VII

Meet the coalition of the UNwilling

I may be getting old, but there’s nothing wrong with my memory or my attention span—at least not yet. The folks from the Bush administration would like us to forget that we went to war in Iraq because they falsely claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They’d like us to forget their phony campaign to connect Saddam Hussein to 9/11, so they could do what they’d wanted to do all along. If I live to be a hundred (which I hope to do), I’ll never understand how we got so duped.

We went to war on a lie. Congress didn’t debate it. The press didn’t challenge it. It got trumped up in secret meetings. The generals weren’t allowed in the room. Secretary of State Colin Powell even got fooled. And now that we’ve made a mess of things, the only way out is to start telling the truth.

The generals finally came forward to do just that, although it took them three years. If anyone doubts how much trouble we’re in, just listen to the generals. They say that the rhetoric of the White House hasn’t been matched by either resources or resolve. The drumbeats have drowned out common sense. They say we are bankrupt in leadership.

Iraq is a war nobody wanted—unless you count Iran, who has watched us accomplish what their eight-year war with Iraq could not. Unless you count the Taliban in Afghanistan, whose narcotics trade is thriving. George Bush says our enemies “hate us for our freedom.” They really hate us for our arrogance. But they love it when we get stupid. And, folks, we’ve been stupid. Big time.

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

One of the qualities that made Winston Churchill a great leader was his historical imagination. “The longer you look back,” he wrote, “the farther you can look forward.” He once complained to a friend, “We live in the most thoughtless of ages. Every day headlines and short views. I have tried to drag history up a little nearer to our own times in case it should be a guide in present difficulties.” Good idea!

The war in Iraq is a failure of historical imagination. Didn’t we learn any lessons from Vietnam? Vietnam was also a failure of historical imagination, which showed that we learned nothing from Korea.

Many years ago, Joseph Califano, who was a member of Lyndon Johnson’s and later Jimmy Carter’s administration, told me this story. It was right after Johnson had been elected in 1964, and Johnson and Califano went to visit General Douglas MacArthur, who was retired and living in the Waldorf Towers in New York City. MacArthur said to Johnson, “Sonny, never get involved in a land war in Asia.” When they left his apartment, Johnson was furious. “Did you hear that?” he asked Califano. “The son of a bitch called me Sonny. I’m the President of the United States, and he called me Sonny!” He couldn’t get over it. Unfortunately, Johnson missed the real message—the one about the ground war in Asia. Kennedy missed it, too, because I understand that MacArthur told him the same thing. I wonder if he called JFK Sonny.

When the Bush administration said we would be greeted as liberators, I knew right away we were in trouble. The lessons of history would have told a different story, but history was never consulted.

TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES

When I talk to John Murtha, he says he feels personally betrayed. In his heart Murtha is still a marine. You never stop being a marine. He feels responsible for the guys we’ve placed in peril without a plan for winning. Murtha spends his weekends visiting the wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He describes their injuries as horrible. Those who survive roadside bombings—the most common injury—usually have massive head injuries and loss of limbs. Their families are crying, begging Murtha to do something. They believe their kids have become nothing more than targets, driving around in poorly armored Humvees and getting blown up. For what?

Have you noticed that we never hear much about the wounded? The media keeps a running count of the dead, but why not the wounded? Where do you even find out how many have been wounded? Let me tell you something. It’s not easy. The Pentagon doesn’t publish that information unless it is specifically requested by the media. Why do you think that is? Could it be because the number is so big? I challenge the media to do just that. Put the number in bold print, right next to the number for those killed. (For your information, the official number of Americans wounded in action in Iraq is currently around 24,000, but that doesn’t account for thousands of non-combat injuries.)

And where is Bush, the Commander in Chief? For a guy who loves photo ops so much, there’s one photo op you never see: the President in Dover, Delaware, standing next to a flag-draped coffin. He doesn’t want to be identified with coffins. For the first time in memory, cameras have been banned from Dover. The coffins arrive in the deep of night, when nobody can see them. Hell, they don’t even call them coffins. They call them “transfer tubes.”

IS IT REALLY WORTH IT?

The cost of human life is the greatest tragedy of Iraq, but don’t forget the other costs. Let’s look at it from the perspective of a CEO. When you decide to launch a project—whether you’re building a car or starting a war—one of the first things you do is look at the cost/benefit picture. That is, what are we getting for the money?

As of this writing, the cost of the war is estimated at about half a trillion dollars. But according to some experts, the true cost could be as high as $2 trillion, when you factor in lifetime disability and health care for the wounded, the interest on our debt, and the rising oil prices.

On the ground, it’s been kind of hard to keep track of how much we’re spending, because the accounting is extremely loose in the new Iraq. It’s like the Wild West over there. At one point, $1.5 billion was floating around in cash, to be used to hire workers and pay off mullahs, and God knows what else. Paul Bremer, who was in charge of the rebuilding effort for a while, kept $600 million in cash on hand. I guess he put it in his sock drawer.

Don’t forget. That’s your money they’re spending. Do you want to throw it into an Iraqi sinkhole, or do you want to provide health care? Do you want to hand it over to Halliburton, or do you want to make sure American kids go to college?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of the amount we’re pouring into Iraq, let’s look at the conservative estimate of what half a trillion dollars would buy here at home:

· We could hire 8 MILLION SCHOOLTEACHERS.

· We could give FREE HEALTH CARE to everyone for one year.

· We could provide 25 MILLION COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIPS.

· We could give every American FREE GAS for one year.

· We could build 3 MILLION AFFORDABLE HOUSING UNITS.

· We could hire 8 MILLION POLICE, FIRE, AND EMT WORKERS.

We could put a dent in some of the most pervasive problems we face as a nation. So, the next time someone in government says we can’t afford health care or education or border security, just remember, it’s all about priorities.

FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS

Ronald Reagan once said, “Facts are stubborn things.” He actually got that quote from John Adams. The Bush administration doesn’t really believe in facts. It believes if you tell a lie often enough it becomes true. But those inconvenient facts keep getting in the way. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. They said the war would take six months tops. It’s been four years. They said Saddam Hussein colluded with Al Qaeda on the 9/11 attacks. That never happened.

I could go on, but the lies get boring. The administration likes to call their mistakes “faulty intelligence.” There was no faulty intelligence. Let’s call a lie a lie. Can’t we believe anything these guys say?

It takes courage to face the truth, but I believe we must. Not only about the disastrous course of the war, but about our nation’s mixed history with Saddam Hussein’s regime. Don’t forget that we backed Saddam in his war with Iran. (There’s a famous photograph from 1983 that shows Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein’s hand. Everyone is smiling!) The Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations provided Iraq with over $15 billion in loan guarantees. When Saddam sprayed chemical gas on the Kurds, he used U.S. helicopters sold to him for crop dusting. With Saddam now in his grave, the whole truth may never be told. But one thing is clear: Nobody’s hands are clean in this one—especially not ours.

THE COALITION OF THE DWINDLING

Can you call it a coalition when it’s just you and one other guy? Let’s compare Bush senior’s coalition in 1990 with his son’s. The phrase “go it alone” takes on new meaning with Bush junior.

In March 2003, as we were gearing up for war, the White House published a list of forty-eight nations that were participating in the Coalition of the Willing. Forty-eight seems like a big number, until you look at the list and the troops numbers. Most of them contributed fewer than a hundred soldiers. Now, even that coalition has become the Coalition of the Dwindling. We’re down to twenty-three nations, totaling less than fifteen thousand troops—half of those from Great Britain. And the dwindling continues. Here’s the real picture (as of this writing):

You might call that a coalition. I call it an American war.

If you want an example of what an actual coalition looks like, take a look at the Persian Gulf war. Bush’s daddy had it right:

One thing you notice right away—in addition to the sheer numbers—is that the gulf war coalition drew its strength largely from the Arab world. They were our allies. Name one Arab nation that signed on for the current Iraqi war. Instead of bringing the Arab world together, the war has sparked a rise in violence across the region, our intelligence agencies report. The best recruiting tool for the jihadists is the war in Iraq.

DOESN’T ANYBODY HAVE A PLAN?

Bush and company had a fantasy that we could bring democracy to Iraq and it would cause a domino effect in the Middle East. Suddenly every Arab nation would embrace democracy. What were they smoking?

Condi Rice said the problems are “the birth pangs of a new Middle East.” Well, it’s an awfully long time to be in labor.

Today, they don’t even talk about establishing democracy anymore. Mostly they talk about how we can pull our finger out of the dike without causing a tsunami.

The war in Iraq has already exceeded World War II in the length of the conflict. Where’s the plan?

After the 2006 election, Bush fired Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but you have to wonder if it was in recognition of the mess we were in or just political expediency. How many fired people do you know who are given elaborate ceremonies praising their years of service?

Before he left office, Rumsfeld leaked the contents of a memo he’d sent the President several weeks earlier, perhaps anticipating the need to shore up his legacy. In the memo he called for a new direction, then gave a laundry list of alternatives. It was too little, too late.

The long-awaited report of the Iraq Study Group, led by Bush senior’s old pal James Baker, left the President with the choice of embracing it and admitting failure, or ignoring it and doing nothing. Can you guess which he chose? This is a President incapable of admitting failure.

Let’s apply some common sense here. If the head of a car company was losing money like crazy on its latest model, you wouldn’t hear the CEO say, “The solution is to build more cars. We have to support our investment.” Not if he wanted to keep his job. He’d better have a new plan—and I mean now.

Remember Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn rule, “You break it, you own it”? Boy, that’s pretty bad news. The way things are going in Iraq these days, we own a pile of crockery. There is no electricity, no infrastructure, no security for citizens, the government is a joke. What there seems to be plenty of is violence. I heard there was an update on the Pottery Barn rule: “We broke it, you own it.”

Let’s face it. Even if the war itself was started under false pretenses, we could have achieved tremendous good will and positive results if we’d been prepared for the aftermath of the invasion. Instead, we sent a bunch of Republican Party hacks over to build a nation. In many cases, their only credentials were loyalty to the President. They didn’t have to speak the language, know anything about the Middle East, or have any experience with the nuts and bolts of nation building. You can talk all you want about the promise of democracy in Iraq, but you can’t really have a democracy if you’re afraid to leave your house. And democracy can’t be planted in a field of civil war.

OSAMA BIN FORGOTTEN

After 9/11, Bush was determined to catch Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. “There’s an old poster out west,” our cowboy leader said, “‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’” Now, that’s a mission the American people could really get behind. But Bush pulled nearly all of our troops out of Afghanistan and sent them to Iraq, without capturing bin Laden. The 9/11 mastermind is still on the loose. Well, I’ll tell you one place Osama is NOT hiding: in Iraq.

In July 2006 the secret unit assigned to track down bin Laden was disbanded. In September Bush told a reporter that capturing bin Laden was not a priority. That boggles my mind. The guy who is responsible for 9/11 is NOT a priority. The guy who “tried to kill my daddy” IS a priority. It makes you wonder if Bush ever intended to capture Osama bin Laden after all. It adds to the evidence that we’re not really fighting the War on Terror in Iraq. We’re fighting to survive a civil war that we enabled. Call me paranoid, but I’m starting to think that whenever a Saudi is involved—even if it’s bin Laden himself—we just aren’t that motivated.

Jay Leno joked about it, but it’s really not so funny. When there were rumors (later discredited) that bin Laden was dead, Leno quipped that officials in Saudi Arabia believed them. “The reason they think he’s dead,” Leno said, “is that the checks they send him keep coming back.”

LET’S DO OUR FRIENDS A FAVOR

Which brings me to my proposal. If our goal is to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, why don’t we do our friends a favor and call for a regime change in Saudi Arabia? Why don’t we bring them democracy? If it’s good enough for Iraq, it’s good enough for Saudi Arabia.

It makes sense. In all the years that the Saudis have been tight with the Bushes, wouldn’t you think some of that love of freedom would have rubbed off on them? Why do you suppose we’ve left their brutal little theocracy alone? If democracy in the Middle East was such a big deal, why did we start with a bitter enemy, before we offered it to our very best friend?

The Bush family’s ties to Saudi Arabia are well documented. I saw it for myself on a visit to former Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar’s mansion in Aspen, Colorado. The prince had quite a luxurious spread near America’s favorite ski slope. He took me on a tour of the property, and pointed out two bungalows. One was named for Bush senior and one was named for Bush junior.

This may explain the fact that even though Saudi Arabia had its fingerprints all over 9/11, the Bush administration refused to demand accountability. Saudi Arabia got a pass when Bush was looking for countries that harbored terrorists. Saudi Arabia got a pass when it was discovered that millions of dollars had flowed from the Saudis to Al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia even got a pass on the fifteen Saudi hijackers. Imagine how the Bush administration would have spun it if even one of the 9/11 hijackers had been from Iraq. It takes a lot of balls to ignore the fifteen hijackers that were from Saudi Arabia.

Thanks to the reliable Bush family consigliere James Baker, whose firm successfully represented the Saudi government in a $1 trillion lawsuit brought by the 9/11 families, Saudi Arabia was declared blameless. I guess that’s what friends are for.

So, back to the question: Why don’t we bring democracy to our friends the Saudis? This theocracy is opposed to everything we stand for. If you were going to name an axis of evil, you could easily start in Saudi Arabia. It’s an absolute monarchy, where all the decisions are made by the King. There is no constitution. No legislature. No due process. It is illegal to demonstrate against the government. It is illegal to practice any religion but Islam. Corporal punishment is still practiced. (That means if you steal a loaf of bread, they cut off your hand.) Public executions are regularly held. Women are not allowed to vote. Women must have written permission from a man to study, work, or travel. The religious police are everywhere, making sure that women are covered, that women aren’t driving cars, that everyone is toeing the line. These religious police are no better than the Taliban—and let me tell you, they’re scary. Once I was at the Riyadh Hilton with a group of top U.S. executives. We were on a tour of nations, sponsored by Time magazine. The cameraman had a knapsack supposedly full of film canisters, but it actually held dozens of miniature bottles of liquor. He slipped a tiny bottle of scotch into a paper bag, and gave it to me to enjoy in my room. The wife of the American ambassador saw me standing in the hall chatting and holding my little paper bag. She whispered to me, “Better get rid of that. If they find alcohol on you in a public place, they will lock you up tonight, no questions asked, and we will not be able to help you.” I couldn’t drink that bottle fast enough!

Saudi Arabia is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, with its vast oil wealth being squandered by the few. The excess is mind-boggling. Hundreds of gold-encased palaces, hundreds of wives, millions blown on vacations, gambling, high living. These guys make Saddam Hussein look downright middle-class. Outside the palace gates, ordinary Saudis face high unemployment, a crumbling infrastructure, and a grim future.

To top it off, every schoolchild in Saudi Arabia is taught that their sole duty in life is to destroy everything America stands for. With friends like these, you don’t need enemies. Why do we tolerate it with a smile?

The answer is simple: It’s the oil. We have sold our soul for oil. And if that doesn’t piss you off, nothing will. Our troops are being blown up in the Middle East so we can bring democracy to Iraq, while we’re in bed with a regime that would sooner see us wiped off the face of the earth. The only possible explanation is oil.