Why Leaders Lie - Mearsheimer, John J_ [25]
Vice President Cheney, who has also played a key role in spreading this falsehood, said on September 14, 2003, that if the United States prevails in Iraq, “We will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.”39 Again, there is no evidence that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden, much less that the Iraqi dictator helped Al Qaeda in any way on September 11. The Bush administration was undoubtedly still pedaling this bogus story to sustain support for the Iraq war, which had begun to go badly in the late summer of 2003.40
Fourth, in the year before the war, President Bush and his advisors frequently said that they hoped to find a peaceful resolution to the Iraq crisis, and that war was an option of last resort. For example, Bush told Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on January 30, 2003, that he had not made a decision on whether to use force against Iraq, and then told the American people, with Berlusconi at his side, that it was still possible to avert war, although time was running short.41 The following week in Munich, Rumsfeld said publicly, “We still hope that force may not be necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein.… Let me be clear: No one wants war.”42
In fact, the Bush administration was bent on war by the summer of 2002, if not earlier, and the decision to deal with Saddam by going to the UN in September 2002 was designed to provide diplomatic cover, not to avoid the war. For example, Richard Haass, the head of policy planning in the State Department, says he knew that war was inevitable after meeting with Condoleezza Rice in early July 2002. He asked the national security advisor whether it made sense “to put Iraq front and center at this point, given the war on terrorism and other issues. And she said, essentially, that that decision’s been made, don’t waste your breath.”43
At roughly the same time, British policymakers concluded that Washington was bent on war against Iraq. Their thinking is summarized in a summary of a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Tony Blair on July 23, 2002. It reads: “C [the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.” It went on to say: “The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided.”44 Finally, Bush met with Colin Powell on January 13, 2003 and told him that he had decided to go to war against Iraq.45 That meeting took place a few weeks before Bush told the American public and Berlusconi that it might still be possible to avoid using force against Saddam and a few weeks before Rumsfeld told a Munich audience that war was not inevitable.46
WHY LEADERS FEARMONGER
Leaders engage in fearmongering when they think they recognize a serious threat to national security that the public does not see, and that the public cannot be made to appreciate with straightforward and honest discourse.47 They reason that the only way to mobilize their citizens to do the right thing is to deceive them for their own good. Fearmongering, which is a straightforward top-down form of behavior, is antidemocratic at its core, although leaders do it because they think it is in the national interest, not for personal gain.
There are a number of reasons why average citizens might not be able to comprehend a particular threat. They might not be sufficiently interested in international affairs to appreciate that their country is facing a lurking danger, even when their leaders give them unvarnished evidence of the threat. Moreover, they might not be collectively smart enough to recognize