President George W. Bush is responsible for the ongoing misadventure in Iraq, and likely nothing could have stopped his administration from pursuing its long-standing plans against now deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. But placing the responsibility solely on Bush's shoulders is too simple and even potentially dangerous. Too simple, because it blurs the responsibilities of those outside the administration who contributed to an environment where bad new ideas were embraced just as quickly as good proven ones were shed. The promise that a tsunami of democracy would spread from Iraq to its neighbors, for example, was as poorly scrutinized as the notion that the Geneva Conventions need not “apply precisely” in Iraq. Blaming Bush alone is also dangerous, because without a clearer understanding of how this permissive intellectual environment emerged, a future U.S. administration could again exploit the public fear instilled by terrorism to let unfounded assumptions guide ill-fated interventions abroad.
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Today, few doubt that the Bush administration's postwar planning was disastrous. Insiders' books, congressional testimony, and recent investigative reporting indicate that the miscalculations resulted from a toxic combination of ideology, terrorism, and an incurious president who allowed Vice President Dick Cheney and his allies to implement their unrealistic policies.
But this view ignores how many potentially influential players seemed cowed into submission or into ineffectual opposition to the whims of the White House. It is not just that intelligence agencies were too willing to confirm the “facts” their political bosses wanted to hear. Many leaders of the Democratic Party were too frightened of appearing “soft on terror” and thus inclined to sign political and military blank checks to an administration prone to overdraft. Blinded by partisanship, congressional Republicans were too subservient to the White House's wishes, even those that contradicted long-standing GOP principles, such as fiscal restraint. Fearing exclusion from the corridors of power, U.S. diplomats were too quick to accept the notion that negotiated approaches on Iraq had run their course. Some journalists were so deferential to official sources that their reporting felt almost stenographic. Bush's failures in Iraq were also facilitated by gullible editorial writers, ratings-hungry television news executives, talk show hosts eager for publicity, and think tank experts addicted to the limelight.
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Ironically, even the leaders who confronted Bush did so in ways that only emboldened U.S. actions. French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder opposed Bush so clumsily and in such blatant pursuit of domestic political interests that their opposition to the war became a caricature too easy to ridicule and ignore. Indeed, in some segments of the U.S. public, German and French opposition only legitimized Bush's moves. The same applies to the Arab states and the Arab League in particular, whose secretary general's calls for immediate elections in Iraq displayed a sudden democratic fervor that the group had never applied to any of its members.
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/files/story2563.phpMore genuis and insight from the talking heads! Chirac and Schroder are really to blame for Bush's Iraq adventure!
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