% male and not very interesting in doing anything about it.
2. A sour Napoleon’s assessment of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the crafty French diplomat who proved neither trustworthy nor dispensable to his many masters, both regal and revolutionary, for well over 40 years.
