President George W. Bush and His War Cabinet James P. Pfiffner
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Prepared for presentation at the conference on “The Presidency, Congress, and the War on Terrorism.” University of Florida (February 7, 2003). President George W. Bush and His War Cabinet James P. Pfiffner George Mason University George W. Bush certainly did not expect to be a war president. In his private sector career and as Governor of Texas he had seldom traveled abroad, and he did not demonstrate much interest in international affairs. In his campaign for the presidency he expressed skepticism about foreign entanglements and a disdain for “nation building.” Yet events conspired to make war the central concern of his presidency; after the terrorist attack on the United States in September 2001, Bush saw the war on terrorism as the primary mission of his presidency. “I’m here for a reason, and this [the war on terrorism] is going to be how we’re to be judged.”1 Soon thereafter he decided that the U.S. should conduct a campaign for regime change in Iraq, by military means, if necessary. Within his first two years in office, President Bush was to pursue two quite different wars: one against terrorism that toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and hunted terrorists throughout the world; the other war he pursued was intended to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and to rid that country of weapons of mass destruction. This paper will examine President Bush and his war cabinet during the conduct of the war in Afghanistan. It will then turn to his domestic and international campaign for a war with Iraq during which he had to overcome domestic skepticism about the wisdom of attacking Iraq as well as international concerns that war in Iraq would dangerously destabilize the whole Middle East region. The final section will compare President Bush’s approach to national security policy making with some previous post World War II presidents. I. The Bush Cabinet Before 9/11 President Bush quickly overcame the problems of his shortened transition into office, appointed his cabinet, and began on his policy agenda. From the beginning, it was clear that the White House staff would dominate policy making in his administration and that the cabinet secretaries would play a supporting and implementing role.2 In the spring of 2001 he undertook several policy initiatives and achieved victory with his tax cut proposal, but after the defection of Republican Senator James Jeffords in May 2001, the Democrats took over the Senate and made future domestic policy victories more problematic. Several members of his cabinet were having difficulties, particularly Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell. Rumsfeld had undertaken to reform the military in order to change it from its Cold War stance of heavy divisions designed to fight traditional wars to a more flexible, mobile force 1 structure that was adaptable to the less traditional warfare he envisoned for the 21st century. His reform plan engendered the opposition of much of the officer corps, particularly in the Army, who saw his style as too brusque and his ideas as too radical. He had also managed to irritate defense-oriented members of Congress who did not favor his reform plans and felt they had not been sufficiently consulted.3 In the summer of 2001 there was speculation that Rumsfeld might resign by the end of the year. Colin Powell had been chosen to be Secretary of State because of his experience and stature. He had supported Bush during the campaign but was not a close advisor, and Karl Rove, Bush’s top political strategist, felt that he was not sufficiently politically aligned with the president. In his first six months in office, Powell had lost a number of minor foreign policy skirmishes, for instance, on relations with North Korea, U.S. commitments in the Balkans, the Kyoto global warming treaty, and the abandonment of the AMB Treaty. His foes in the administration were trying to marginalize him and undercut his effectiveness. In early September, Time magazine came out with a story on him with a cover that asked, “Where Have You Gone, Colin Powell?”4 According to Bob Woodward, “It was a very effective hit by the White House,” that is, by staffers who wanted to undermine Powell.5 While chief of staff Andrew Card was in charge of managing the White House, Vice President Cheney was clearly the dominant person, short of the president. Cheney had played a major role in the transition, which he directed, and in the administration’s early domestic and foreign policies. Because Cheney’s experience and expertise overshadowed the president’s, White House officials were careful to emphasize his subordinate position to the president. Cheney’s counselor, Mary Matalin, felt the need to assert, “The vice president has no personal or political agenda other than advising President Bush.”6 One White House official said, “For the first time since Truman, you have a Veep who does not dream, does not wonder, does not think every day about being President.”7 President Bush said, “Dick’s doing a good job because he’s told me he doesn’t want to be president.”8 Condoleezza Rice had worked for Brent Scowcroft when he was national security advisor to President H.W. Bush and had gone back to Stanford where she was professor of political science and then became provost of the University. In the late 1990s she became the leader of a group of foreign policy advisors to George W. Bush as he campaigned for the presidency, a group called the “Vulcans” (the Roman god of fire). In 1999 she resigned as provost of Stanford to become candidate Bush’s foreign policy advisor.9 When Bush appointed her assistant to the president for national security affairs, she became at 46 the youngest person and first woman to hold the position. Rice began her job by downsizing the NSC staff by a third and adopting the role of policy facilitator. Her job would be difficult, given the stature, experience, and egos of the other major national security principals: Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell. Her major asset, aside from her intelligence, was her relationship with the President. She had become a close personal friend of the President and Laura Bush, spending more time with him and them than any other White House staffer. In the fall of 2001, the importance of her role in the administration was to expand 2 considerably. II. The Administration Transformed and the War Cabinet The tragedy of the September 11 attacks transformed the world and the administration in striking ways. The first and most striking political effect of the terrorist bombings of September 11 was a huge jump in public approval of President Bush. In the September 7-10 Gallup poll public approval of the President stood at 51 percent; the next poll, on September 14-15 registered 86 percent approval – a 35 percent jump virtually overnight. 10 The broad outpouring of grief, anger, and political support for the president provided the backdrop for the administration’s war on terrorism. To plan the administration’s response to the terrorist attacks, President Bush assembled his “War Cabinet,” which included Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, Card, and Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet. When it was suggested that Cheney might chair the war cabinet for the president, Bush rejected the idea and said that he would chair the meetings and that Rice would act as chair in his absence.11 Although Tenet had been appointed to head the CIA by President Clinton, President Bush came to trust him personally and came to rely on his judgment. In the previous administration, President Clinton had approved several intelligence orders and increased funding for human intelligence sources so that the CIA could undertake covert operations against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.12 Thus in the days immediately following September 11, it was Tenet who was most prepared with intelligence about the terrorists, al Qaeda, and their base in Afghanistan. Tenet prepared a Memorandum of Notification that would give the CIA broad new authority and flexibility in dealing with international terrorism that the president approved in the first days after 9/11.13 The war cabinet considered several options for the U.S. pursuit of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. A strike with cruise missiles could have been implemented quickly, but the targets might have been abandoned by the terrorists, and that option seemed too much like President Clinton’s strike in 1998 that achieved nothing. Another option was cruise missiles along with bomber attacks, and a third was a combination of the first two along with “boots on the ground,” that is U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.14 The president decided that it was important to have U.S. soldiers committed to battle in order to demonstrate U.S. resolve and commitment. The problem was that there were no existing military plans, and it would take time to set up staging areas and rescue teams before U.S. personnel could be placed in the country. The U.S. bombing attack on Taliban targets began on October 7, and the president was impatient to get U.S. troops into Afghanistan, but by September 26 only the CIA had a covert team of about 10 men in Afghanistan.15 Although some hard Taliban targets were hit (e.g. buildings and airfields), the major early challenge was the lack of targets to bomb. The Taliban did not mass their troops, and there were no U.S. personnel on the ground in position to call in air 3 strikes on the enemy.16 During October President Bush was impatient to get U.S.