This week, Slate is featuring a conversation about George Bush's presidency, prompted by Oliver Stone's film W. Participants are Oliver Stone; Bob Woodward, author of The War Within; Ron Suskind, author of The Way of the World; and Jacob Weisberg, author of The Bush Tragedy.
Bob, Ron, Jacob,
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StumbleUponForgive my tardiness in response. I'm working long hours over here in England and France getting W. open. It's tough to keep this pace up, and it's late here. But it's great to see how you're all fighting with one another. I love it.
I'd add this to the issue of Ron's accusation that in the movie Bush is some kind of innocent "Candide." At times, certainly, Josh Brolin plays him with charm and goofy innocence—but Bush is hardly innocent. What could be clearer in this movie, coming after his supposed evangelical conversion, than the size of his ego? It seems to me in contradiction to the demands of the born-again faith, wherein you surrender your ego to Jesus Christ. "This is my war, not his! I will not renegotiate this," he yells at Condoleezza Rice in the Bush-Scowcroft-Wall Street Journal scene two-thirds of the way through the film. W also clearly tells the assemblage in the central Situation Room scene, "I'm a gut player, always have been, and I am just so bone tired of this Saddam. ... We have got to get this war going." And earlier in the same scene: "The working Joe's not thinking about oil. We're talking 9/11 terrorists and WMDs. We're talking freedom and democracy. We're talking about 'Axis of Evil.' "
In another scene, he clearly tells Dick Cheney that he is the "decider," and he tells Karl Rove that he makes up the ideas. All men serve him. And, as Jacob portrays so wonderfully in his book, he is a creature of outsized ego, resulting partly from the fact that up until the age of 40 he was a man brewing with frustration. Forty years is a long time to wait when your father is better at sports, politics, oil, money, diplomacy, and even academics than you are. I can see in Bush's press conferences, at the very least, a seething anger and impatience with any kind of criticism that seems to affect every aspect of his life. Jacob, in his book, goes into detail about the idea that as a first-born, black-sheep son who has been criticized for so much of his life, Bush reacted by hardening his willpower to the point at which any criticism would only encourage him in the opposite direction. There are many examples of this: his reactions to the vast 12 million-to-15-million-person protest throughout the planet against his policies in Iraq, his reaction to his father's and Brent Scowcroft's criticisms of the war, and his contemptuous indifference to questions about his judgment from the press, among many other instances.
It is Bush's unchecked ego that drives him to willfully disregard facts and rely on so-called instincts, as well as his naive belief this was a just and winnable war simply because good is supposed to triumph over evil. Saddam and terrorists are clearly evil, and America is clearly for freedom and democracy; what could possibly go wrong?
Add to the mix the Project for the New American Century—whose statement of principle is "American leadership is both good for America and good for the world." The PNAC had a sense of supreme purpose: It had been advocating regime change in Iraq since 1998—and counted among its chief advocates Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, who were strategically placed in the White House. There you have it: a combustible mix of ambition and faith. A perfect storm wherein Bush's ego blends with the collective desire for revenge after 9/11, the Darwinian global-domination instincts of Cheney, and the needs for re-election of Karl Rove.
And not to overlook this: We have not talked much about Richard Clarke, the White House counterterrorism expert, who writes of W.'s immediate impulse after 9/11:
The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, "I want you to find whether Iraq did this."
I said, "Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection."
He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection." And in a very intimidating way.
As Bob points out in Plan of Attack, by the Camp David meeting on Sunday, Sept. 16, Bush had decided, "We won't do Iraq now. ... We're putting Iraq off. But eventually we'll have to return to that question."
However, it wasn't long before Bush returned to that question: "By that November 21 [2001], when he took Rumsfeld aside, Bush had decided it was time to turn to Iraq. 'I want to know what the options are.' "
While Tommy Franks and Rumsfeld went full speed ahead on their war plans for Iraq from November 2001 on, Franks was telling his commanders: "This is fucking serious. You know, if you guys think this is not going to happen, you're wrong."
In April 2002, again according to Bob, when Bush hosted Tony Blair and his family at his ranch at Crawford, a British television reporter interviewed the president about Iraq.
"I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go," Bush said, announcing his explicit intentions almost a year before he launched his pre-emptive strike on Iraq.
In the fascinating discussion the three of you had setting different timelines for the actual origin of the war, I would only point out the one thing that stood out in my mind at the time: As an infantry veteran, I was struck by the commitment of Bush to send 100,000 soldiers to the Gulf in December 2002. This was the typical kind of "hide in plain sight" deployment often used in cases such as Central America in the 1980s and in previous Middle Eastern conflicts. Nevertheless, you don't send 100,000 soldiers, plus a fleet of naval ships, to a region with the idea of their coming back without having used the power. It would've cost a fortune, and it was a policy from which George Bush could not have retreated without great embarrassment and cost. It smelled clearly of war. So I think by December it was more or less decided.
I think there is a larger implication, however. I think we make too much of Iraq specifically. I think Bush's anger needed a larger pasture in which to graze. If it had not been Iraq, I think he would just as easily have turned us against Iran or, for that matter, Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea, another co-star in his "Axis of Evil" speech. The mindset is there from the beginning—of "us vs. them," the "evil-doers," the "terrorists" (which is really an undefinable term in the perspective of history). This is the essence of the Bush Doctrine, which allows the chief executive to tell us, Orwellian-style, who our enemy of the moment is.
The bigger issue is the mindset that exists in such thinking, that it's going to occur again in the cycle of our foreign policies. Even should Obama win, I can foresee these hostile situations arising over and over from such flammable policies as our expansion of NATO and our recent Russian/Georgian conflict. Bush and his ilk, in opposition, will continue to raise their voices in dissent at any kind of "soft power" response coming from the United States. We will be expected to answer perceived threats in a partial military manner because of the fierceness of our opposition party. Already Obama seems to be going in that direction in Afghanistan; it's beginning to look to me like another version of Iraq/Vietnam. We seem incapable as a system of reforming the military-industrial complex.
Finally, I just want to reiterate that the compassion this film displays toward the feelings of George Bush has not changed my sensibilities about the clear path of destruction and diminishment to which he has led our nation; yet I don't think Bush wakes up in the morning thinking about the bad things he does or could do. He believes he's a good guy; he's with the angels. In fact, I don't think he has had a moment of uncertainty about his virtue. He believes it to his core, and clearly a part of America, to a degree, believed in this, too.
Our next terrible president will not come wearing wolf's clothing or twisting a mustache. He—or she—will seem benign, friendly, and patriotic; someone who can convince us that the nuance of international relations is actually quite simple; someone with whom we'd want to have a beer. This is one of the main lessons I hope the film conveys: Will we recognize the next George W. Bush who enters national politics? Will we see the train wreck coming before we are in it?
Jacob, as I am finishing this post, I see your recent one questioning two big scenes in the film. I would like to respond to this in my next post.
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Movies are all about drama, not history-by-the-books.
Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser get it exactly right by focusing on Bush's character, not on trying to capture the verbatim history of events. There was a lot of good reporting, particularly by Bob Woodward, but no stenographers were in any of the important meetings. Therefore, everything is subject to speculation. And here is where Oliver and Stanley gave a fabulous, real, large, and acutely accurate psychological reading of W. and the events and people who surrounded him.
This film will be studied for generations. Not only is it fair to the subject, "W.", it is also fair to the real, underlying truth of the characters and the events. Which is a major-league accomplishment by the writer and the director. Kudos to both Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone.
--radlib1
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While W's drinking and carrying-on didn't result in him getting fined, tossed in jail, etc., when he did achieve he didn't (literally) get the pat on the back either. Whatever W did was meaningless to him, whether it be crash the car into the front door or get elected to positions of incredible power and status.
--brewcrew2008
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This all reminded me of the reviews I read of one of the biographies of Ronald Reagan, I believe it was "Dutch" by Edmund Morris. After being at Reagan's side for years and interviewing everyone he could who ever met Reagan he couldn't believe what he had found. He learned that Reagan was essentially a stuffed shirt, a kind of empty vessel who, like Bush, was incurious about the world and didn't really know how to fix any problems. But Morris could not believe this. Surely there must be more to Reagan. Thus he chocked it up to Reagan be a mysterious, inscrutable person of endless depth. Despite his closeness to Reagan Morris never found the bottom of the man, at least he couldn't believe that he had. Thus to explain Reagan Morris had to make up stories about Reagan and insert himself into events he wasn't a part of.
Suskind believes that some future writer will get a better and truer grasp of Bush. But if there is nothing else to grasp then Suskind is sounding or acting like Morris.
--doughdee222
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One thing Mr. Woodward left out: yes, it was believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and, yes, we tried to make a case of it. And in the end we were wrong, but let's not forget, Saddam was less than forthcoming until the U.S.A was knocking at his door.
We can get all over the weapons-of-mass-destruction argument and bash Bush, Powell, and all the others who were wrong. But Saddam closed his doors to regular inspections by the U.N. (until the last minute) and kept his entire country under his thumb.
-Pachomius
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A big part of his election campaign in 2000 was that he was the "CEO president" - that he would surround himself with advisers who were experts and would give him advice, and then he would make the decision. A huge problem with a "CEO" president who takes no time to understand any issue is that he is completely dependent on his advisers, and in this case, they were all some combination of delusional, insane, ideologically corrupt, incompetent, or gutless. Of course Bush decided to invade, he was fed information that could only lead him to one conclusion.
And this bit about Bush telling Cheney he's the boss - that had nothing to do with Cheney's control over policy, Bush just didn't want Cheney to appear to be making the decisions, and he wanted Cheney to be deferential to him. The whole Bush presidency was about him looking presidential, and being elected twice, and making big decisions to be remembered by. He had no real plan that he wanted to implement, he just wanted to look like he was in charge, and he didn't want Cheney to alter that perception.
--kgsbca
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The points missing from the discussion are, first, the way people process information, and second, the fact that the political climate at the time created tangible benefits to Bush which disposed him towards war.
Intelligence assessments, the existence or not of WMD, possible links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda--all of the available facts and interpretations of facts available to Bush were heavily laced with ambiguity. When faced with decisions in the presence of even minimal ambiguity, almost no human beings can analyze them completely objectively, and most tend to be strongly disposed to make the interpretation that is most advantageous to them. This happens to all of us to some degree, without our awareness. We will interpret available facts, and even bend them, if necessary, in order to interpret them in a way consistent with our pre-dispositions, without even thinking about it.
Bush is clearly either less able or less willing to set aside his pre-existing beliefs than most people, and most people aren't very good at it. This must be considered against the fact that, during the spring and summer leading up to the Iraq invasion, in a political sense, war was working for Bush and Cheney. […] Although most people agreed that action against the Taliban in Afghanistan was justified, many doubted whether it would be effective. However, by early in 2002, the skeptics looked wrong. […] It was a huge political success for Bush at the time, and defining himself as The Anti-terrorist became the strategy used to help Republicans gain in the 2002 elections.
I don't know if Weisberg is right that a decision was made to go to war in Iraq in mid 2002. But a psychology disposed toward war was strongly entrenched, and continued to be further fortified by the political advantage the Republicans gained from exploiting the conflict. The result may well have been that no single over-riding reason was needed. Between all of the players involved, a group-think took over in which each could assemble their own justifications from a long list of possibilities.
When you have a democracy governed by a collective dominated by a group-think that has been re-enforced by tangible benefits to the leaders resulting their interpretation of sketchy data, and when that same collective has great control over the presentation of the available datta to everyone else, the only reasons that really matter are the ones that will sell the idea to the public.
--not_abel
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I wish I had the date of the speech so I could go back and listen to it again. During the 2000 campaign, I heard a snippet of Bush speaking on the radio in which he said something to the effect of, "We don't have a monolithic enemy like in the days of the 50s, we have instead this vague unstructured threat field" What struck me about it was that he sounded wistful, disappointed that he missed all the fun of facing down an evil empire, going toe to toe against Kruschev. He was right, of course, about the vague unstructured threat field, but I think he wanted to test himself against the consolidated forces of evil. So I think he was predisposed to look for a monolithic enemy, to see the actions of a terrorist cabal as one face of evil incarnate. He wasn't content to fight Al Qaeda, he needed to be god's warrior and declared a global war on terror.
--Swampdog
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(10/28)