The American people can stop this train

By Jim Mullins
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
October 11, 2006

George W. Bush promised "a humble foreign policy" and rejection of "nation-building" in his 2000 presidential campaign. They were the first of a long list of deceptions as, in his first National Security Council meeting, he outlined an invasion of Iraq as the most pressing foreign policy issue facing the United States.

Although information was flooding intelligence agencies about an imminent al-Qaida attack on the U.S. mainland, it was placed on the back burner.

Intelligence information volume reached the urgent action level on June 30, 2001, when a study commissioned by CIA Director George Tenet concluded that the "bin Laden threats are real." He and counter-terrorism chief J.Cofer Black sought an immediate meeting with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, where their pleas for action were rebuffed. Rice, a Stanford scholar on the (then defunct) Soviet threat, considered missile defense the greatest priority and al-Qaida a "nuisance."

She belatedly remembers telling them to speak to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, neither of whom had direct authority to respond to the emergency as she, the national security adviser, did.

Despite the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential briefing that laid out the threat as even more urgent, President Bush continued with his monthlong vacation.

Sept. 11 brought an end to America's "age of innocence," the beginning of fear as the guiding political motivator, and the "War on Terror" as the rationale for abandonment of our moral principles.

Bush administration officials have used the politics of fear to maintain control of Congress ever since. Just nine weeks before the 2002 election, they began a scare campaign, describing Saddam Hussein as having weapons of mass destruction, waving the sight of a "mushroom cloud" over our cities and stampeding a Congress into giving the president authority to attack Iraq based on deception.

Not revealed was that in April of that year, Bush had sold Tony Blair on joining the invasion of Iraq, had agreed in June with British intelligence to "fix the facts around the policy," had pulled our Special Forces out of Afghanistan to begin training for the Iraqi invasion -- leaving Osama bin Laden on the loose -- and began accelerating the bombing of the Iraqi no-fly-zones. All the while supposedly supporting diplomacy and U.N. inspections.

By 2004, the Iraq war was falling apart, "Mission Accomplished" was a distant dream -- but the politics of fear won over common sense. The Democrats, ever fearful of being accused of being soft on national security, advocated doing a better job of waging the war and lost the election. Fear won out again.

Another election is rapidly approaching. Bush's public speeches leading up to the five-year commemoration of 9-11 were replete with allusions to "terror," 9-11 and "the war on terror." Then came references to WW II, FDR and Munich appeasement. A sick joke for those of my generation, to whom FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Roosevelt led us in those dark times by asking all to sacrifice. No tax cuts for the rich, but a surcharge on their incomes. Not "go out and shop," but live with rationing. Men and women left families and friends to defend the nation, and "Rosie the Riveter" wives and girlfriends went to work.

America's WW II involvement, against two military behemoths on opposite sides of the world, lasted three and a half years. After the same period of time, Iraq has as many people killed in random sectarian killings in a month as were killed on 9-11.

The Afghan war has lasted five years with its current situation: escalating insurgency, production of 90 percent of the world's heroin, a move to bring the Taliban into government and no end in sight. All 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have reported that since our invasion and bungled occupation of Iraq, it has become the prime incubator of world terrorism.

Yet our craven Congress just passed the Military Commissions Act that makes a mockery of the 800-year-old Magna Carta's right of habeas corpus, trashes the Constitution's Bill of Rights, decriminalizes violations of the U.S. War Crimes Act and Geneva Conventions and retroactively absolves U.S. officials, including the president, of culpability under their provisions.

Only the American people can stop this train -- by losing their fear and demanding a different destination: a return to multilateralism, respect for international law and FDR's "Good Neighbor" policy.

Jim Mullins is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., and a resident of Delray Beach.

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