Did Pres. Bush’s Invasion of Iraq Pave the Way for Trump?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Thank you. And next to the United States, where the consequences of the Iraq war are also still being felt. President Bush has never admitted that his war was a mistake, unlike some of his officials. And many Republicans today. Our next guest, Professor Melvyn Leffler tackles the question of responsibility and accountability in his new book, “Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq.” And here he is now with Walter Isaacson.

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WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank, you Christiane. And Professor Mel Leffler, welcome to the show.

MELVYN LEFFLER, AUTHOR, “CONFRONTING SADDAM HUSSEIN: GEORGE W. BUSH AND THE INVASION OF IRAQ”: Delighted to be with, you Walter.

ISAACSON: Today marks the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. And you write that that was the most consequential American foreign policy act of the 21st century. What were the consequences?

LEFFLER: There were many. First off, keep in mind that it led to the deaths of over 200,000 Iraqis and the displacement of about 9 million Iraqis. It led to the deaths of approximately 9,000 American soldiers and private contractors. It will cost the American people, over time, approximately $2 trillion. Geopolitically, it had significant consequences as well. It diverted American attention from the ongoing war in Afghanistan. It allowed Iran to become predominant in the Persian Gulf. It divided America from its European allies, however briefly. It distracted America’s attention from the rise of China and from the revanchism in Russia. So, geologically, it had significant consequences as well.

ISAACSON: But didn’t we think that Saddam Hussein was a really bad threat and we had to do this? I mean, weren’t these well-intentioned decisions?

LEFFLER: Yes, they were well-intentioned decisions. And as I described in my book, Saddam Hussein was a brutal, cruel dictator who had developed weapons of mass destruction, who had used weapons of mass destruction, meaning chemical and biological weapons, both against his own people and against the Iranians in the Iraq-Iranian war. He had lied about his weapons of mass destruction. He had concealed his weapons of mass destruction. And he was, overall, a character who could not at all be trusted. So, I think the — what I try to present in my book is that there were good reasons for American policymakers to be extremely completely distrustful and suspicious of him, especially after the shock of 9/11. That doesn’t mean that I am writing that the war was justified, but it does mean that policymakers were acting, in your words, out of good intentions. They certainly wanted to prevent the United States from suffering an attack like the one that happened on 9/11.

ISAACSON: I want to drill down on the question of why did George W. Bush do this? Why did he invade? And that main theory is weaving through your book and other places, some of which had to do with his father and his — the way his father conducted the first Gulf War. Some say it was Cheney and willful wits and advisers like that who drove him into it, and they had undue influence on him. Some say it was a whole fog and confusion. Some say he really did believe in democracy promotion, that he would create democracy in the Middle East. What do you think the motivations really were?

LEFFLER: I think the overriding motivation was fear and a sense of responsibility to prevent another attack. The allegations that he was trying to redress the errors of his father or get even with Saddam Hussein for Hussein’s effort to assassinate his father, there seems to be no credible evidence to suggest that that — those were real factors. But President Bush clearly was extraordinarily worried about another attack. And he had a reason to be worried about based on incontrovertible evidence that al Qaeda did seek to attack United States again. The notions Dick Cheney was making policy, or the Neocons, like Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, those generalization are simply not well founded if you look carefully at the evidence. And the evidence suggests that President Bush was motivated principally by fear, and President Bush also believed he had the capacity, the capabilities, the power to deal with this perception of threat. So, it’s really the fear, power, hubris that motivated him.

ISAACSON: In your book, there is a scene that illustrates, I think, one of the failings that happened in U.S. policy. I like to describe that scene and have you discuss it. It’s in a meeting with General Franks, and you talk about President George W. Bush saying, can we win? And General Franks says, yes, sir. And the president says, can we get rid of Saddam Hussein? Yes, sir, says the general. And then, you say, the president did not ask, what then? Why was that the problem?

LEFFLER: That was a tremendous problem because there was inadequate attention paid to what the war plan is defined as phase four of the war effort. Phase four was the post war stabilization and reconstruction time period. And President Bush and General Franks and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and other top officials actually spent a lot of time talking about the initial phases of the war plan. What would be required to topple Saddam Hussein? But they did not spend much time on what it would take to preserve order and stability and ensure security in the aftermath of the government being toppled. Hence, there was enormous confusion and there was enormous chaos and there was enormous disorder, immediately after the regime was toppled. And the United States did not have sufficient troops or sufficient plans to really deal with the dynamics of the situation that quickly emerged. The administration must be held responsible for the inadequate planning for so- called phase four, the post war stabilization.

ISAACSON: You say it’s hubris, but isn’t that why we have an intelligence community, why did not the CIA know what would happen in the aftermath of the war?

LEFFLER: Well, it’s — one, because, Walter, that’s a very difficult thing to do. Predicting the future is infused with imponderables. So, I mean, one might say that what happened after the war might have been very different if the United States had sufficient forces to preserve order immediately. But it is the role of the intelligence community to try to predict what would happen. And in fact, in January of 2003, there were two intelligence analyses that broadly — in broad strokes didn’t predict that there would be a type of chaos that emerged but suggested that that was that was a possibility. The top policymakers did not really pay enough attention, as I just said, to what was likely to happen. They didn’t pay attention to those two intelligence reports that emerged in January of 2003. One of the points that I want to emphasize is that the policymakers, for example, in the State Department, General Powell who is secretary of state, some of his subordinates in the policy planning staff, like Richard Haass, in the division of Near Eastern affairs like Bill Burns, these people were very skeptical of going into Iraq with combat troops, very skeptical but they never presented a systematic analysis of what was likely to happen.

ISAACSON: Let me read you a sentence that you wrote, which is, it’s important to get the story right in order to grapple earnestly with the dilemmas of statecraft. By simplifying the story, we comfort ourselves to think, if we only had more honest officials, stronger leaders, wiser policymakers, all would be well. Why was it not true that if they had just been a little bit wiser things would’ve been well?

LEFFLER: Well, it’s because being wise is difficult. And what I try to show in this book and many other books I’ve written is that decision-making is tough. There are real lessons to be extrapolated from this decision to go to war. One, American policymakers need to be able to calculate threats more carefully. They need to — Americans need to modulate their fears. They need to really be able to determine much more accurately when there is war is not “an existential threat.” They also need to grasp the limits of American power. During this period of time, of course, the United States had hegemonic power, no great power rivals whatsoever. So, American policymakers thought they could achieve what they wanted to achieve. They perceived threats and from a pretty weak nation, overall, Iraq, and they believe that the exercise of their power would enable them relatively easily to remove the threats that they perceive. Another lesson, right, would be reexamined fundamental assumptions. That’s easy for me to say, it’s easy for most people to agree, but how many of us reexamined fundamental assumptions. The fundamental assumption here was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that assumption should have been carefully reexamined, and there were opportunities to do it. But policymakers didn’t re-examine it because they felt absolutely certain that the lessons of history suggested that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

ISAACSON: You say it was the most consequential foreign policy decision in the 21st century. How did it reverberate and things like Obama’s decisions on Syria and other things that could have been different had we had not done this invasion?

LEFFLER: Oh, I think they had profound influence on President Obama’s inclinations to get deeply involved in regime change in Syria. It certainly influenced his initial action to withdraw completely from Iraq, thereby providing opportunities for ISIS or the Islamic State to regroup and gain more and more power in the region before troops, again, were reinserted to stifle ISIS and to defeat the Islamic State.

ISAACSON: Was that a mistake on Obama’s part to withdraw from Iraq?

LEFFLER: I think many experts now feel that the total withdrawal that occurred under Obama probably was an error. That is not to say that people think or I think that there should have been a continued deployment of large numbers of combat troops. But the critical factor during the years of Obama, especially in 2011 and 2012, the critical factor was whether to keep it in a small number of troops to continue the training and the support of the Iraqi army.

ISAACSON: So, do you think this — the really bad problem he had after the Iraq invasion has made the United States all the way through have these reverberations where we don’t know how to calibrate our involvements in the Middle East?

LEFFLER: Yes, I think it’s chastened the United States, it’s made policymakers think very deeply about the use of force. I think that’s a good lesson. I think people should think deeply and systematically about the prospective use of force. But it also clearly contributed to the rise of the America First, of MAGA America because President Donald Trump certainly campaigned on the notion that the so-called forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were totally inconsistent with American interests and led to commitments that was totally self-defeating. And so, much of the growing American First-ism, most — much of the present American hesitation, especially on the far- right, even to give assistance to Ukraine at this very moment goes back to what Donald Trump and his supporters believe are the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, stay out of these conflicts. They have nothing to do with U.S. interests.

ISAACSON: Are there some truths to that?

LEFFLER: These problems abroad do affect American interests. And the challenge for policymakers, the challenge for you, Walter, and for me is to determine precisely what is the nature of our interests in Iraq, in Ukraine, et cetera? How important is that interest? And then to define tactics, commensurate with those interests. So, I would say today, President Biden’s carefully calculating these issues with regard to the situation in Ukraine. He understands that undeterred aggression, that Russian aggression left unmet is a dangerous precedent, both for Europe and for what might in the future have been in East Asia. He understands that and I think that he is right about that. At the same time, he has carefully tried to calculate that although that is an important interest, and overriding priority is not to get engaged in a full-scale war with Russia because that might culminate in the use of nuclear weapons. So, I see President Biden trying carefully to calculate the nature of American interests and to prioritize them and to design tactics that are commensurate with the priorities he is assigning to those interests. And I think that’s the lessons to be learned here. It’s not, yes, we have an interest in Iraq or we don’t have an interest in Iraq, we do have interests in Iraq. We have interest in the Middle East. But the challenge is how great are those interests and what sorts of tactics should be employed in pursuit of those interests.

ISAACSON: Mel Leffler, thank you so much for joining us.

LEFFLER: It’s been a great, great pleasure talking to you.