Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [118]
Among the skeptics and critics on the Iraq venture were several retired generals, including Anthony Zinni, Norman Schwarzkopf, Wesley Clark, and Barry McCaffrey. Zinni, former commander at Centcom of the Middle East, said he believes Iraq is about fifth on the list of things that need to be done in order to arrive at peace in the Middle East. The first, blindingly obvious, is to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Conservatives are fond of observing that there are some problems that cannot be solved by throwing money at them. There are even more that cannot be solved by dropping bombs on them.
Bush got a blank check from Congress, one of the most curiously passive performances by our elected representatives anyone could remember. Gulf War I, a far more defensible proposition, set off a pip of a debate in the Senate. Members have since maintained they were misled by the administration, which was then touting “evidence” that Hussein had tried to acquire uranium for his alleged nuclear program from Niger in Africa. The evidence turned out to have been forged, and U.N. inspectors later announced flatly they had found no evidence of any nuclear program. “Evidence” of biological and chemical weapons was vague, and the claimed connections to al-Qaeda embarrassingly thin.
The United Nations preferred trying to disarm Hussein without war. Throughout the weapons-inspection process, the administration remained bellicose. Everybody else thought war should be a last resort, but the Bushies appeared to be champing at the bit, posting with unseemly haste to blow the smithereens out of Baghdad. When Germany and France joined Russia in the “whoa, slow down” camp, a truly nasty spate of Frog-bashing ensued. Richard Perle said in January in England that we would go to war whether the weapons inspectors found anything or not. The egregious Mr. Perle later described the elected leader of Germany as “a discredited chancellor” and announced that France is no longer our ally, that it has lost its “moral compass” and “moral fiber.” Donald Rumsfeld first described France and Germany as “old Europe” and then lumped Germany in with Cuba and Libya.
The armchair generals in the punditocracy, none of whom has ever served in the military, were even tougher: Jonah Goldberg of the National Review popularized the phrase “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” to describe the French, while right-wing commentators launched a perfect jihad over the news that the French had dared to disagree with us. Phrases like “Euroweenies” and “EUnuchs” were flung about with fine abandon as the Europeans were charged with being envious, hypocritical, petulant, anti-Semitic, philosophy-reading, wine-sipping, limp-wristed pansies. The House of Representatives, in a moment of breathtaking gravitas, decided to rechristen the French fries served in the House cafeterias as “Freedom fries,” a ringing blow against the perfidious Frogs. To say the least, the case was not argued on its merits. Timothy Garton Ash, the British writer, put his finger on an interesting feature of this new anti-Europeanism: “The most outspoken American Euro-bashers are neoconservatives using the same sort of combative rhetoric they have habitually deployed against American liberals.” That the ugly and contemptuous rhetoric of right-wing radio talk shows is not normally employed in “diplomatic nuanced circles” and might, indeed, have serious long-term consequences did not seem to occur to the Euro bashers. As Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times pointed out, “Every time Rumsfeld insults Europe, it costs us another $20 billion.” (Ninety percent of the first Gulf War was paid for by our allies.)
By February, public opinion across Europe was running 80 percent against a war with Iraq, putting those governments that did support the United States in considerable electoral peril. Why American jihadists hell-bent on democracy in Iraq thought