The gift that keeps on giving

This quote makes the rounds every couple of months. It’s hardly a new discovery, but we probably should make posting it a regular feature as long as W is president:

Trying to eliminate Saddam…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible…We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq…there was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern of handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.

There are a couple of interesting things going on here. First, it’s still stunning to me how much smarter the old man is than the first-born. The problems with an invasion of Iraq were obvious in 1991, and should have been just as obvious in 2003. Bush II foreign policy has often been depicted as ABC (anything but Clinton), but I think it’s more accurate to describe it as ABD (anything but daddy). Bush I made a six month effort to construct an international coalition to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, and took pains to include Arab states in the planning and the execution (take a look at Kenneth Pollack’s description of Egyptian military performance in the Gulf War; it’s not positive, but it didn’t matter because they were assigned to an unimportant sector). Bush I then realized the difficulties that the invasion of Iraq would produce, including domestic chaos, the collapse of the coalition, and the strengthening of the Iranian hand, and stopped short.

This quote, and others like it, should also produce questions about attempts to ascribe any sort of master plan to Bush family or even Republican foreign policy. Poppy and W didn’t sit down with advisors and script out a master plan in 1988. There are a few important differences between the 41st and 43rd administrations. For one, Bush I was far more experienced in international affairs than Bush II, who didn’t have a clue in 2000 and still doesn’t today. Just as important, Bush I had better advisors. Although a lot of Bush II appointees also served in Bush I, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft are gone, and Colin Powell, paradoxically, is probably less important to security planning now than he was in 1990.