Former Bush Senior Aide Karl Rove deserves credit for vindicating President Bush in his new auto-biography, “Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight.”
As one of the few liberals in America who has supported the war in Iraq (See www.honorfreedom.com) I found deep historical value in Rove’s account of what actually happened in the White House during the months leading up to the war, and I was inspired by his willingness to call out those Democratic senators who voted for the war, but later abandoned the president once it became unpopular.
On January 5, 2007 ABC News reported that 28 of the 77 senators who originally voted for the war said they would have voted differently. Not surprisingly, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, John Edwards, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, all of whom challenged Bush for the presidency eventually turned against the war.
Of course, Bush’s post-9/11 popularity was 90 percent, the highest of any president in American history, and Democrats knew the only hope they had of winning was to undermine the morality of the war. Undermining the morality of the war meant that it didn’t matter if America achieved victory in Iraq.
The Democratic Party knew that if they could create a myth that Bush started the war under false pretenses, they could not only call him a failure; they could call him a liar. If that were true, they could discredit all of Bush’s successes.
Chapter 21 of Rove’s book – “Bush Was Right on Iraq” – sets the record straight. It is a thorough account of what really happened in the months leading up to the war. Rove starts with the history of Saddam Hussein’s attempt to compile weapons of mass destruction and sites specific examples of Democratic leaders who argue that point to the nation, including former President Bill Clinton, Vice-President Al Gore and current U.S. Senator majority leader Harry Reid.
Rove also mentions that on February 5, 2003, only a few weeks before the war, Democratic U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller publicly tied Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden in an interview with Wolf Blitzer. The media however, only criticized Bush and Cheney for making the same connection, and falsely accused the administration of tying Iraq to 9/11, which was something the administration never did.
What Bush and Cheney actually asserted was that there were contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda brokered by Sudanese Islamist leaders, which was also reported by the 9/11 Commission (See page 61 of the paperback version which outlines the non-aggression pact brokered between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda by Turabi. Upon release of the report, the New York Times incorrectly reported on the front page that the 9/11 Commission found no tie between the two.)
Although there were conflicting reports that Iraqi intelligence had suspected involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (bomb-maker Abdul Rahman Yasin fled to Iraq after the 1993 WTC bombing and was essentially given asylum) the FBI did conclude that Iraqi intelligence was behind attempted assassination of President Bush 41 during his 1993 post-presidential visit to Kuwait (see “U.S. Strikes Iraq for Plot to Kill Bush, The Washington Post, June 27, 1993 which outlines how President Clinton fired 23 tomahawk cruise missiles into Iraq’s intelligence headquarters in retaliation).
All of these issues probably created additional concerns about Saddam Hussein’s determination to harm U.S. interests, but Bush’s actual justification for using military force against Saddam Hussein was simple; 9/11 was a wake up call that made government officials realize how vulnerable our nation was, and our national security strategy had to become more pro-active to prevent any other future possible attacks.
Since Iraq was still refusing to give U.N. weapons inspectors unfettered access to search for weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. Resolution 687, both Congress and the White House decided we needed to finally enforce those resolutions, which is what the international legislation actually mandated.
Using the same intelligence as the White House, the House of Representatives voted 296-133 and the Senate voted 77-23 in support of the 2002 resolution that authorized President Bush to use all necessary force to enforce any U.N. resolutions pertaining to Iraq. Rove also points out that despite the myth that the White House misled Congress about Iraq harboring weapons of mass destruction, Congress had access to the same intelligence reports the White House did.
Perhaps the most valuable mention in Rove’s book is his historical review of American foreign policy. Rove points out that the removal of Saddam Hussein did not start out as a policy under George W. Bush, but was actually an extension of President Clinton’s.
In 1998, President Clinton enacted the “Iraq Liberation Act,” (ILA) which made it official American foreign policy to support the removal of Saddam Hussein. Shortly after passing the Iraq Liberation Act, Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a massive bombing campaign designed to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.
The liberation of Iraq was not a Republican or neo-conservative policy decision. It was an extension of the policy created by President Clinton who also had the insight to see the danger that Saddam Hussein presented to his own people and nations abroad.
Rove does not disappoint his readers. He takes personal responsibility for the Bush administration’s failure to respond to the Far Left attacks on the president.
“So who was responsible for the failure to respond? I was. I should have stepped forward, rung the warning bell, and pressed for full-scale response. I didn’t . . . the hope was that the charges would evaporate. The opposite happened. Our critics pounded us relentlessly. And the public saw our silence as a plea of nolo contendere . . . (but) the charge that Bush lied was itself a lie.”
Rove’s book is hopefully only the first account of many that will set the record straight about President Bush and the liberation of Iraq. Irrespective of one’s partisan loyalty, “Courage and Consequences” is an important historical perspective that should be read for consideration.
Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is the National Organizer of HONOR FREEDOM (www.honorfreedom.com) an organization dedicated correcting historical record President Bush and the war in Iraq. He previously interned for President Clinton in the White House and served on U.S. Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential election legal team.