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International Relations
DOI: 10.1177/0047117805050059 2005; 19; 5
International Relations
Robert Gilpin
War is Too Important to Be Left to Ideological Amateurs
http://ire.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/1/5
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Amateurs
1Robert Gilpin, Princeton University, USA
Abstract
The 2003 American attack against Iraq was engineered by two powerful groups within the Bush Administration, the nationalists and the neo-conservatives. The ultra-nationalists’ motive was to gain control of the oil reserves in the Middle East and elsewhere in the region in order to gain and sustain American global primacy. While the neo-conservatives shared this objective, they also wanted a radical restructuring of geopolitical relations in the area in order to promote the long-term security of Israel. Supporting the Administration were powerful domestic constituencies, especially evan-gelical Christians. Opposition to the war was expressed by leaders of three professional services responsible for American security: the American army and marines, the Foreign Service, and Middle East experts in the CIA. Opponents of the war believed that there was no threat posed to the US by Iraq; they also believed that the civilian leadership of the Pentagon was not competent and that planning for securing and pacifying postwar Iraq was inadequate. The opponents of the Iraq War have proved correct.
Keywords: clash of civilizations, evangelical Christians, Iraq War, Islam, Israel, Middle East, neo-cons, Pentagon, Powell Doctrine, terrorism
President George W. Bush’s costly and reckless war against Iraq has resulted in the greatest threat to the security and wellbeing of the United States since the US Civil War. The war against Iraq has significantly exacerbated dangerous social, cultural, and regional fissures in US society. The war has not only undermined the social and political stability of the Middle East, but has also let loose forces that threaten the entire global political and economic system. The hubris, ambitions, and incom-petence of the ideological amateurs managing the foreign policy of the Bush Administration are unparalleled in the history of the United States. The needless deaths and the maiming of thousands of both combatants and Iraqi civilians weigh, or at least should weigh, heavily on the conscience of every American. Every citizen of the United States and millions of others around the globe have been placed at serious risk for the foreseeable future. Rather than serving as a ‘beacon of light unto the nations’, the United States has become almost universally hated and distrusted. Further and more importantly, the ‘pre-emptive’ war against Iraq, launched ostensibly to eliminate Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and its links to international terrorism, has actually greatly increased the magnitude of the terrorist threat to the United States and other societies.
2004, the tide of public and expert opinion began to turn against the war and the President’s foreign policies in general. The first development undermining the Administration’s credibility was its embarrassing failure to find Saddam Hussein’s alleged cache of WMDs; nor has it found convincing evidence of the alleged connection between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001 on the United States by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
The Administration has contrived one rationalization after another to justify its ‘pre-emptive war’ against Iraq. When no WMDs were found, the Bush Adminis-tration redefined the purpose of the war. The war has been defended as an effort to ‘bring democracy’ to Iraq and eventually to the whole Muslim world. On other occasions, the purpose of the war has been defined as the liberation of the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. The Administration has put forth at least a dozen different justifications for its attack on Iraq, but the originally stated purpose of the war, to eliminate Iraq’s WMDs, however, has been almost totally ignored by Administration spokespersons, at least since early in 2004.
As months have passed and the violence in Iraq has intensified, Americans have learned more and more about the Administration’s true motives, hidden machi-nations, and outright deceits regarding the war. Growing numbers of people have recognized the many ways in which President Bush himself and the top officials of his Administration have lied to or deliberately misled the nation’s citizens. This increased public understanding of the true nature of the war has been greatly promoted by publication of a number of outstanding books and other writings by excellent investigative reporters and disaffected former members of the Bush Administration; in these writings, much of the excessive secrecy of the most secretive administration in US history has been diligently and patiently peeled away.
Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies, a startling and influential book published early in 2004, seriously decreased trust in the Bush Administration.2Clarke, one of
the most experienced and knowledgeable US counter-terrorism experts, revealed and severely criticized the failure of the Bush Administration prior to 11 September to take seriously the dangerous threat posed to the United States by international terrorism, and especially by bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Other important books by respected US journalists and defectors from the Administration also alerted the US public to the extraordinary chicanery of the Bush Administration.3
Although the July 2004 Intelligence Commission Report on 9/11 revealed a wealth of information about the Administration’s activities behind its cloak of secrecy and lies, there is much that we do not know and probably never will know about the origins and conduct of the war.4There is much that is murky about the
Administration’s use and abuse of intelligence, the intense debate within the Administration leading to the decision to attack Iraq, and the crucial errors made by highly placed civilian officials in the Pentagon that could result in one of the worst military and diplomatic debacles in US history.
Admin-istration’s serious failures and true motives. It is now beyond doubt, for example, that both geo-strategic and domestic political considerations provided theprincipal motives for the Administration’s decision to wage war against Iraq. Moreover, although honest and sincere individuals differ profoundly about the wisdom of the war itself, few would deny that the planning for the war and its aftermath by the civilian leadership of the war effort was handled in an incompetent manner. Responsibility for these significant mistakes of judgment rests squarely on the shoulders of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other high civilian Pentagon officials, especially Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the top of the Pentagon chain of command. The major blunders of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) based in Baghdad and headed by US proconsul Paul Bremer also contributed significantly to the tragic US failures in Iraq.
In a brief article, it is impossible to consider all the important decisions and mistakes that have led to the failure of the United States to achieve its ambitious and unrealistic goals in Iraq and the Middle East. Not even the US hyper-power can transform these ancient cultures and the geopolitics of its extraordinarily complex political system. The Pentagon’s inadequate plans for the war, its serious mis-judgments with respect to the conduct of the war, and the incompetence of the civilian leadership of the US occupation made achievement of the Administration’s objectives highly unlikely and also greatly weakened global confidence in and respect for the United States.
Why do they hate us?
The 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States produced an unprecedented trauma among Americans. In response to the terrorist attack, Americans asked themselves: why did foreign terrorists attack us? What had the United States done to deserve such savagery? Why do they hate us? Answers given have significantly shaped the US response to international terrorism and to the problems of the Middle East.
Stated simply, there are two prominent and differing positions concerning the appropriate answer to the question of why the United States is hated and was attacked by Islamicist terrorists. The first and by far the most influential explanation is that the United States is hated for what it is; terrorists and other enemies of the United States hate the United States because of its huge successes and their own miserable failures. This position, which has been accepted, at least implicitly, by a majority of US citizens, has been exploited and promoted by the Bush Administration. The alternative explanation for anti-Americanism is that the United States is hated by millions of people around the world because of its policies, especially the arrogant policies of the Bush Administration. In other words, the United States is hated for what it does. The most widely accepted explanation for the 9/11 terrorist attack and opposition to the United States has frequently been labeled the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis.5Although few in the United States would
by Princeton University scholar Bernard Lewis that the United States was attacked and is hated for what it is rather than for what it has done. In other words, according to Lewis and the many pundits who follow his lead, terrorist attacks against the United States and its citizens are not attributable to Americans themselves or to anything that they have or have not done. Such pundits argue that the fault lies instead fully with the terrorists themselves. The implication of this interpretation of Islamicist terrorism is that anti-American terrorism arises from a failed Islamic civilization, is inevitable, and cannot be prevented through any attempt to resolve political disputes between Islam and the United States or any attempt to alleviate Muslim suspicions or criticisms of the United States and the West.6
The ‘clash of civilizations’ interpretation of Islamic terrorism takes many forms, and Lewis’s prolific writings, public lectures, and well-known books claiming to explain ‘why they hate us’ have had a profound effect on US public opinion regarding terrorism, and especially on the views of the top echelon of the Bush Administration. As a front page article in the 3 February 2004 Wall Street Journal has reported, Lewis’s diagnosis of the ‘Muslim world’s malaise’ and his strong advocacy of a war against Iraq ‘have helped define the boldest shift in U.S. foreign policy in 50 years’.7It is worth noting that Peter Waldman, the author of the article,
refers to Lewis’s highly influential views on the nature of Islamic civilization and the necessity for a war against Iraq as the ‘Lewis Doctrine’.
Lewis views Islam as a degenerate, resentful, and dangerous religion/civilization that seeks to destroy the more successful and therefore threatening Western civi-lization. He argues that the United States was attacked on 9/11 because the Islamic world hates the United States and what it represents; the terrorists, he asserts, believe that Western secular values are corrupt and pose a serious threat to Islam’s social and religious beliefs. Another major point is that, whereas the United States is a highly successful society, Islam – once itself highly successful – is today a failed and demoralized civilization. This situation has led Islamic terrorists, and Osama bin Laden in particular, to resent the United States because of its successes, its democratic way of life, and its individual freedoms.
Lewis views Americans as basically innocent; he believes that the United States has done nothing to merit the enmity of Islam. The United States stands for decency and civilization; its fundamental motive is to bring democracy and the blessings of liberty to the rest of the world. President Bush, using a similar argument, has frequently stated that the evil forces and individuals opposed to the US mission of promoting a ‘global democratic revolution’ irrationally wish to prevent imple-mentation of the good deeds that the United States would like to do in Iraq and elsewhere around the world.
Muslim world. It is difficult, moreover, to accept Lewis’s single-factor over-simplified ‘clash of civilizations’ interpretation as thecause of a sudden and intense outbreak of anti-US terrorism and of the worldwide fury of Muslims, especially Arab Muslims, against the United States.
This writer finds Lewis’s simplistic explanation of the behavior of Muslims implausible.8 The Muslim world is composed of highly diverse peoples and
cultures. Islam extends across many disparate and distinctive societies from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Central Asia to deepest Africa. It is riven by many serious internal political conflicts and intense national rivalries, and many of its distinctive cultures have very different attitudes and policies toward the West and the United States.
An alternative explanation, and the one that I myself prefer, is that US impe-rialist policies and anti-Muslim actions in the Middle East have provided the terrorists with a crucially important motive, one that is ignored and in fact rejected by Lewis’s explanation for Islamicist terrorist attacks against the United States. In particular, the bias of US policies toward the interests of Israel in the Israeli– Palestinian conflict and US support for corrupt, repressive Arab regimes foster resentment and opposition to the United States, particularly, but not only, in the Middle East.
Islam is divided internally in a variety of ways. It is divided between two major and antagonistic branches (Sunni and Shia); there are also dozens of splinter groups based on ethnic or theological differences. It is worth noting, for example, that Sunni-dominated Iraq fought Shia-dominated Iran for 10 years in one of the blood-iest conflicts of the late twentieth century; in that war, the United States gave assistance to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq even though Saddam used chemical weapons against Iranian troops and his own people. This writer notes, however, that Turkey, a secular Muslim society and the most important Islamic country in the Middle East, is an ally of both the United States and Israel.
thesis is that it absolves Israeli and US policies of any responsibility for contri-buting to anti-US terrorism. Perhaps this is due to the fact that many proponents of that thesis have also been strong supporters of the repressive policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon toward the Palestinians. Some American pro-Israeli partisans have chosen to portray Israel as merely an innocent victim of a clash between Islamic and Christian civilizations rather than as itself a significant contributor to the dangerous conflicts in the Middle East.
Lewis’s argument logically leads to the conclusion that diplomatic initiatives put forward by Israel, the United States, or others to further the cause of peace would have little impact on the problem of terrorism and could even signal Western weakness and thus embolden the terrorists to increase their nefarious actions. Such thinking has influenced or, at least, provided a rationalization for counterproductive American policies and for Bush Administration failures to take steps to eliminate the political problems that underlie and motivate terrorist behavior. Indeed, the Bush Administration has shifted the burden for solving the problem of terrorism entirely to Muslim societies themselves.
The Bush Administration argues that in order to stop terrorism, Islamic nations must be transformed into more secular and democratic societies; they must become part of President Bush’s ‘global democratic revolution’ and become more like the United States. In effect, members of the Administration seem to believe that the onlypossible solution to the problem of Islamicist terrorism is the transformation, including the democratization, of Middle Eastern societies. If so, we are indeed entering an era of civilizational conflict that will be very long and extremely dangerous.
Terrorism as a political issue
Terrorism in all its many manifestations is a form of political action carried out to achieve specific political objectives. Although revenge, hatred, and other powerful emotions can be important elements in the motivation of terrorists, these factors cannot in themselves explain specific acts of terrorism. The ten years of detailed planning by bin Laden and Al Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks certainly suggest that this extraordinarily well-conceived and -executed operation was much more than either an expression of emotionally based anti-Americanism or a means for individual Muslims to reach Islamic paradise.
that this would draw the United States into a protracted and unwinnable land war in the Middle East. I believe that bin Laden intended such a war to rally the Muslim world against the new Christian Crusaders and that this would further his long-term goal of undermining and destroying the United States’ ‘puppet’ ruling elites in the Arab world.
Disagreeing with the Lewis Doctrine, the hypothesis of this article is that the 9/11 attacks were politically motivated. Both bin Laden’s words and actions indicate that he believed that his actions would restore the true Islam to its rightful place in the Muslim world. More specifically, bin Laden appears to have hoped that the attacks on New York and Washington would cause the United States to retaliate militarily and be drawn into a protracted war against Islam. He believed that an American military invasion of the Middle East would in turn rally the Muslim world against the new Christian Crusaders and to support bin Laden’s efforts to undermine and destroy the US ‘puppet’ ruling elites in the Arab world. Whether or not this political explanation of Islamicist terrorism is correct, it is at least a plau-sible alternative to the Lewis Doctrine and should be given serious consideration rather than being summarily discarded in favor of an explanation based largely on the political preferences of the Bush Administration and right-wing supporters of pro-Israeli policies.
The military versus the militarists
Shortly after the terrorist attack of 9/11, President Bush called a meeting of his national security team to determine the US response. The unanimous decision reached by the President’s ‘War Council’ was to wage war in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group (Al Qaeda) and its Taliban supporters. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz raised the issue of Iraq at the very first meeting of Bush’s senior security advisors after 9/11; he proposed that the United States use the opportunity provided by 9/11 to attack Iraq and destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein. Although Wolfowitz received some support, especially from his boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the issue of Iraq was set aside. However, the question of what the United States should do about Saddam Hussein’s regime was now firmly on the agenda of the President’s ‘war against terror’ and attention would be given to whether or not the anti-terrorist war should be expanded to include Iraq, how such a war should be fought, and the ultimate political purpose of such a war.
most outspoken has been US Marine General Anthony Zinni, who served as Commander-in-Chief of the US Central Command that included Iraq and other countries of the Middle East and is an expert on the region. He had been appointed by President Bush as his special representative to assist in the resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. However, strong disagreements between General Zinni and the Administration regarding US policy toward that dispute led to Zinni’s dismissal by the President.9
Disagreeing with professionals in the State Department and the CIA and with many high-ranking military who argued that a war against Iraq would be folly, civilian officials in the Pentagon, the White House, and elsewhere in the Administration strongly advocated such a war. Those civilian advocates of war (whom I shall call ‘militarists’ because of their overriding confidence in the use of military force and because of their contempt for diplomacy) controlled the Pentagon and were also supported by such other civilian officials as Vice-President Richard Cheney and his influential Chief of Staff, Lewis ‘Skipper’ Libby.
The bitter controversy between proponents and opponents of the war centered on the relevance of the Powell Doctrine regarding the necessity of a war and how such a war should be fought. Senior officers in the army and Marine Corps generally accepted the Powell Doctrine formulated by Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Powell Doctrine, based on the devastating experience of US ground forces in the Vietnam War, contained three fundamental principles. One, the United States should go to war only if there were a clear and present threat to US national security. Two, in such an event, the United States should destroy the threat with overwhelming force in order to defeat the enemy quickly and to rapidly secure and pacify the conquered country. Three, there must be an agreed ‘exit’ strategy that would give the United States military an honorable means of escape if the war went awry and eventual defeat should appear inevitable.
The civilian leadership of the Department of Defense, on the other hand, took the position that the war in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership provided the ideal opportunity to attack and destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime. They argued that the ‘war on terrorism’ should be expanded to include the destruction of any ‘state-sponsor’ of terrorism, which they ardently proclaimed was the case with Iraq. Opposing Powell’s emphasis on the importance of diplomacy and on involving the United Nations in dealing with terrorism and Iraq, this group, composed of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others, believed that a coalition, especially one composed of the traditional West European allies of the United States (or what Rumsfeld condescendingly called ‘old Europe’), would only inhibit US actions. The United States, they proclaimed, had both the will and the power to unilaterally destroy Saddam, cause other Muslim states to submit to US domination, and thereby gain full control over the Middle East and its immense petroleum reserves. The President, strongly influenced by Vice-President Cheney, gave his full support to this position.
Another contentious issue arising from the army’s adherence to the Powell Doctrine concerned the ways in which a war against Iraq should be fought. On one side of the debate was the Department of State led by West Point graduates, Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, advocating the use of overwhelming force in order to quickly subdue Iraqi resistance; they also argued that a large US occupying force would be necessary in order to pacify postwar Iraq and forestall violent resistance against the occupying forces, prevent widespread looting and pillage, and provide personal security for Iraqi civilians. Secretary of State Powell’s argument for the deployment of as many as 300– 500,000 ground troops was supported by General Hugh Shelton, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Eric Shinseki, then Army Chief of Staff. Soon the latter’s candor and opposition to Rumsfeld’s untested war plans resulted in his dismissal from his command and forced retirement from the army. Powell’s, Shelton’s, and Shinseki’s serious reservations about the Pentagon’s war plans were strongly supported by many distinguished retired officers free to voice their opinions on the folly of the dubious war strategy of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his civilian cohort.
The Pentagon’s curt dismissal of the need for an exit strategy was closely tied to the issue of planning for the postwar situation in Iraq and, in particular, to the question of whether the Department of State or the Pentagon would control defeated Iraq. The Department of State and its Middle East experts believed that extensive planning was required to ensure a stable and workable postwar Iraq. To this end they established dozens of task forces that worked for many months to deal with every possible aspect of postwar Iraqi society, including establishment of political stability and a smoothly functioning infrastructure. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had very different plans for postwar Iraq, and, following Chalabi’s advice, they believed that only minimal planning would be necessary for managing the postwar situation. Both Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were seriously misled by false intelligence regarding Iraq fed them by Chalabi and his associates. Indeed, these two top members of the Department of Defense, known as ‘sophisticated and experienced’ experts in matters of war and statecraft, had such extraordinary confidence in Chalabi that they expected that he would be installed as the head of a post-Saddam Iraqi government. They also expected that, once he was in power, Chalabi would fulfill several of their major objectives: first, the United States would acquire permanent military bases in Iraq; second, a post-Saddam Iraq would pursue a foreign policy of friendship and normalization of relations with Israel; and, third, Iraq would be governed by a secular, or at least moderate, Muslim regime.
The important struggle between the Departments of State and Defense was ultimately resolved in Rumsfeld’s favor. He successfully convinced President Bush that the Pentagon could best plan for the postwar situation. By assigning this responsibility to the Pentagon, the President in effect accepted Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz’s military plans and political objectives. However, even in the mid-summer of 2004, after the United States had officially transferred ‘sovereignty’ to the Iraqi interim government, there was no evidence that the Bush Administration was willing to give up the Pentagon’s long-term military and political goals. The President’s decision to forsake diplomacy and, in effect, turn over to the civilian militarists in the Pentagon the conduct of the war and the postwar fate of Iraq was one of the most disastrous mistakes ever made by a US leader in the realm of foreign policy.
The coalition supporting the war
continued primacy of the United States in the world and to prevent the emergence of any foreign power that could challenge US supremacy. This objective of achieving global dominance, first expressed during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, was made explicit in what became known at that time as the ‘Cheney– Wolfowitz Doctrine’; it advocated that the United States use its military superiority to prevent the rise of any challenger to its dominant world position. The Clinton Administration, at least implicitly, accepted the goal of US primacy but employed economic rather than military means to achieve this objective. The ultra-nationalists in the Bush Administration, on the other hand, have believed that US political/military control over the world’s petroleum reserves in the Middle East, Central Asia, and elsewhere, was necessary to achieve their goal of global domination.
The ultra-nationalists and their imperial ambitions are supported by the neo-cons in high positions in the Administration and by influential allies in the media and in many well-known private organizations. For the first time, neo-conservatives have occupied powerful positions in the Pentagon, the White House, and other parts of the US national security establishment. The neo-cons, both inside and outside the government, have included individuals with such familiar names as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Daniel Pipes. The neo-cons believe that the survival of Israel is dependent upon a Middle East transformed by geo-strategic arrange-ments favorable to the security interests of Israel. Elimination of the ‘Iraqi threat’ to Israel’s survival has been particularly important to them.
Even during the early Clinton years, the neo-cons, then out of power, began a concerted campaign to denounce Iraq as a threat to the United States and to Israel. Through the effective use of the public media, they also advocated a US war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; such efforts by the neo-cons were supported financially and in other ways by such influential ‘think tanks’ as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Heritage Foundation.
The authors of the report recognized that only the United States could achieve their ambitious goal of reordering the geopolitics of the Middle East; they knew also that the United States would intervene militarily in the Muslim world only if its own security were threatened by developments originating in the region. Both the ultra-nationalists and the neo-cons viewed the terrorist attack of 9/11 as a terrible but fortuitous event that empowered both groups within the Bush Administration and enabled them to promote their complementary plans for reordering political and strategic affairs in the Middle East. It is important to emphasize, however, that it was President Bush himself who made the crucial decision to attack Iraq and that he did so for his own reasons.
Evangelical Christians are the largest and most important group supporting the Bush Administration and its policies toward the Middle East, especially the United States’ close ties to Israel.12 This highly motivated religious and increasingly
political movement advocates a strong pro-Israeli US policy. A loose grouping, consisting largely of fundamentalist Protestant faiths, the evangelicals constitute a sizeable fraction of the US population and are concentrated in the politically important states of the South and Midwest. The support of these groups is essential to the political success of George W. Bush and the Republican Party.
The strong support of evangelical Christians for Israel is based on their funda-mentalist reading of the Bible. They passionately believe in the ‘Second Coming of Christ’ and the Apocalypse, or ‘end of time’, that will accompany his return to Earth. This interpretation of the Bible was moot until the creation of Israel in 1948. Up to that time the evangelical belief in the ‘Second Coming’ had been largely theological and had not been considered a reason for political action. However, when the state of Israel was ‘re-established’ in 1948, evangelicals realized that their biblical interpretations indicated that this development had made possible the ‘Second Coming’ and that it could possibly occur during their own lifetimes. Because the ‘re-gathering of the Jews’ in the Holy Land is a biblical prerequisite for the earthly return of Jesus Christ, evangelicals want the United States to support and protect Israel against the followers of anti-Christian Islam.
Conclusion
could have anticipated. Yet many military officers, Middle East experts, and foreign policy professionals provided extensive and timely warnings of the dangers awaiting US forces in an occupied, anarchic, and devastated Iraq. Anyone familiar with the ‘fog of war’ and war’s unpredictable nature should have known better than to be confident in predictions about the outcome of a war. In contrast to the impru-dent and flawed speculations of many enthusiasts for the war, the more carefully weighed views and warnings of such military professionals as Chief of Staff of the army General Shinseki and many Middle East experts proved correct.
Alas! Few officials in either the executive or legislative branches of the US government gave serious consideration to the many warnings from strategic and political experts who sought to point out the dangerous pitfalls of an Iraq war, and particularly of a poorly planned war. Dissenters within the Administration who questioned the wisdom of the war were either totally ignored or moved to positions where they could not make trouble. And the Congress, with few members dis-senting, enthusiastically and without serious deliberation committed the nation to the most dangerous and hazardous initiative ever undertaken by the United States. Whereas caution and prudence are of the utmost importance in matters of war and statecraft, President Bush plunged the country into a war that has produced tragic consequences for the United States and the rest of the world: consequences which have not yet fully run their course.
Notes
1 This title is a variation of the famous remark attributed to Georges Clemenceau that war is too important to leave to the generals. This article is an edited and updated version of the E. H. Carr annual lecture delivered at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 16 October 2003.
2 Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terrorism(New York: Free Press, 2004).
3 This article relies heavily on the superb books and articles by such journalists as Bob Woodward of the Washington Postand Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker magazine. Woodward’s two remarkable books based on extensive interviews with members of the Administration are Bush at War(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002) and Plan of Attack(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). Hersh, an outstanding investigative reporter, has written extraordinary articles in which he exposes many embarrassing shortcomings and failures of the Bush Administration.
4 US Congress, The 9/11 Commission Report (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, July 2004).
5 The ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis gained popularity following the publication of Samuel Huntington’s book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). However, Bernard Lewis coined that term.
7 Peter Waldman, The Wall Street Journal, 3 February 2004, p. 1.
8 For methodological reasons alone one should be highly skeptical about any argument that attempts to explain major social and political upheavals by a single motive or cause.
9 A good summary of General Zinni’s severe criticisms of the war and the Administration’s policies can be found on the website http://www.cbsnews.com (accessed 21 May 2004).
10 The role of Chalabi in the events leading up to the war, his bizarre relationship with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, and answers to many other important questions are still unknown. Was he, for example, an Iranian agent and did he support an attack on Iraq believing that the major beneficiary would be Iran?
11 R. Perle, J. Colbert, C. Fairbanks, D. Feith, R. Loewenberg, J. Torop, D. Wurmser and M. Wurmser, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Washington, DC: The Jewish Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, 1 June 1996).
