It seems the mark of a superior politician is the inherent inability to admit to a mistake. Bush has certainly proven he is no exception. When asked last week by Barbara Walters whether going to war in Iraq was worth it considering that no weapons of mass destruction were found, Bush replied, "Oh, absolutely." Bush’s comments came on the heels of the announcement that the search for WMD in Iraq has come to an end.
So will this be the catalyst for a mea culpa from the Bush administration? Don’t hold your breath. Bush is not going to apologize, nor is he going to admit he made a mistake. He is in good company.
Propaganda, rhetoric, and downright deceit aren’t exclusive to the Bush administration. America has been led to war on more than one occasion for dubious reasons. Politicians merely need a sensational event and a willing media to rally Americans to their war cause. One such example was the sinking of the battleship Maine, which led to America’s declaration of war on Spain in 1898.
The print media, led by William Randolph Hearst, played a very crucial role in persuading the public that war with Spain was necessary. Hearst’s papers reported daily that the Spanish had sabotaged the Maine, which was anchored in Havana Harbor in Cuba. The Maine mysteriously exploded in February 1898 and Spain was quickly implicated by the "yellow press.” President McKinley, who had actually seen combat in the Civil War, was reluctant to seek a declaration of war, but the constant drumbeat of the war-hawks in the press became overwhelming. In language befitting any modern neocon, Congress approved the Teller Amendment, which stated that the United States:
“Hereby disclaims any disposition of intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island [Cuba] except for pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people.”
Hearst had his war. Although the Spanish-American war itself was modest in terms of American casualties, it spawned a brutal Philippine-American war, which I’ve written about before.
When given the opportunity, there have been few presidents who have resisted the urge to engage the country in armed conflict, even while publicly denouncing the prospect. Such was the case with Woodrow Wilson.
The United States had stayed out of World War I in Europe and even Wilson’s campaign slogan in 1916 was, "He kept us out of war.” But in order to "make the world safe for democracy," Wilson plunged the United States into the Great War less than 90 days after his reelection. Making the world safe for democracy is still a rallying cry of politicians of every ilk.
In more recent history, the Vietnam War was predicated on the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The problem was, the Johnson administration trumped up the whole incident.
The U.S. Navy destroyer Maddox was patrolling the waters of the Tonkin gulf in August 1964 when it came under attack by the North Vietnamese. The Maddox launched retaliatory strikes, but no enemy boats, subs, or airplanes were ever discovered. The Maddox had never actually been attacked. The Navy later blamed "overeager sonar men" and "freak weather effects on radar” for the false alarm.
James Stockdale, a Navy aviator at the time and later Ross Perot’s 1992 running mate, wrote, "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event, and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets – there were no PT boats there. There was nothing but black water and American firepower.”
President Johnson used the incident, in an emergency television announcement, to justify air strikes on North Vietnam. The next day,
"’The president,’ proclaimed the New York Times, ‘went to the American people last night with the somber facts.’ The Los Angeles Times urged Americans to ‘face the fact that the Communists, by their attack on American vessels in international waters, have themselves escalated the hostilities.’"
Fifty-eight thousand Americans eventually died in Vietnam.
Bush, with ample media participation, used the WMD story to rally Americans to the cause of the neocons. Going before America and the world, he assured us that the intelligence was conclusive and that Saddam Hussein posed a deadly threat to the safety of the world. Now, after the entire story has been proven to be a case of selective intelligence and the search for WMD has been called off, we are told "it was worth it." Is anyone actually surprised?
