If the Bush White House excels at anything, it’s keeping secrets. With the sudden departure of political director Karl Rove, who it’s reported frequently leaked information to pet reporters for political purposes, the mystery about who’s responsible for what decisions can only deepen. Since the administration rarely tells the truth about anything, divining its intentions requires American Kremlinology, a term once used for decoding Soviet Russian propaganda. If you can figure out who wants you to believe something, it’s sometimes possible to understand why. From there, underlying facts can be deduced. Maybe. In foreign policy, two factions reportedly are competing for George W. Bush’s ear. Supposedly, these groups are represented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who allegedly favors diplomatic engagement with Iran, and Vice President Dick Cheney, who’d prefer to bomb them back to 333 B. C., when Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian capital of Persepolis. “Darth” Cheney has long been an adept of the Chicken Little school of international relations in which the sky is always falling and only launching another pre-emptive war can save us. The theory is that following a massive bombing attack, Iranians would rise up and overthrow their government as the U. S. currently has no army available for the job.Back in the ’ 80 s, the Chicken Little faction dubbed itself Team B. They claimed that the CIA was gravely underestimating the Soviet threat. Disaster loomed. Soon afterward, the U. S. S. R. imploded, partly due to military disaster in, yes, Afghanistan. In retrospect, the CIA had greatly oversold Russian might, thanks mainly to domestic political pressure.
Today, the Chicken Little brigade warns that, should we fail to respond to the Iranian “threat,” we could soon find ourselves living in an America where Paris Hilton has been stoned to death, Britney Spears has to go around in a baggy black chador, and the World Series will be contested by men wearing beards and turbans. I get frequent e-mails warning that “Islamo-fascism” threatens to conquer the U. S. A.
I’ve never understood why Cheney’s hysterical world view is always seen as more virile and manly than that of wimpy “realists” like Rice and retired Gen. Colin Powell, although few, if any, neo-conservatives espousing it have had combat experience since the third grade. I suspect it’s mainly to do with sounding extremely sure of yourself at Washington cocktail parties.
So last week we had the spectacle of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki traveling to Tehran, where he was photographed holding hands with Iranian President (and designated “madman” ) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In a CNN interview days earlier, Afghan President Hamid Karzai had characterized Iran as a “helper.” In a news conference, Bush strongly disagreed. He later vowed to have a “heart-to-heart” with al-Maliki to straighten him out, too.
Meanwhile, U. S. military sources in Baghdad keep blaming Iran for attacks on Americans, and keep not proving it. They recently alleged that sophisticated roadside bombs could have been manufactured only by Iranian engineers; days later, U. S. soldiers raided an Baghdad bomb factory using explosives stolen from unsecured Iraqi munitions sites. Thanks, Rummy.
Next, the Iranians were accused of smuggling small arms to Shiite militias. A Government Accountability Office report subsequently documented that the Pentagon couldn’t find 110, 000 AK-47 assault rifles and 80, 000 pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005. Both things could be true. But it’s equally likely that the Bush administration seeks to divert attention from its own spectacular blunders.
Al-Maliki is no more prime minister of Iraq than the aforementioned Miss Spears. Iraq no longer exists; its government is a fiction. Al-Maliki heads the Islamic Dawa Party, a Shiite sectarian organization allied with Iran. The so-called insurgency is almost entirely Sunni. Remember three weeks ago when “al-Qa’ida in Iraq” was the big enemy ? They’re among al-Maliki’s opponents in Iraq’s increasingly worsening civil war. The “surge” ? Pretty much beside the point.
To see how it all began to unravel, read The New York Times’ exhaustively reported “How a ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan Went Bad.” It reports that after Bush boasted, “We’re tough, we’re determined, we’re relentless” and “We will stay until the mission is done,” and promised the Afghans a new Marshall Plan, the administration almost immediately began diverting resources to Iraq. “I said from the get-go that we didn’t have enough money and we didn’t have enough soldiers,” said Robert P. Finn, U. S. ambassador to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003. “I’m saying the same thing six years later.” In summary, the Bush administration started a second war before winning the first. In consequence, Osama bin Laden remains at large while Americans die every day vainly refereeing a chaotic civil war in Iraq. With the U. S. in danger of losing both wars simultaneously, Cheney is pressing for a third war against an opponent larger than the other two combined. This isn’t conservatism, neo- or otherwise. It’s madness.
—–––––•–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
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