Bush & Iraq: It Was Personal

For Son Bush It Unfortunately Was Personal
Enough To Likely Make a Difference
to the Elect Hobie Webpage

SORRY... N0 pretty pictures or flash animations or even a good looking design, but rather just lots of facts and original analysis for decision makers, opinion makers, and those who want to be ahead of the pack!

“In 2002 there was much speculation centered on an American invasion of Iraq and the defeat of Saddam Hussein. The circumstances were different from 1990 and the Gulf War, but the idea was nevertheless openly discussed that GW was finishing family business. Was he, as dozens of presidential children before him, trying to do something his father had not, namely, in this instance, get Saddam Hussein?” Doug Wead, "All the President's Children." Mr. Wead co-authored a campaign biography for Father Bush and closely worked for Son Bush during Father Bush’s 1988 campaign.
What are the odds that both Father Bush and Son Bush would fight the same declared enemy, Saddam Hussein? “The consequences of some Freudian compensation for the failures of the father could be horrifying.” Mark Lawson, the Guardian

“The great untold – indeed, untouchable – story of Bush II is what might be called the Oedipal angle.” The history of the father’s early and many accomplishments and the son’s few and late accomplishments, and that at the age of 48 Son Bush "found himself propelled, largely on the strength of his family name, into the governorship of Texas and then into the White House just eight years after his father had left it" are circumstances that create "a dynamic worth looking at.... Yet for good reasons and bad, that dynamic has gone mostly unexamined.... like the theory that the Iraq war will transform the Middle East, the theory that the relations between GHW Bush and GW Bush might somehow affect the policies of the United States exists purely in the realm of speculation. It is empirically unprovable. No one is more of an empiricist than Bob Woodward. Yet “Plan of Attack” is full of tantalizing hints that “father issues” might present a problem....

I asked about his father this way: “Here is the one living human being who’s held this office who had to make a decision to go to war. And it would not be credible if you did not at some point ask him, What are the ingredients of doing this right? Or what’s your thought, this is what I’m facing.” “If it wouldn’t be credible,” Bush replied, “I guess I better make up an answer... I can’t remember a moment when I said to myself, maybe he can help me make the decision.... You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is higher father that I appeal to.”

If the son is capable of so thoughtlessly blurting out, in effect, that his earthly father is weak – that the boy is determined at long last to show his dad a thing or two – then there may be something stranger and darker at the root of our present difficulties than a noble effort to change the world. H. Hertzberg, reviewing Bob Woodward’s "Plan of Attack," in the New Yorker, 5/10/04

And while Son Bush maintained that “the decision I'm making to disarm Saddam Hussein is based on the security of the American people,” and said “I don't necessarily send troops into combat because I don't like a person,” (Whew, that's a relief!) these many webpages show that there is ample support for Mr. Wead's (and many other's) speculation that for Son Bush ousting Saddam was personal, i.e. a way to "best his father" and avenge his family's honor by: (1) fixing his father's mistake in not finishing off Saddam in 1991; (2) righting a terrible and galling wrong: Saddam remained in power while being evil while Father Bush was booted out of power for being good; and (3) protecting his father – and his wife – by neutralizing someone who had allegedly tried to kill them since Laura (as well as mother Barbara and brother Neil) had accompanied Father Bush to Kuwait in 1993 when an assassination attempt engineered by Saddam against Father Bush -- and those accompanying him -- failed. And the key point is this personal element was likely enough to make a difference... that is while there were good reasons to have a regime change in Iraq, it would not have happened in the same way or timeframe except for Son Bush’s personal animosity against Saddam Hussein, and except for his complicated and competitive relationship with his family... and except for Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, his closest advisors, who shared these personal feelings about Saddam... and for Cheney and Rumsfeld, shared the view that Father Bush had made a grave mistake in not pursuing Saddam in the Kuwait war.

Regime change in Iraq was the first item on the first National Security Council meeting held only 10 days after GW Bush was inaugurated.
Son Bush said, and firmly believed, that his father had made a terrible mistake when he “cut and ran” in Iraq rather than finish off Saddam and his Republican Guard.
“In contrast to his decision on stem cell research which involved numerous steps, briefing books, and consultations with religious and scientific leaders, the process he took on Iraq is suspiciously vague. The clear impression is that Bush made a quick gut decision. The debate, says one knowledgeable former administration official was “pro forma.”
Indeed, apparently there was no formal or informal meeting with his top advisors to discuss if the US should invade Iraq; rather all meetings only were about how to do it.

Saddam had a personal vendetta against the Bushes:

“There's no doubt his hatred is mainly directed at us. There's no doubt he can't stand us. After all, this is a guy who tried to kill my dad and wife at one time,” Son Bush referring to the failed assassination attempt when his father and wife Laura (and mother Barbara and brother Neil) visited Kuwait in 1993 (although questions were subsequently raised about how much Saddam was involved).
Saddam also put a mosaic of Father Bush’s face on the floor of the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad so thousands of people would have to walk over it every day... one of the worst insults in Arab culture.
Reportedly Saddam's son Uday had a picture of Son Bush's daughters on the gym wall in one of his palaces.

And this personal vendetta was reciprocated:

Even Father Bush said he doesn't hate many people but does hate Saddam.
U.S. troops tore up the tiled portrait of Father Bush in the Rashid Hotel shortly after taking Baghdad.
Son Bush kept pictures of the bullet ridden bodies of Saddam's sons to show to visitors.
Son Bush keeps the gun Saddam had when he was captured in a table drawer off the Oval Office to show to visitors (& interestingly Father Bush delighted in showing visitors the handcuffs that held Noriega after he was captured in Panama).
Son Bush kept a list of the Saddam regime's top 52 most wanted (as well as the top Al Quaeda members) in his Oval Office desk drawer and enjoys showing the list, and crossing off names one by one...

Also Consider That the Complicated and Competitive Father-Son Relationship Continues:

Son Bush said: “Freedom will prevail so long as the United States and allies don't give the people of Iraq mixed signals... that is cut
and run early, like what happened in ‘91.”
Father Bush said his son’s comments that America had “cut and run after the first Iraq war, hurt a little bit.”
Son Bush has never been able to admit that his coalition was smaller than his fathers... saying: “We've got a huge coalition. As a matter of fact, the coalition that we've assembled today is larger than the one assembled in 1991, in terms of the number of nations participating. This is a vast coalition [with] plenty of Western allies.”
Besides Son Bush, the person planning for war with Iraq was Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who had a very intense rivalry with Father Bush throughout the 1970's and 80's... (and was picked because he was a close friend of Cheney and was thought strong enough to go one-on-one against Powell.)
The person advocating caution, Secretary of State Powell, was Father Bush's long-time favorite.
Son Bush informed Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador, of his decision to go to war before he informed Powell. (At that conversation, Bandar promised to “fine-tune” oil prices for Bush’s benefit before the 2002 presidential election.)
When Woodward asked Son Bush about his subsequent meeting with Powell to say he had decided to go to war with Iraq, GW said curtly “I didn’t need his [or his father's?] permission.”
Son Bush failed to tell his father he was going to Iraq for Thanksgiving rather than have dinner with him at his ranch.
Son Bush pointedly let the press know that when Saddam was captured, he didn't call his father but rather waited till his father called him... and then corrected his father when he said it was a great day for the country, Son Bush said it was a greater day for the Iraqi people.
While Father Bush is very careful in his public comments to not say anything bad about his son, he is also very careful to not to endorse son’s policies.
Father Bush never endorsed son’s unilateral Iraq policies, and indeed strongly criticized it by proxy through his former national Security Advisor and close friend Brent Scowcroft.
Brent Scowcroft’s Wall Street Journal article in August 2002 warned that a new war in Iraq didn't seem to be justified by the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, would entail a long-term occupation, and “seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter terrorist campaign we have undertaken.”
“It's agony for him," a friend of Father Bush on Son Bush's policy on Iraq... "it not the way he'd run it if he was in charge.”
“I think he [Father Bush] is genuinely conflicted. The son’s relationship to the father is one where he's still trying to prove his independence. And the father must intuitively know that, and if the father was to press a point strongly, he can intuit that it might well backfire.” That is, Father Bush believed Son Bush’s Iraq plans were not just misguided, but were in some large part because the son was “still proving his independence” – and Father Bush knew if he pressed his son too hard, it would “backfire” by making the son even more intransigent in carrying out his plans.
Jaws dropped when Father Bush gave his coveted 2003 G. Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service to Ted Kennedy, perhaps his son's most vocal critic on the Iraqi war. "Since the current President Bush veered away from the real war against terrorism in Afghanistan and went a'venturing in Iraq, much to his father's dismay, just about everybody close to Washington politics has known of the policy schism between father and son.... More curious, and in many ways depressing, is the fact that this President Bush has embarked upon a policy designed to counter, or even to wipe out, his father's entire political legacy." G.A. Geyer

Note: Jaws dropped even more when Father Bush worked closely, and indeed even developed a personal relationship, with Bill Clinton... and indeed this personal reaching out to Clinton is perhaps (W jokingly, but wistfully, said Clinton was his father's "newest best friend") is not just the latest, but perhaps the most dramatic and telling aspect of this complicated father-son relationship.

Certainly W's personal animosity against Saddam and his complicated and competitive relationship with his family were key motivations to "take out Saddam," but also certainly Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice enabled if not exploited these feelings. Moreover, these same forces will make it harder for Son Bush to admit any error... or make policy changes... and indeed could make a second term even more dangerous if Father Bush's rejected advice and predictions about the problems in a post-war Iraq prove true... and certainly neither Cheney, Rumsfeld or Rice will criticize their own plans and strategies for "regime change" in Iraq... and if on the other hand the invasion of Iraq becomes -- as we hope and pray -- even moderately successful, it could well embolden Son Bush and his closest advisors to undertake even more such adventures.

This page created October 7, 2004, updated March 31, 2007; Original material and