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I'm a fixin-to-draw cowboy: How peculiar to my ear that Europeans hear Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in Bush's war rhetoric. "This fundamentalist, Bible-thumping, right-wing Administration in the United States wants war," recently shouted George Galloway, a Labor Party member of the British Parliament, tapping into deep fright that Bush's born-again Christian beliefs could somehow lead to Armageddon (see BW Online, 3/7/03, "Bush, the Bible, and Iraq"). What I hear is Bush talking like a Texan, not like he's on the PTL Club.
Whatever you hear, why Karl Rove has allowed the President to speak the language of his home state during a world crisis is a mystery that can only make dad -- a former U.S. Representative from Houston who sometimes used Texas talk on the political stump -- wince. After all, as any American knows, the Lone Star State is almost another country, profoundly conservative, with an insular culture built on white hat-black hat moral clarity and blunt-talk absolutes.
A good Texas colloquialism at the right moment can always evoke of a smile in the U.S. But in vowing to track down Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" or to "smoke out" the "evildoer" Saddam, Bush's Lone Ranger utterances have left him open to ridicule in the U.S. (Where's Osama?) and elicited unctuous gasps in Europe.
Rove has to know this. When Bush ran for President in 2000, his political handlers recast the Texas governor as a "compassionate conservative" (i.e., liberal in the Lone Star State) to appeal to a national audience. Bush's father know this, too. He adhered tightly to the language of diplomacy in the buildup to the first Gulf war. And in victory, he sounded like a New England Yankee (Connecticut and Maine were his other adopted home states), self-effacing and spare with words. If this President wants to talk Texan, the right time would be after bin Laden is caught and Saddam is ousted -- not before.
Define an achievable objective and achieve it with overwhelming force: To this day, foreign policy mavens argue whether Bush Senior made a critical mistake in not going all the way to Baghdad and taking out Saddam, once Desert Storm was launched. But that would have been a violation of the so-called Powell Doctrine, which Bush closely embraced as part of his gameplan. The objective from the start was to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation -- period. Bush used overwhelming force, making achievement of his objective look stunningly easy.
This Bush appears confident that he has the second part of the Powell Doctrine right -- amassing more than 200,000 U.S. troops in the region, ready to use the most sophisticated technological armory in the history of the world. But what about an achievable result? The Administration has vacillated from "regime change" to "disarming Saddam" back to "regime change" again. As possible war approaches, the President -- who ridiculed the notion of nation-building during the 2000 Presidential campaign -- is now strongly hinting that he's convinced regime change will inevitably lead to a cascade of beneficial results, as grateful Iraqis line the streets to welcome U.S. troops and a tolerant, transparent Iraqi government somehow blooms in the post-Saddam vacuum.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has an interesting take on what lies ahead. He says when U.S. troops enter Iraq, they'll find either an envelope that says "Iraq is like Germany after World War II." Once the evil dictator (Hitler) was overthrown, a country with strong traditions, abundant domestic resources, and a large, educated middle class built a stable democracy. Or they'll find one that says "Iraq is like Yugoslavia after the death of Tito." There, suppressed tribal hatreds led to chaos and slaughter, eventually requiring unilateral intervention by U.S. troops and a military presence that exists to this day.
Given the sporadic tribal fighting that continues to plague Afghanistan since the 2001 war there to oust the Taliban, why is Bush so convinced Iraq will be like Germany? He better know something the rest of the world doesn't grasp yet, in defining this outcome as an "achievable result." Otherwise, the enormity of the task he has undertaken will make him look like another Texas pol who set his sights too high: Lyndon B. Johnson and his futile effort to somehow save South Vietnam from communist domination.
Paying the tab for war: Perhaps the wisest move by the first Bush Administration was figuring out a way to pay for a military action before launching it. Back in 1990, months before the Gulf war began, Secretary of State James Baker devised an "economic action plan" that in essence passed the hat among U.S. allies for cash to stand down Saddam. Baker figured on a high estimate ($15 billion) and Schmoozer-in-Chief Bush cajoled Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Egypt to pay for what was essentially a U.S. police operation designed to make their neighborhood safe again. With additional cash from Japan and Germany, the U.S. easily covered the cost of a $11 billion campaign.
Contrast that fiscal planning with the lack of any by the current Bush Administration. Costs for a military campaign this time range from $60 billion to $100 billion. Yet no one in the White House will even hazard an official estimate. And when former economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey suggested that the cost might come in at $100 billion, he angered Bush and was gone in a matter of months in a shakeup of the economic team.
Given strained relations with Germany, a Japan that is mired in economic stagnation, and a region eager to see Saddam gone but reluctant to get involved in a military operation, no one in the Bush Administration can pass the hat around this time, especially at a such a late date. That means this war's huge cost will only add more red ink to federal ledgers. Bush inherited a budget surplus from Bill Clinton when he took office, with future tax-and-spending estimates that envisioned black ink for as far as the eye could see. Today, after one round of stimulative tax cuts, another proposed tax reduction, and an economy that can't seem to find its footing, the nation sees endless deficit spending ahead. Who would have ever thought that a Republican Administration could make the Democrats look like the party of fiscal discipline?
Granted, if Bush is right and Saddam's ouster is quick, clean, orderly, and leads to a new era of peace and prosperity in the Middle East that reverberates around the world, his father's gameplan for war will look like so much past history. The President certainly seems confident. As one senior Administration official recently put it, he's willing to "let victory be our best argument."
For this President, as it was his father, living by a code is sacrosanct. Right and wrong are crystal clear. The horror of September 11 has led to a new clarity for Bush: Saddam's weapons of mass destruction must be destroyed. Iraq, part of the "axis of evil," must be liberated, and the U.S. must be prepared to pay the price. Bush will do this without a hint of doubt, just as his father did 12 years ago. Let's just hope that this time, father didn't know best.
Copyright 2003, Bloomberg L.P.
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