Just like his daddy: Bush may win the war and lose election

George H. W. Bush won the first Gulf War and enjoyed the highest approval ratings of any… George H. W. Bush won the first Gulf War and enjoyed the highest approval ratings of any president before losing the 1992 election. George W. Bush has won the second Gulf War, enjoyed some of the highest approval ratings of any president and may be destined to the same fate as his father.

The elder Bush lost his bid for re-election due to economic issues, namely, a “jobless economy.” Now Dubya, already facing doubts about both the economy’s current state and prospects — and certain to become the first president since Herbert Hoover to have created a net loss in jobs during his term, with the 2.2 million person increase in unemployment since his taking over — now faces increasing problems in his war in Iraq.

In a recent National Public Radio interview, and later in a report to the U.S. Senate, former Chief Iraq Arms Inspector David Kay revealed that he did not find, nor did he believe Iraq possessed, weapons of mass destruction or stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. “I don’t think they exist,” he said. “It turns out that we were all wrong, and that is most disturbing.”

This comes on the heels of accusations by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill — known for his candor — that Bush intended to depose Saddam Hussein long before Sept. 11, 2001. Still, the Bush administration continues to defend its war as just, even as the reasons they gave — of Hussein’s ties to Al-Qaida and the existence of WMDs — have been reduced to myths.

Though Kay refused to put any responsibility upon the administration and blamed intelligence reports instead, Bush and his neo-conservatives pushed for this war when the threat simply did not warrant such action.

Bush went to war believing he would be proven correct in regards to the existence of WMDs. This view, however, was not created as a result of strong intelligence pointing in that direction; it had been formulated long before, along with the decision to go to war. Intelligence data that provided the administration with suitable explanations of “suspicious” movements were highlighted, suggestions that proposed alternative — and ultimately, correct — explanations for such activity were dismissed.

Bush reasoned that Hussein would not have misled U.N. inspectors if he did not have anything to hide. Now that it has been revealed that Hussein was lied to by his own scientists about their military capabilities out of their fear of displeasing the tyrant, the alternative explanation presents itself, accounting for both Hussein’s reluctance to accommodate inspectors and the absence of WMDs.

The war that we entered because of Bush’s dangerous assumption has produced strained diplomatic ties with allies and has succeeding only in furthering the view of America as an imperial evil, especially in regions of the world in which credibility was not our strength to begin with.

It is finally undeniably clear that Hans Blix, the U.N. and, yes, France were right — and we wrong — in judging the Iraqi threat. Maybe wars should not be led on assumptions and uncertain intelligence after all.

Still, withstanding the intelligence failure, Bush had an option that would have justified the war politically. He could have taken the diplomatic route which Europe and most of the world advocated, passing one final U.N. resolution and giving Iraq an explicit ultimatum: follow the terms dictated, or face war. As it stands, he has managed to unnecessarily undermine America’s standing abroad, the war effort and the cohesiveness of the international community all at once, which is no small feat.

As for other justifications given for the war, sure, the world is a safer place without Hussein, and the Iraqi people are “liberated.” But so long as we are being honest, let us be honest about our intentions.

We have rarely gone to war to make the world a safer place or a people more free unless our own interests were directly involved. In fact, we have supported exponentially more dictators, who have endangered the world at the expense of brutalizing those under their rule, than we have run military campaigns for humanitarian ends. This trend was certainly not abandoned for the people of Iraq — their liberation was merely a side effect of pursuing national interests and was never a sincere objective of the people who embarked on this war.

The elder Bush lost to a man whose sexual indiscretions cost his party the presidency. If a political party can lose the White House over an extramarital blowjob, it can certainly do the same by waging a premature — and now undeniably illegitimate — war. After all, the political cost of 528 American lives, and between 8,000 and 10,000 Iraqi civilian lives, thrown away by the Bush administration in an unnecessary war should, at the very least, be equal to the political cost of a receiving a blowjob.

Pedja is not really a Frenchman; he just plays one on TV. E-mail him at pej3@pitt.edu.