Assessing Blame

For a little while, or at least for the time I was working up the urge to write again, I have been thinking about the geopolitical cauldron that we have collectively been sitting around and dangling our feet over the edge. Let’s face it; we’re a few BTUs away from the pot boiling over.

The best way to excuse all the uncertainty and violence around the world is to claim, “Bush started it all by invading Iraq.” Or better, “Bush started it all by being elected.” Well, that’s a bit too simplistic and makes it far too convenient for most Americans to wrap it all up as if it were a 30-minute sitcom. Consider the following:

As day broke on September 11, 2001, President Bush had some of the most inconsequential goals of any modern president. He merely wanted to use the federal government to improve educational opportunities and behave as an amorphous “compassionate conservative.” He was even reading to school children while 19 Muslim fanatics were slitting the throats of flight attendants and pilots before crashing their hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. What did President Bush do to encourage this unthinkable act? Did they not like his education policy? Were the books he was reading to schoolchildren offensive? We’re they still feeling disenfranchised about the Florida recount?

We all know now – at least 70 percent of us still believe this – that these 19 men, financed by Osama bid Laden, had been planning the attacks for three years prior to Bush taking office. We also know from captured data and public statements that the attacks were done to measure American resolve after we left Somalia with our tails tucked in, decided not to do anything in Rwanda and almost completely ignored the bombing of the USS Cole. None of this has anything to do with Bush.

In Palestine, hostilities didn’t begin when Bush took office. It’s difficult to find a time during the past 50 years when there wasn’t violence among the closely nestled ethnic and religious combatants. The upswing in violence in the disputed territories began in September 2000 when Al Gore had a six-point lead in national polls. This was called the Second Intifada, and it was the second because there was a First Intifada in 1987 that ended in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo Accords which got Yassar Arafat a Nobel Peace Prize (does the weird Norwegian guy ever take back the peace prize when he’s goofed up like this?). Thousands died in each of these uprisings but, again, what does President Bush have to do with this?

North Korea, which Americans had heard little about until they were named as part of the infamous Axis of Evil trio, had been giving the Clinton Administration fits over their nuclear weapon ambitions. President Clinton was at such a loss on how to deal with a leader who kept his nation locked in the basement that he sent former President Carter to surrender on his behalf.

While President Clinton may have secretly hoped the North Koreans would kidnap Carter to keep him from hanging around outside the Oval Office, he must have been satisfied when Carter returned with a document declaring the North Koreans would give up building a nuclear arms program. At least he was happy until he got the bill on the several billion dollar incentive package Carter offered the North Korean regime so they would sign a document proclaiming they would never again think of ways to blow up the world. This, in the practiced art of statecraft is called “paper diplomacy” and, like similar treaties, a hearty handshake and a statement about their word being their bond may have produced similar results and saved a few pounds of paper.

As we have since learned, the North Koreans never stopped their nuclear programs and when they had run through the original billions in American taxpayer support, they declared themselves very, very bad liars and cheats. This not so stunning admission led to a request for comparable American diplomacy and, as long as it came with a check with at least nine zeros, they would agree to be good again. All that was left was a document to sign.

This request, however, came while Bush was president and Carter was off stirring up trouble elsewhere and so no ransom was paid. This caused North Korean leader Kim Jeong-il to pout and saber rattle for the next few years. I suppose Bush could have given Kim some payola to stay out of our hair a while, but I fail to see how North Korean goofiness is due to Bush policies or American lunacy for electing him.

Of course we all know we have trouble in Iran, or at least we think we do. There is a rumor Iran is building a nuclear weapons program but their leader, who didn’t even win the Most Wacky Dictator award at the recent U.N. American Bashathon, claims these are dirty lies by Imperialist Occupiers and their Zionist collaborators.

As much as we want to give President Ahmadinejad and his religious leaders the benefit of the doubt, Iran’s claim that it’s nuclear program is for generating electrical power does stretch credibility a tad. In a country that produces more oil than it can dump in American SUVs and possesses an abundance of hydro power, it’s difficult to imagine Iran needing nuclear power and even more puzzling that it needs to place the components for its power generators scattered about the country, deep inside reinforced bunkers. But what do I know? I am not a scientist.

None of this is to say we don’t have a problem with Iran, but it didn’t begin in November of 2000 or even in the chad-searching days to follow. Our troubles with Iran go back sixty years when Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy’s grandson, helped stage a coup to make sure Iran’s leader Mohammed Mossadegh kept his paws of U.S. and British oil reserves. Twenty-five years later, President Carter was learning to play the fiddle around fires when a U.S.-installed regime led by the autocratic Reza Shah was overthrown by a religious theocracy and, ever since, Iran has been a tricky read. It’s safe to say that Iran’s leadership didn’t like Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton well before it didn’t like the current President Bush. Giving Bush the blame for this failed relationship would be to ignore some pretty recent history.

In Iraq, where rubber seems anxious to hit the road of divisiveness, our troubles didn’t begin with the election of George W. Bush or even his father, come to mind. The U.N., led by France oddly enough, had tossed the first three sanctions against Saddam for using chemical weapons on the Kurds and the Iranians in March of 1988. In 1989, as Saddam was feeling pretty good for getting away with gassing his neighbors, he decided to loot and rough-up another neighbor, Kuwait.

Amid cries of “No Blood For Oil,” an international force led by the U.S. came to the rescue of a bunch of rich Sultans to recapture their pipelines and Platinum American Express Cards. Saddam’s reaction to our military solution was to lob SCUD missiles at Israel, which possessed chemical and nuclear weapons of their own but decided against such a nightmare reaction and decided instead to rely on the unproven success of the American Patriot defense system. Of course it’s fashionable these days to discuss relative reaction to attacks on Israel, but here was a case when missiles of unknown payloads were fired at Israel and the Israelis didn’t react at all except to put on gas masks and huddle in bunkers.

America was a proud country for a short while as we basked in a decisive victory with minor causalities. Saddam quickly capitulated and signed a bunch of documents similar to the North Koreans that promised peace, love, understanding and Frisbee tossing in city parks. What Saddam did not sign, and is often overlooked, was a peace treaty. Instead he signed a document that put the war on hold as long as he lived up to his end of the bargain. To nobody’s surprise, he failed at keeping his word and 14 more U.N. Resolutions – some even strongly worded – were passed by a lot of weighty international thinkers and do-gooders.

We can debate ad nauseam on the soundness of Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq. In fact, most of Congress, including democrats, voted to authorize a war with Iraq but many have said it was an unfair tactic by the Administration because it came far too close to an election when the brave Members are judged by their constituents. But rather than debate, let’s just admit it was a big mistake to go to war in Iraq. And by conceding this point, we also get to announce loudly that this is Bush’s fault. It takes a long time to get here, but at least we have something to blame on George W. I trust some are now satisfied.