Center for International Policy

Translation from printing in
ContraPunto de América Latina
Jan - March 2007

Worst of Presidents?

Wayne S. Smith

The mid-term elections in the U.S. on November 7 this year resulted in a major defeat for the Bush administration, with the Democrats taking control of both houses of Congress. The majority of Americans, clearly, have lost confidence in President Bush and his policies. And no wonder!

Remember the outpouring of solidarity and support for the United States immediately after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001? Most of the world stood with us and the way seemed open to the creation of a vast international alliance against terrorism, led by the U.S. Five years later, all that has collapsed and rather than the world being with us, U.S. standing internationally has fallen to its lowest point in memory.

Polls taken recently in Great Britain and in Canada and Mexico show that the U.S. is now seen as a threat to world peace even by its closest neighbors and allies. In Great Britain, 71% of those polled now say the invasion of Iraq was unjustified, a view shared by 89% in Mexico and 73% in Canada. In Great Britain, 75% see Mr. Bush as a danger to world peace. Only Osama bin Laden himself, the al Qaida leader, is seen by more as such a threat, by 87% of those polled.

Extraordinary! To have brought us from that moment of international solidarity back in 2001, to this, with Mr. Bush himself seen even in Great Britain as a threat to world peace, took an almost unimaginably incompetent administration. As they went to the polls on November 7, American voters were reacting to most of the same perceptions that had already turned international public opinion so massively against the Bush administration. It took them a bit longer to react of course. There is always a tendency to give your own president a greater benefit of the doubt than the international community is willing to give. But finally, reality cannot be ignored. And Mr. Bush has major policy blunders and misstatements to answer for.

The War in Iraq. First and foremost, of course, is the war in Iraq. Mr. Bush told the American people, along with the rest of the world, that he had to invade because he had evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ready to fire. He also claimed Iraq was associated with those behind the September 11 attacks, associated, that is, with Osama bin Laden. But no weapons of mass destruction were ever found and much of the evidence turned out to be concocted. Nor was there any connection whatever to bin Laden. On the contrary, there was bad blood between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks. In short, both pretexts given by President Bush for the invasion of Iraq turned out to be totally false.

President Bush insisted nonetheless that the invasion would open the way to a democratic Iraq, which in turn would lead to a more stable region. And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assured one and all that we’d be in and out quickly, in no more than six months. But going on four years later, with almost three thousand American soldiers dead, thousands more wounded, many maimed for life, and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians slaughtered, we see those assurances also for the gross miscalculations they were. Iraq is not moving toward democracy; it is sliding rapidly into a full-scale and hideously bloody civil war – as we should all along have expected. Did Mr. Bush really think Sunnis and Shiites would so easily put aside the hatreds of centuries!?

In short, the Bush administration has misled the nation into perhaps its worst foreign policy debacle ever, with no clear way out as of this writing.

Violation of the Geneva Conventions. And then also, flowing out of the war in Iraq, is the shameful record of mistreatment of prisoners seen at Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo, together with the practice of renditions, i.e., flying detainees to foreign prisons where they are frequently tortured. Never, in my darkest, most pessimistic moments would I have expected an American government to condone this sort of thing. But condone it the Bush administration has. We have, for example, the 50-page Justice Department memo dated August 1, 2002, which assures the President that the Geneva Conventions against torture do not apply to “unlawful combatants” captured during the war on terrorism. It also states that anti-torture provisions in various international conventions may well not apply and that the acts themselves may not really represent torture. “Certain acts,” it says, “may be cruel, inhuman and degrading, but still not produce pain and suffering of the requisite intensity to fall within [the] proscription against torture.”

If you’re still breathing, in other words, then you must not have been tortured!

People around the world have been shocked by this blatant departure from the traditional U.S. position of respecting prisoners and treating them humanely. At last the American public is also reacting to the Bush administration’s shameful conduct in this area – conduct which fundamentally undermines the Geneva Conventions and in some cases also undermines certain fundamental rights of U.S. citizens. Wiretapping of citizens without benefit of a warrant comes immediately to mind.

Failure to Rebuild Iraq. Another failure in Iraq has to do with reconstruction and even the provision of water and lights. More than three years after the invasion, the average Iraqi is getting along on, at best, a few hours of electricity a day, far fewer than enjoyed before the invasion. Running water is also in short supply. Yet, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars to restore these services – unsuccessfully. How can that be? The spiraling violence is to be sure part of the answer. But there has also been massive corruption and incompetence. As one of the companies most involved is Halliburton, which Americans know to be Vice President Cheney’s old company, they will draw their own conclusions.

The Bush administration’s failure to restore essential services in Iraq will come as no surprise to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, Americans living on the Gulf Coast, where, despite all its promises, the Bush administration also failed to restore services and press ahead with a massive rebuilding effort. It all follows a pattern of incompetence.

Consequences of the Mid-Term Elections. An Argentine friend recently arrived in the United States asked me the other day what real difference it made to have the Congress under a Democratic majority, since Bush was still the President and had a veto power. “The Democrats won’t be able to impose legislation against his will, so what can they do?”

The first thing, I answered, was to block any of Bush’s legislation with which they disagree. No more will he be able to steamroller bills through Congress. And the veto power is not absolute. There will be issues on which a presidential veto might be overridden – if enough Republicans vote with the Democrats. And even if not, in some cases, embarrassing the President by forcing him to veto legislation that has a good deal of popular support, is worth the effort.

But of far, far greater importance is that Democratic control of the Congress ends a situation that has undermined our constitutional system over the past six years. That is, there have been no checks and balances. The Executive could do virtually anything it wished, no matter how strongly its measures appeared to be unethical or even downright illegal, secure in the knowledge that a supine Congress would not challenge, investigate or allow investigations. All that is now over. Checks and balances have been restored. The Democrats have already made it clear that in January, once they are in charge, they will launch a whole series of investigations, on issues ranging from the decision to invade Iraq to what most see as illegal wiretapping, i.e., without warrants. Already, Senator Patrick Leahy, who will head the Senate Judiciary Committee, has announced that he will demand to see two documents. One is a directive, signed by President Bush shortly after the September 11 attacks, that granted the CIA authority to set up detention centers outside the U.S. and described allowable interrogation techniques – some believed to border on torture.

The second document is believed to be still another Justice Department memorandum providing watered-down definitions of what constitutes torture.

With the Democrats in control of Congress, it will now be far more difficult, and in many cases impossible, to ignore or sidestep demands for such documents. Needless to say, the administration has been most reluctant to have them seen – usually refusing outright to provide them. And no wonder! It seems clear that many describe situations and decisions of highly questionable legality – if indeed they were not downright illegal.

But it will no longer be in a position simply to refuse. And there is more. There is even speculation that out of the firestorm of investigations, hearings and revelations that will begin in January, impeachment proceedings against the President and Vice President may become a real possibility.