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“The Art of Ruling the Minds of Men”: George HW Bush and The "The Art of Ruling the Minds of Men": George H. W. Bush and the Justifications for Intervention in the Gulf War A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Anthony M. Crews November 2010 © 2010 Anthony M. Crews. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled "The Art of Ruling the Minds of Men": George H. W. Bush and the Justifications for Intervention in the Gulf War by ANTHONY M. CREWS has been approved for the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences by Chester J. Pach, Jr. Associate Professor of History Benjamin M. Ogles Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT CREWS, ANTHONY M., M.A., November 2010, History "The Art of Ruling the Minds of Men": George H. W. Bush and the Justifications for Intervention in the Gulf War (177 pp.) Director of Thesis: Chester J. Pach Selling the Gulf War required the George H. W. Bush administration to depart from its ineffective approach to public communications. The American people initially supported the President‘s response to the invasion of Kuwait, but over time the administration‘s inconsistent arguments caused the case for intervention to be increasingly called into question. By late November the administration perceived a looming crisis in support and moved to solidify domestic approval. Public opinion research informed them that the memory of the Vietnam War was the greatest threat to public support of an American war in the Persian Gulf. Consequently the administration simplified the justifications for war and argued that challenging Saddam Hussein was a moral imperative. After an initial swell of support in the aftermath of victory, the administration became less able to publically justify the war and unable to use it for political ends. The cultural and political consequences of the administration‘s decisions contributed to Bush‘s defeat in the 1992 presidential election. Approved: _____________________________________________________________ Chester J. Pach Associate Professor of History 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Several people deserve thanks for making this project possible, and none more than my thesis advisor Dr. Chester Pach. Though he was always willing to discuss my ideas, Dr. Pach wisely insisted that I find my own path. He sacrificed some of his personal time to read drafts of my work. The other members of my thesis committee, Dr. Paul Milazzo and Dr. Peter John Brobst, were both generous with their time and offered helpful comments. Dr. Ingo Trauschweizer was out of the country during my major writing period but he read some of my early proposals. I would also like to thank the rest of the faculty at Ohio University, many of whom broadened my thinking about history in a variety of ways. Living in the graduate community in Athens has been an enriching experience. Special thanks to Patrick Campbell, who read a draft of one of my chapters, and also to Sebastian Hurtado-Torres, Meredith Hohe, and Michael Cook, all of whom suffered my thinking-out-loud with grace. My undergraduate advisor Dr. Jonathan Winkler first sparked my interest in graduate study. His enthusiastic mentoring encouraged me to pursue a new career path. The Ohio University History Department and the Contemporary History Institute provided travel funds to conduct research in Texas. The archivists at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library were helpful in many ways and kind to a novice. My family‘s willingness to babysit provided me the time I needed to read and write. I would also like to thank Olivia, for whom it must have seemed like I stared at computers much too often. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................4 INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................6 CHAPTER 1: SEARCHING FOR TEFLON: GEORGE H. W. BUSH AND THE PROBLEM OF PERCEPTION ...................................................................................... 25 CHAPTER 2: ―A DIFFERENT GEORGE BUSH‖ ....................................................... 63 CHAPTER 3: WHY WE FIGHT: COMMUNICATING THE JUSTIFICATIONS FOR THE GULF WAR........................................................................................................ 106 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 155 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 168 6 INTRODUCTION After a quick victory over Iraq in the Gulf War George H. W. Bush informed the nation on March 1, 1991 that ―we‘ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all!‖1 Immediately after the war many Americans seemed to agree with Bush‘s apparent jubilation as a postwar euphoria swept through the country. Thousands gathered to celebrate in victory parades across the country. One such parade in Washington drew a crowd of between 200,000-800,000 celebrators and only a single protester;2 sometimes when dissenters showed up they were beaten or arrested.3 Americans were not in the mood to tolerate antiwar agitators in part because protesters reminded many of the negative aspects of the Vietnam War, which the President had assured everyone no longer mattered. Public approval of the President reached nearly 90 percent in the immediate postwar period.4 Though the Vietnam Syndrome is difficult to define and some questioned its existence, there did seem to be something to the concept. Many decision-makers worried about the effects of the war on U.S. foreign policy and public opinion. When Ronald Reagan pulled American troops out of Lebanon in 1984 after 241 Marines were killed by a suicide bomber he followed the recommendations of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who based his advice on the military‘s collective memory of Vietnam. Weinberger had opposed the deployment in the first place and used the opportunity of 1 From here on I will refer to George H. W. Bush as Bush. If I am talking about his son I will make that clear. 2 William J. Eaton and Beth Hawkins, ―200,000 Cheer Victory Parade Through Capital,‖Los Angeles Times, June 9, 1991. 33 Robert Stewart, ―Protesters Claim They Were Beaten by Officers,‖ Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1991. 4 John Mueller, Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), table 1, page 180. 7 Reagan‘s decision to withdrawal to announce the Weinberger Doctrine, which was to determine when and when not to commit American forces abroad.5 Foreign policy practitioners drew different lessons from the Vietnam War, but most agreed that they did not want to repeat the mistakes that resulted in the most divisive event in American history since the Civil War. Some academics wondered how to implement the perceived lessons of Vietnam. In 1990 James F. Pontuso, a scholar of political philosophy, wrote that television news cameras should be restricted by the federal government from reporting from war zones. Pontuso argued that such a plan was perfectly compatible with the First Amendment and necessary to secure the public will in any future conflict. If the United States didn‘t take these steps, Pontuso warned that it ―will be progressively at the mercy of those regimes which have no qualms about denying their people full freedom of the press.‖6 Pontuso and Weinberger were both reacting to the Vietnam Syndrome in their own ways by offering solutions that they thought would mitigate the most debilitating consequences of the experience of the Vietnam War. The President‘s claim that the country had kicked the Vietnam Syndrome was partially rooted in real concerns of policymakers and analysts. The media had mixed reactions to the President‘s claim. While railing against Congressional Democrats who had voted against the Gulf War and continued to refer to the Vietnam Syndrome as if it existed after the U.S. victory, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that for Democrats, ―somehow, nothing was learned [from the Vietnam War] and the entire scenario repeated itself on a grand scale with Operation Desert 5 Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), 302-03. 6 James F. Pontuso, ―Combat and the Media: The Right to Know Versus the Right to Win,‖ Strategic Review 18, 1 (Winter 1990), 58. 8 Storm.‖7 Others argued that Bush‘s concept of the Vietnam Syndrome was narrow and his dismissal hasty. Los Angeles Times reporter Robert Scheer admitted to being a ―downer‖ when he asked several lingering questions about the postwar order. He thought any cure of any syndrome was at best bittersweet.8 The Boston Globe argued that Bush‘s statement was a ―dubious claim‖ that was based on a ―narrow and tendentious‖ interpretation of the original mistakes of the Vietnam War. The New York Times seemed ready to move on to other matters when it led a story on Bush‘s post-war popularity by asking ―where is President Bush‘s domestic agenda?‖9 The Washington Post suggested that Bush had been preoccupied from the beginning with curing some syndrome and in the process had lowered the threshold for acceptable reasons to go to war.10 Some of these arguments in the media reactions to Bush‘s statement hinted at an important dynamic at work in the Bush administration‘s strategy for selling the Gulf War that has
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