W. Patrick Lang

LANG: DRINKING THE KOOL-AID DRINKING THE KOOL-AID W. Patrick Lang Col. Lang is president of Global Resources, Inc. and former defense intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). hroughout my long service life in preferable to living under their control. He the Department of Defense, first called together his followers in the town as an army officer and then as a square and explained the situation to them. Tmember of the Defense Intelli- There were a few survivors, who all said gence Senior Executive Service, there was afterward that within the context of the a phrase in common usage: “I will fall on “group-think” prevailing in the village, it my sword over that.” It meant that the sounded quite reasonable. Jim Jones then speaker had reached a point of internal invited all present to drink from vats of commitment with regard to something that Kool-Aid containing lethal doses of poison. his superiors wanted him to do and that he Nearly all did so, without physical coercion. intended to refuse even though this would Parents gave their children the poison and be career suicide. The speaker preferred then drank it themselves. Finally Jones career death to the loss of personal honor. drank. Many hundreds died with him. This phrase is no longer widely in use. What does drinking the Kool-Aid mean What has taken its place is far more today? It signifies that the person in sinister in its meaning and implications. “I question has given up personal integrity and drank the Kool-Aid” is what is now said. has succumbed to the prevailing group- Those old enough to remember the think that typifies policymaking today. This Jonestown tragedy know this phrase all too person has become “part of the problem, well. Jim Jones, a self-styled “messiah” not part of the solution.” from the United States, lured hundreds of What was the “problem”? The innocent and believing followers to Guyana, sincerely held beliefs of a small group of where he built a village, isolated from the people who think they are the “bearers” of world, in which his Utopian view of the a uniquely correct view of the world, universe would be played out. He con- sought to dominate the foreign policy of the trolled all news, regulated all discourse and United States in the Bush 43 administra- expression of opinion, and shaped behavior tion, and succeeded in doing so through a to his taste. After a time, his paranoia practice of excluding all who disagreed grew unmanageable and he “foresaw” that with them. Those they could not drive from “evil” forces were coming to threaten his government they bullied and undermined “paradise.” He decided that these forces until they, too, had drunk from the vat. were unstoppable and that death would be What was the result? The war in Iraq. 39 MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. XI, NO. 2, SUMMER 2004 It is not anything like over yet, and the tion. Insiders knew it all along. State- body count is still mounting. As of March ments made by the Bush administration 2004, there were 554 American soldiers often seem to convey the message that dead, several thousand wounded, and more Iraq only became a focus of attention after than 15,000 Iraqis dead (the Pentagon is the terrorist attacks on 9/11. The evidence not publicizing the number). The recent points in another direction. PBS special on Frontline concerning Iraq Sometime in the spring of 2000, mentioned that senior military officers had Stephen Hadley, now Condoleeza Rice’s said of General Franks, “He had drunk the deputy at the National Security Council Kool-Aid.” Many intelligence officers have (NSC), briefed a group of prominent told the author that they too drank the Republican party policymakers on the Kool-Aid and as a result consider them- national-security and foreign-policy agenda selves to be among the “walking dead,” of a future George W. Bush administration. waiting only for retirement and praying for Hadley was one of a group of senior an early release that will allow them to go campaign policy advisers to then-Texas away and try to forget their dishonor and Governor Bush known collectively as “the the damage they have done to the intelli- Vulcans.” The group, in addition to gence services and therefore to the Hadley, included Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and republic. Richard Perle and had been assembled by What we have now is a highly cor- George Shultz and Dick Cheney beginning rupted system of intelligence and in late 1998, when Bush first launched his policymaking, one twisted to serve specific presidential bid. group goals, ends and beliefs held to the Hadley’s briefing shocked a number of point of religious faith. Is this different from the participants, according to Clifford the situation in previous administrations? Kiracofe, a professor at the Virginia Yes. The intelligence community (the Military Institute, who spoke to several of information collection and analysis functions, them shortly after the meeting. Hadley not “James Bond” covert action, which announced that the “number-one foreign- should properly be in other parts of the policy agenda” of a Bush administration government) is assigned the task of describ- would be Iraq and the unfinished business ing reality. The policy staffs and politicals in of removing Saddam Hussein from power. the government have the task of creating a Hadley also made it clear that the Israel- new reality, more to their taste. Neverthe- Palestine conflict, which had dominated the less, it is “understood” by the government Middle East agenda of the Clinton adminis- professionals, as opposed to the zealots, that tration, would be placed in the deep freeze. a certain restraint must be observed by the Dr. Kiracofe’s account of the pre- policy crowd in dealing with the intelligence election obsession of the Vulcans with the people. Without objective facts, decisions ouster of Saddam Hussein is corroborated are based on subjective drivel. Wars result by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul from such drivel. We are in the midst of O’Neill’s memory of the first meetings of one at present. the Bush National Security Council, which The signs of impending disaster were he attended in late January and early clear from the beginning of this administra- February of 2001. Ron Suskind’s book 40 LANG: DRINKING THE KOOL-AID The Price of Loyalty, based on O’Neill’s is that no one present or in the background memory and notes, tells us of an NSC had any substantive knowledge of the meeting, ten days into the Bush administra- Middle East. It is one thing to have tion, at which both the Israel-Palestine and traveled to the area as a senior government Iraq situations were discussed. official. It is another to have lived there Referring to President Clinton’s efforts and worked with the people of the region to reach a comprehensive peace between for long periods of time. People with that the Israelis and the Palestinians, President kind of experience in the Muslim world are Bush declared, “Clinton overreached, and it strangely absent from Team Bush. In the all fell apart. That’s why we’re in trouble. game plan for the Arab and Islamic world, If the two sides don’t want peace, there’s most of the government’s veteran Middle no way we can force them. I don’t see East experts were largely shut out. The much we can do over there at this point. I Pentagon civilian bureaucracy of the Bush think it’s time to pull out of the situation.” administration, dominated by an inner circle Next, Condoleeza Rice raised the issue of think-tankers, lawyers and former of Iraq and the danger posed by Saddam’s Senate staffers, virtually hung out a sign, arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. A “Arabic Speakers Need Not Apply.” They good deal of the hour-long meeting was effectively purged the process of Ameri- taken up with a briefing by CIA Director cans who might have inadvertently devel- George Tenet on a series of aerial photo- oped sympathies for the people of the graphs of sites inside Iraq that “might” be region. producing WMD. Tenet admitted that Instead of including such veterans in there was no firm intelligence on what was the planning process, the Bush team opted going on inside those sites, but at the close for amateurs brought in from outside the of the meeting, President Bush tasked Executive Branch who tended to share the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld views of many of President Bush’s earliest and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Hugh foreign-policy advisors and mentors. Shelton to begin preparing options for the Because of this hiring bias, the American use of U.S. ground forces in the northern people got a Middle East planning process and southern no-fly zones in Iraq to support dominated by “insider” discourse among an insurgency to bring down the Saddam longtime colleagues and old friends who regime. As author Ron Suskind summed it ate, drank, talked, worked and planned only up: “Meeting adjourned. Ten days in, and with each other. Most of these people it was about Iraq. Rumsfeld had said little, already shared attitudes and concepts of Cheney nothing at all, though both men how the Middle East should be handled. clearly had long entertained the idea of Their continued association only reinforced overthrowing Saddam.” If this was a their common beliefs. This created an decision meeting, it was strange. It ended environment in which any shared belief in a presidential order to prepare contin- could become sacrosanct and unchallenge- gency plans for war in Iraq.

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