Prolonging
The secrecy, manipulation and deceit of the Nixon years had no larger foci than the two consuming topics of
Nixon knew how unpopular the Vietnam War was, and against this backdrop of
Iraq escalation benefits only Jeb Bush
Senator McCain presents as someone who figures it’s his turn, per
generally the way GOP presidential nominations work—the next man in
line steps up, wins the nomination usually without too much difficulty,
and then wins or loses the general election. The occasional exception
like Barry Goldwater is characterized for a generation in party lore as
someone who tore the party apart and then went on to lose the
presidential election in a landslide. McCain is showing his loyalty in
spades to the Bush team, to the Oval Office. But only some obliviousness
to history would predict that his loyalty will be repaid with unstinting
support by Team Bush.
McCain
There can be no happy Iraq outcome for McCain. If things get worse–the overwhelming probability–then even he will be forced to bail on
the policy at some point, and the question will always be why he did not
do so earlier, saving more lives; why he did not put his independent
power base to better use. He will be associated with, and he is
aggressively associating himself with, catastrophe. If things were by
some miracle to get better, the Iraq War is still Bush’s war. Meanwhile,
Governor Jeb Bush sits comfortably by in Florida, in relative political
safety in spite of Mark Foley, the sugar growers, his family’s several
run-ins with the law, the ecological disaster in the Everglades, and the
ongoing election fraud in Florida. Jeb Bush is not tied to Iraq policy;
he has no son in Iraq; he is not storming the country in support of
Bush’s escalation.
Jeb Bush
White House Iraq policy at this point, in other words, may be guided by
desire to help Jeb win next time. This is the only perspective from
which the escalation makes even bad sense.
Of course, a plausible alternative explanation is that it makes no sense
at all—that it is merely Bush’s vain effort to prolong the war, which
is what he cares about most, while his cronies with both hands in the
cookie jar frantically extract their utmost.
It is difficult to imagine the sane person who could imagine that supporting the Bush escalation in
What prolonged the Vietnam War?
Diaries of Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, demonstrate that Nixon was fully aware in election year 1972 that the Vietnam War was not popular. The White House turned a paranoiac, watchful eye ever outward, constantly alert, scanning the political zodiac for any sign that the Democrats were going to capitalize on the unpopularity of the war.
Nixon came into the White House knowing he would not have won in 1968 had Robert F. Kennedy, his campaign rocket-propelled by opposition to the war as well as by the Kennedy mystique, not been assassinated; had Lyndon Johnson’s Vice President Hubert Humphrey not been inextricably tied to Vietnam; and had the early and effective opposition to the war by Eugene McCarthy not been derailed by RFK. The history of the Sixties is partly a series of flukes, had they not been tragic; a series of near-misses that narrowly avoided ending the Vietnam War on the larger scale and the political career of Richard M. Nixon among others on the smaller. At any moment the nation had the potential to rise up in organized, spontaneous political action to break the stranglehold of Vietnam.
Nixon knew it. Even the impossibly late entry into the 1968 nominating process of George McGovern, hero to the young, helped fuel the passion against Nixon and the war; even with opponents of the Vietnam War hopelessly split, there was such a Democratic reenergizing in the last few weeks and especially the last days of the 1968 campaign that Hubert Horatio Humphrey almost managed to squeak out a win. Citizens who had at long last turned away their scrutiny from LBJ and focused it on Nixon and Agnew got so motivated, or so steamed, that in some places HHH came into respectful treatment as a candidate that he scarcely received at the time he was nominated. At the start of his campaign, Humphrey could hardly get paid attention. At the end, there was such a surge that ordinary donors were literally throwing money–tens, small bills–at him or his people in personal appearances; his volunteers were opening hastily sealed envelopes of miscellaneous sizes and stationery, into which money had been thrust without request for receipt or sometimes even a note, sent via regular mail.
Unfortunately the Democratic Party of the time never did adequately focus on and oppose the Vietnam War, not in an adequately organized way, and historians are free to wonder why not. One cause was certainly the grief, fear and demoralization brought about by the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. (It is Orwellian that those murders, which did so much to wound and cripple the Democrats, have been vaguely blamed on some culture of Sixties permissiveness.) Another cause was the lack of a blocking agent, as John Stuart Mill would put it, in that the press was as usual royalist and timid in scrutinizing the actions of presidents in conducting war. (Regarding Vietnam, the press was additionally confused by a gullible view that Henry Kissinger would bring about peace if Nixon would let him.) Undoubtedly another cause was White House manipulation of internal Democratic Party politics, using tactics including bribery and assisted by several prominent personalities of the time including John Connally, Billy Graham and George Wallace.
But the war was always present, and opposition to the war was growing daily. One did not have to start from any particular spot on the political spectrum. When combat veterans started coming home from Vietnam by the thousands, if alive and relatively healthy they came home with a single, lucid, across-the-board recognition that many of them had acquired within a few minutes in Southeast Asia: “nobody [back home] knew anything.” The recognition did not necessarily translate into instantaneous and organized opposition, but it did translate into solid, bedrock, widespread lack of enthusiasm. That, in other words, was square one – not among draft resisters and war opponents but among people who had gone, and their relatives and acquaintance. Anecdotes about fragging First Lieutenants will do that.
Nixon knew it, and took steps accordingly.
Over the next few weeks, we in our time will be facing a chief executive bent more than Nixon was on prolonging and expanding a war. As always when there is heavy rightwing rhetoric on “moving forward,” we have to look backward to some extent for guidance on the tactics that will be used. Forewarned is forearmed.
The process might also shed some light, valuable for historians including amateur historians, on the question about Watergate often scanted even in good histories of Watergate. Why was the Democratic National Committee headquarters broken into in the first place?
Practically the first thing President William Jefferson Clinton did on entering the White House was in effect to shut off congressional investigation into the Reagan-Bush scandal of Iran-Contra. Practically the last thing
This is an open letter to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution for War and Peace, the Federalist Society, the Republican National Committee (RNC), the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), the editorial boards of the Weekly Standard and the Washington Times, and prominent media personalities connected to Fox News and to the programs of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O
The National Security Archive now reveals that the Pentagon knew from 1999 on that invasion and occupation of Iraq would entail disaster.
Through a FOIA request, the National Security Archive has obtained documents of “Desert Crossing” war games conducted by CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) in April 1999 to assess outcomes of invading Iraq. Outcomes were not rosy.
As the NSArchive introduction observes, “Some of these conclusions are interestingly similar to the events which actually occurred after Saddam was overthrown. (Note 1) The report forewarned that regime change may cause regional instability by opening the doors to “rival forces bidding for power” which, in turn, could cause societal “fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines” and antagonize “aggressive neighbors.” Further, the report illuminated worries that secure borders and a restoration of civil order may not be enough to stabilize Iraq if the replacement government were perceived as weak, subservient to outside powers, or out of touch with other regional governments. An exit strategy, the report said, would also be complicated by differing visions for a post-Saddam Iraq among those involved in the conflict.”
General Zinni, who retired after the war games, tried unsuccessfully to remind the current administration about Desert Crossing. In an act of political heroism, he went public with some of his concerns. Aside from other problems, “the former CENTCOM commander noted that his plan had called for a force of 400,000 for the invasion — 240,000 more than what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved. “We were concerned about the ability to get in there right away, to flood the towns and villages,” USA Today quoted Zinni as saying in July 2003. “We knew the initial problem would be security.” (Note 7)”
Portions of the conclusions are being reported on CNN.com today.
Selected emails disclose that one of the entities involved in planning Desert Crossing, along with CENTCOM, was the giant security contractor “Booz Allen.” The emails refer to Booz Allen Hamilton, a huge northern Virginia firm numbering members and signatories of PNAC among its principals and the government among its chief clients. Booz Allen is a privately held mega-funded global contractor.
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The company name hit the news earlier this fall with revelations that the Bush administration was secretly monitoring bank transactions (SWIFT). The White House said that the electronic surveillance was being supervised by Booz Allen, a claim that itself arouses problems. As this article by Liana Forest reminds, Booz Allen also developed Carnivore, the discredited data mining process, for use by the FBI. Thus we have a purported check and audit on government electronic surveillance being handled by a company that has demonstrably not seen fit to warn the public about what government is doing, either in regard to Iraq or in regard to financial spying.
Back to Desert Crossing: no argument can be made that key government agencies were left out of the loop. As the report afterward makes clear, “Over 70 participants, including the Department of State, Department of Defense, National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency took part in the seminar.” Donald Rumsfeld, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby and David Addington had access to the information processed by their predecessors in the Defense department. Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley had access to material available to the National Security Council.
Even couched in the value-neutral language of bureaucracy, the conclusions of the report are horrifying: “The dimensions of preparing a post-Saddam policy for Iraq and the region are vast and complex. Early preparation of a political-military plan as called for in Presidential Decision Directive 56 should be a priority. The accompanying policy debate will expose a variety of contentious positions that must be reconciled and managed. Key discussion points include: benefits and risks associated with various strategic options; information requirements; and the likelihood that intervention will be costly in terms of casualties and resources.”
Setting aside if one could that calling the invasion of another country “intervention” is quintessentially Orwellian; setting aside if one could that one nation has no right to remake another nation in the first place; setting aside if one could the injuries and deaths of thousands, one is still faced with the obscene presumptuousness with which under-qualified individuals set themselves on a course to do something they never had a chance of doing. We keep asking how–how could they do it? –how could personnel as negligible as George Walker Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Wolfowitz and Libby, Hadley and Addington even think they could accomplish the remaking of Iraq? What made them think they had the right to do so?
PNAC
In a sense the question answers itself. Invading and trashing a country that has not attacked us is self-evidently invalid. Only unqualified, ignorant, selfish people–ignorant in spite of all their resources, their wealth and their access to information and expertise–could imagine either that they could, or that they should give it a try.
Bush-connected company won in court September 12, 2001
In a brief unpublished opinion, the California court system handed an obscure and now-defunct security company called Securacom one of its few court wins. The date is memorable–Sept. 12, 2001.
Securacom, as readers may recall, was the name of a security contractor later renamed Stratesec. Its board of directors throughout the 1990s included Marvin Bush, youngest brother of George W. Bush. It was headed by Wirt D. Walker, who also headed two other now-disbanded companies, Aviation General (formerly Commander Aircraft) and the Kuwait-American Company (KuwAm). It was capitalized largely with funding from Kuwaiti royals; a member of the ruling al-Sabah, Mishal al-Sabah, a longtime friend and business associate of Walker’s, also held company positions and sat on the board of directors.
The unpublished ruling reads in full,
“Information Systems and Networks Corporation, Cross-complainant and Appellant v. Securacom Inc., Cross-defendant and Respondent S099607SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA
2001 Cal. LEXIS 6179September 12, 2001, Decided
NOTICE: [*1] DECISION WITHOUT PUBLISHED OPINION
PRIOR HISTORY: Appeal from First Appellate District. Division One. No. A091315.
OPINION: Petition for review DENIED.”
Securacom, the company, was notable chiefly for its big-time, long-term clients including the World Trade Center and Dulles Airport; for its repeated infusions of capital in spite of a track record of questionable financial management; and for its connections to the Bush family.
With all the press attention now given–belatedly–to longtime ties between the Bushes and the Sauds, the fact that the ruling family of Kuwait has also looked after Bush family interests for years has been overlooked.
Two versions of Dubya’s Yale grades
George W. Bush’s grades at Yale seem to be far lower than the ones published by the university, according to records of his grades stored at his former residence house.
Yale has an august tradition of housing students in separate residential colleges, not dorms but smaller and more cohesive versions of the college experience. Bush’s residence hall wasDavenport, where his daughter Barbara also lived as a Yale student, graduating in 2004.
So integral to the institution were and are these residential halls that for many years, important records including student grade and discipline records were stored at the individual colleges. This practice continued well up into the twentieth century past the sixties. Then it was decided that it would be good to have them in a more official place, so academic records came to be stored in the registrar’s office. However, the old records continued to be stored in the basements of the twelve residential colleges.
Also, the records stored in the residential halls were not just grades. George W. Bush’s records, for example, contained reports of his undergraduate shenanigans, including his police records.
According to an informed source, the “official school records at the registrar’s office were much kinder” than these other records. The key observations come from recent Yale alumni. One Yale student, offspring of an award winning educator, who graduated in 2002 with a strong undergraduate record, found out while at Yale that Bush had lived in the same residence and was not charmed by this discovery. A number of students were aware that the residences traditionally kept old grade records. This student was among those who went down to the basement, checked the older records physically and looked at them. Students discussed among themselves the disparities between some grades published for Bush and those stored in the residence hall basement. According to anecdote, some of the housed grade records had also been physically altered, with grades whited out or obscured and other grades substituted.
One key question among others would be when the records were altered. Student hearsay has it that the altering took place during the presidential term of the senior Bush, but that may be conjecture generated by stories still floating around the institution from 1998 and beyond about visits from former First Lady Barbara Bush to campus. In the words of one mother of a recent Yale alum, there was “this sense of control” about the visits. “The university was very uncomfortable,” evidently from a sense of influence if not pressure for reasons not publicly clarified. Ties between the first family and the university donor base are deep and longstanding.
The White House has not answered questions, telephoned and emailed in September 2006 and earlier, on this topic.
As most parents know, discipline issues are not entirely separate from grade issues. One observer says, “we just honestly don’t think he [Bush] went to history class.” Bush has said he did attend, but the grade records indicate otherwise. “We don’t think he was ever there.” The cached version of the official presidential biography, from the White House web site, says that Bush graduated from Yale with a BA in history.
Yale students’ proximity to records — under the same roof — was what gave them the information. According to the current webmaster for Davenport Hall,
“Davenport was renovated two years ago, so any files that were stored in the basement were surely moved. I’m not sure anyone would know if they still exist, but the people to ask would be the master and the dean.”
Questions emailed to the pertinent officials have not been answered. Davenport Hall has now been extensively renovated, including its basement. Questions to the architecture firm about archives in the basement have not been addressed.
Davenport Hall, Pierson Hall, Yale
Issues here include the comparative lack of vetting Bush received as a candidate for the White House. While other contenders were being put through the meat grinder, the Bush campaign in Texas and in DC adeptly presented its candidate as a homey Jimmy Stewart type–modest in demeanor, so that his modest accomplishments were a given, to be taken for granted. Thus the secrecy, drift and dishonesty in Bush’s background were largely given a pass.
One large question is why Bush or anyone connected to him would try altering grades. One answer is Vietnam. John Kerry’s clumsy witticism about being stuck in Iraq is a flashback to Vietnam, when any student who flunked out was genuinely liable to be shipped out if his name was not George W. Bush.
Difficult as the Ivy League was to get into, it was notoriously gentle about flunking out a student once admitted, including legacy students like George Walker Bush who would anticipate getting the gentleman’s C in any case.
At this stage, some question remains as to whether Bush attained even that. For family members to go so far as to pressure the institution to keep Bush inside the hedges to keep him stateside, if they did so, he must have been failing. Unfortunately, there is no inherent unlikelihood in this narrative, given the way Bush was leapfrogged over more than a hundred other applicants for the Texas Air National Guard.
George W. Bush in Texas Air National Guard uniform
The deeper issue is character rather than grades. Assuming that these anecdotes are correct, and there is no reason to assume otherwise, they have frattitude written all over them. Any teacher knows that it is one thing to help your fellow students by filing professors’ old tests and passing around copies from previous years; it is quite another to help by passing around answers to a test or copies of a test that students are not supposed to have seen. Studying from old tests rather than going to class may not be the ideal way to learn, but it is minimally legitimate–cramming rather than reading, something most of us have done at some point. The other is cheating. By the same token, it is one thing to oppose all grades, the grading system, on the basis of reasoned argument that grades do not well reinforce learning. It is another to game the existing grading system by dishonesty. Whatever one thinks of grade point averages, class standing, or the grading system in general, there is no argument in favor of altering selected grades ex post facto.
From another perspective, the years that George Walker Bush and Joe Lieberman attended Yale were also years that the Ivies including Yale did not admit women. If the elite institutions had more than doubled their talent pool by admitting women and historically excluded groups, presumably some of these bums would not have gotten in.
The most recent television commercial for George Allen, presumably aimed at women, contains this reverse blurb:
[female voice-over:]