The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama [139]
It was a good start by the Administration, I thought—steady, measured, and accomplished with minimal casualties (only later would we discover the degree to which our failure to put sufficient military pressure on Al Qaeda forces at Tora Bora may have led to bin Laden’s escape). And so, along with the rest of the world, I waited with anticipation for what I assumed would follow: the enunciation of a U.S. foreign policy for the twenty-first century, one that would not only adapt our military planning, intelligence operations, and homeland defenses to the threat of terrorist networks but build a new international consensus around the challenges of transnational threats.
This new blueprint never arrived. Instead what we got was an assortment of outdated policies from eras gone by, dusted off, slapped together, and with new labels affixed. Reagan’s “Evil Empire” was now “the Axis of Evil.” Theodore Roosevelt’s version of the Monroe Doctrine—the notion that we could preemptively remove governments not to our liking—was now the Bush Doctrine, only extended beyond the Western Hemisphere to span the globe. Manifest destiny was back in fashion; all that was needed, according to Bush, was American firepower, American resolve, and a “coalition of the willing.”
Perhaps worst of all, the Bush Administration resuscitated a brand of politics not seen since the end of the Cold War. As the ouster of Saddam Hussein became the test case for Bush’s doctrine of preventive war, those who questioned the Administration’s rationale for invasion were accused of being “soft on terrorism” or “un-American.” Instead of an honest accounting of this military campaign’s pros and cons, the Administration initiated a public relations offensive: shading intelligence reports to support its case, grossly understating both the costs and the manpower requirements of military action, raising the specter of mushroom clouds.
The PR strategy worked; by the fall of 2002, a majority of Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and at least 66 percent believed (falsely) that the Iraqi leader had been personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. Support for an invasion of Iraq—and Bush’s approval rating—hovered around 60 percent. With an eye on the midterm elections, Republicans stepped up the attacks and pushed for a vote authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein. And on October 11, 2002, twenty-eight of the Senate’s fifty Democrats joined all but one Republican in handing to Bush the power he wanted.
I was disappointed in that vote, although sympathetic to the pressures Democrats were under. I had felt some of those same pressures myself. By the fall of 2002, I had already decided to run for the U.S. Senate and knew that possible war with Iraq would loom large in any campaign. When a group of Chicago activists asked if I would speak at a large antiwar rally planned for October, a number of my friends warned me against taking so public a position on such a volatile issue. Not only was the idea of an invasion increasingly popular, but on the merits I didn’t consider the case against war to be cut-and-dried. Like most analysts, I assumed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and coveted nuclear arms. I believed that he had repeatedly flouted UN resolutions and weapons inspectors and that such behavior had to have consequences. That Saddam butchered his own people was undisputed; I had no doubt that the world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
What I sensed, though, was that the threat Saddam posed was not imminent, the Administration’s rationales for war were flimsy and ideologically driven, and the war in Afghanistan was far from complete. And I was certain that by choosing precipitous, unilateral military action over the hard slog of diplomacy, coercive inspections, and smart sanctions, America was missing an opportunity to build a broad base of support for its policies.
And so