FROM RED TO BROWN

Even before Bush was President, he had discussed invading Iraq. In 1999, he told the ghostwriter of his official autobiography, Mickey Herskowitz, quote, “My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade… if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed.” Bush got such a chance on 9/11, and everything he wanted to get passed was in the Patriot Act.

The first version of the Patriot Act was introduced to the House less than three weeks after the attacks. Considering the usual sluggishness of Congress, how far-reaching the Patriot Act is, and the complexity of its legal proposals, it is hard to believe that the Administration wrote the 342 page bill in such short time. It is easier to believe that the Patriot Act’s proposals, most of which expanded the powers of the executive branch by allowing it to bypass the other branches, was an existing laundry list of everything that the Administration had dreamed of accomplishing legislatively. Indeed, it allows Bush to bypass Congress to wage attacks and even war against unspecified enemies for unspecified reasons, and to bypass the courts in obtaining warrants for the arrest of anyone suspected or accused of terrorist association. Those arrested can be held indefinitely without hearing or knowledge of charge. The act also gave the government the previously unheard of power to spy on Americans by tapping their phones, reading their emails, and even reviewing their library records.

During the post 9/11 political hysteria, in an effort to appear as resolute as Bush against the terrorists, Senate and House Democrats put their tails between their legs and voted for the Patriot Act without any serious debate. Current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi voted for it; as did Senators Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich voted against the bill, because, as he says, he “actually read it.” Likewise, when Michael Moore interviewed Democratic Rep. John Conyers for Fahrenheit 9/11, Coyners stated, quote, “We don’t read most of the bills. Do you know what that would entail if we were to read every bill that we pass... it would slow down the legislative process.” Slowing a measure which Republicans marketed as being necessary to protect the country from terrorists was the last thing Democrats wanted to be seen as doing; so, without reading it, they joined their Republican counterparts in giving such unprecedented powers to Bush. Taking time to read the bill, which for my research took about two hours, might have saved Canadian Maher Arar, who was falsely accused of terrorism, from being detained without access to lawyers and deported to Syria, where he was interrogated and tortured by the FBI--all of this done legally under the Patriot Act.

But even in light of Bush’s successes in passing vast restrictions on our system of checks and balances for the benefit of his office, to really gain political capital, as Bush himself has suggested, a President needs a war.

The initial response to 9/11 was fought in Afghanistan. This war was easily and reasonably explained: the ruling Taliban regime had to be uprooted because they harbored the terrorist organization al-Qaida, and its leader Osama Bin Laden, who was accused of, and accepted responsibility for, the 9/11 attacks. The larger war which Bush and his advisors wanted to fight was in Iraq, but their given reasons were never quite as clear. Instead, they were murky, misleading, and today remain hidden under the endlessly inclusive moniker “War on Terror.”

To increase the perceived necessity of an Iraq invasion, Vice-President Dick Cheney went to several press outlets to make the case that Saddam Hussein was somehow connected to 9/11: on Meet the Press, Cheney stated that one of the 9/11 perpetrators, Mohamed Atta, had met with senior Iraqi intelligence officials; on NPR, Cheney stated that there was “overwhelming evidence” of a relationship between al-Qaida and Hussein. All of these accusations have since been found to be false, and Cheney, during a later appearance on Meet the Press, reversed course, acknowledging that the Administration has, quote, “never been able to confirm any connection between Iraq and 9/11.” The Administration refused to deny such a connection, though, and continued to insist that such links existed. This misinformation proved to be a success: A 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that 46% of Americans actually believed that Hussein helped plan the 9/11 attacks, and 41% of the country believed that the hi-jackers were Iraqis, which none of them were. Ironically, the Iraq war is believed to not only be emboldening terrorists, but the National Intelligence Council believes that Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for new terrorists by, as the Washington Post put it, “creating a haven for them in the chaos of war.”

The evidence suggesting that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” was also later debunked. While the Administration’s role in the gathering, or creation, of such faulty information remains unclear, what is clear is their refusal to acknowledge the increasing barrage of evidence that discredited their own. Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector, had concluded months before the invasion that there weren’t any WMDs. Though Joseph Wilson, a CIA operative, concluded that Iraq did not attempt to purchase uranium from Niger, Bush stated the opposite in his case for war. And David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group, responsible for the post-invasion discovery of WMDs, resigned in January 2004, stating that WMDs would never be found in Iraq. Less than a year later, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan revealed that the search had ended.

Bush relied on the strong reputation of Colin Powell in selling this misinformation to the world, and while Powell’s reputation has certainly suffered as a result of his being misled, far worse is that our country’s reputation has suffered as a result of our being misled.

The consequences of the Iraq War will take years to fully realize. We have spent over $600 billion dollars, and Bush has requested $200 billion more for 2008. Much of this money is spent on un-bid contracts to companies like Halliburton, of which Dick Cheney was once CEO. Most estimates believe that by the time the war is over, the US will have spent between $2.5 and $3 trillion dollars. But worse than dollars are lives, and the death toll among American’s is approaching 4,000, which is hundreds more lives than were lost on 9/11. Total Iraqi deaths, of which we don’t keep an official count, are estimated to now be above 600,000, with some estimates as high as one million.

If the goal was to “free” the Iraqis, then we have failed. After the spread of anti-American sentiment in the country, we established restrictions on free speech and the press. For most Iraqis, the schools, hospitals, and government services have decreased in quality since the war began. Worse, our poor understanding of the delicate religious divides in Iraq among Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, and our carelessness in establishing the makeshift government we now charge with being unable to govern, has caused Iraq to descend into all out civil war, with each side guilty of genocide. It is increasingly hard to imagine a resolution to the conflict which leaves Iraq as one country.

To those leaders in the international community who were unwilling to support his “War on Terror,” Bush decried in November 2001, “You are either with us, or you are against us,” insisting that there was no room for neutrality. Tellingly, “those who are not with us are against us,” are the words of a young Vladimir Lenin to political dissenters in Russia, and it was Joe McCarthy who said that you either fight Communists or you aid them--there was little room for neutrality, or reason, in his arguments either. Indeed, opposing the death penalty for those who have been convicted of “terrorist conspiracy,” supporting due process rights for those who are accused, and supporting humane treatment of them, necessarily by closing Guantanamo Bay, is considered by the far Right as supporting the terrorists.

Emboldened by high approval ratings following 9/11, the Bush Administration has worked to squash all types of political dissent. Attorney General John Ashcroft warned in December 2001 to those concerned about the late-to-be-realized implications of the Patriot Act that, quote, “those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies, and pause to America’s friends.” When Democrats began to ask what could have been done to prevent 9/11, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responded in February 2002, saying that such questions were dividing the country, and that was “exactly what our opponents, our enemies, want us to do.” When Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle criticized Bush’s use of the term “axis of evil,” conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said, quote, “In essence, Daschle has chosen to align himself with the axis of evil.” Time Magazine columnist Andrew Sullivan went so far as to suggest that some liberals supported terrorists, writing shortly after 9/11, “the decadent Left… may mount a morally nihilist Fifth Column that will surely ramp up its hatred in the months ahead.”

American society held an unspoken zero-tolerance policy against speech that was critical of Bush, or insensitive to the 9/11 attacks: After Bill Maher said about the 9/11 hijackers, quote, “staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly,” his show Politically Incorrect was cancelled by ABC, ultimately for being exactly what the show‘s title suggests it would be. The Dixie Chicks and Michael Moore had similar controversies which have already been discussed in this class.

In December 2005, NBC News discovered the existence of a secret Pentagon database which tracked anti-war protests and rallies. A month later, it was revealed that the FBI had been spying on a Pittsburgh peace group. Documents recovered suggest that the sole reasoning for the investigation was that the group is, quote, “a left-wing organization advocating, among many political causes, pacifism,” and that one of the members “appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent.”

Citing “security concerns,” Bush often uses the Secret Service to remove protestors from his events. In outdoor appearances, protestors are moved to “free speech zones,” which are chained off from the main area. Considering that no political assassination attempt in the US has ever been carried out by someone wielding a large protest sign, this policy is clearly to suppress discourse, not to protect the President.

New York political groups planning on protesting at the Republican National Convention were spied on for months, and during the event they were arrested by the hundreds. Thousands of other protestors were segregated. David Cohen, NYPD Commissioner of Intelligence, said that, quote, “given the range of activities that may be engaged in by the members of a sleeper cell in the long period of preparation for an act of terror, the entire resources of the NYPD must be available to conduct investigations into political activity.”

During the 2004 Presidential election against Democratic Nominee John Kerry, Bush, in a campaign strategized by Karl Rove, relied on the politics of fear: Bush perpetuated the fear of gay marriage by illogically suggesting that it was a threat to heterosexual marriages; he exploited racist fears of Mexicans by suggesting they were taking American jobs, smuggling drugs, and potentially aiding terrorists by bringing weaponry across the border; and heightened “Terror Alert Levels” were suspiciously recurring in the weeks leading up to election day. Kerry was accused by Bush of aiding terrorists after he drew contrasts with Bush’s foreign policy positions. Bush said, quote, “You can embolden an enemy by sending a mixed message. You send the wrong message to our troops by sending them mixed messages.” And Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch said that the terrorists were, quote, “going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry.”

Rove was able to carve up the Left into those who supported the soldiers and not the terrorists, or those who supported the terrorists, and not the soldiers; likewise, into those who supported gay marriage and therefore are Godless, or those who opposed gay marriage and therefore are people of faith. Such framing persists, even among Democrats: Clinton frequently says Obama isn’t experienced enough to deal with terrorism, and neither of them support marriage rights for gays. These stances perpetuate and legitimize irrational fears.

However, their rhetoric is mild when compared to that of John McCain, who says as part of his stump speech, quote, “America faces a dedicated, focused, and intelligent foe in the War on Terrorism. This enemy will probe to find America’s weaknesses and strike against them. The United States cannot afford to be complacent about the threat, naïve about terrorist intentions, unrealistic about their capabilities, or ignorant to our national vulnerabilities.” McCain’s stated concern about the naivety of Americans echoes McCarthy, who said, “Ladies and gentlemen, can there be anyone here tonight who is so blind as to say that the war is not on?”