By now everyone knows that George Bush has fastened on the idea of redeeming his fast sinking Iraq project by temporarily increasing the American military presence in Iraq by about 20 000 troops. For reasons that deserve their own post this will not avert the near certainty of a humiliating American defeat in Iraq or it's impact on Bush's historical legacy and reputation. For me however the most interesting aspect of the "surge" strategy is the insight it gives us into Bush's psychology and particular habits of mind that have contributed so much to his disasterous tenure as president.
In a couple of decades when historians look back at the Iraq trainwreck and ask themselves "how could this disaster have ever been allowed to happen?" a lot of ink will be spilled on the topic of Bush's psychological suitability for the job. With the benefit of hindsight it will be clear that Bush was remarkably underqualified to hold what is arguably the most powerful political office on the planet, partly because he plainly isn't all that bright, but perhaps more importantly because he lacks a certain emotional maturity that has saddled him with remarkably poor judgement, of which the surge strategy is only the latest manifestation.
Doubts about Bush's suitability for the job arose among many who studied his career prior to becoming governor of Texas in 1995. As is so often the case however the evidence can be read two ways, often depending largely on the ideological predisposition of the person doing the evaluation. Bush's apologists, and back in the day their numbers were legion, looked at Bush's resume and convinced themselves he had solid credentials. In particular, they pointed out that:
- He held two degrees from elite Ivy League schools (a BA in history (no that's not a typo) from Yale and an MBA from Harvard)
- He was a fighter pilot in the Air National Guard
- He had business experience running oil companies in Texas
A sceptic however could look at exactly the same evidence and reach a very different conclusion. The difference isn't so much a disagreement about what Bush did or didn't do in the years prior to holding public office, but rather what this formative period tells us about the man's character and values. Hence to the sceptic:
Bush got into Yale as a legacy preference. His 1970 application to enter the University of Texas law school was rejected. In 1973, which is father serving as chairman of the Republican National Committee (having previously built his profile within the party as a two term Representative and American ambassador to the UN), he is admitted to Harvard. Bush stumbles through university on the strength of a succession of "gentleman's C" grades. Yoshi Tsurumi, who taught Bush during his first year at Harvard, recalls that he was not (ahem!) an outstanding student, and in fact was already exhibiting many of the character
All of which goes to show that in America everything has a price, including intellectual respectability.
Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard (flying obsolescent F-102 Delta Dart interceptors) in order to avoid service in Vietnam. He was posted to the 147th Fighter Wing, a "champagne unit" that included sons of other prominent Texans, like those of Senators Lloyd Bentsen and John Tower and Texas governor (later Nixon Treasury secretary) John Connally. There has of course been a great deal of controversy about Bush's National Guard service, but that needn't distract us here. The point is that at the height of the Vietnam War the American draft system was deliberately engineered to ensure that the sons of the elite were not press ganged into active military service. Those from this charmed cohort that did serve, like John Kerry and Al Gore, actually volunteered.
Bush's business dealings are, if anything, even more opaque and controversial than his National Guard service. He dabbled in a series of small cap energy companies, initially financed largely by friends of the family. None of these were financially successful but, at the same time, none of them failed outright on his watch, largely because of a series of remarkably fortuitous interventions by outside investors. Each time one of his ventures was close to collapse -Arbuso / Bush Exploration in 1982 and 1984, Spectrum 7 in 1986- it was rescued by a white knight. The fingerprints on the first bailout are not hard to identify: it came in the form of a cash infusion from New York financier Philip Uzielli, a close friend of James Baker III (then President Reagan's chief of staff, later Bush 41's secretary of state) which Bush used to take the company public (though in the end this raised only a bit over $1 million, instead of the $6 million originally hoped for). The second and third (Spectrum 7's merger with Bush Exploration in 1984, with Bush becoming CEO of the merged entity, and then Harken Energy's buyout of Spectrum 7 two years later, with Bush becoming a director at Harken) involved mergers in which the acquiring firm got a company that was essentially worthless, headed by a man with an unbroken record of failure. Bush did have one very marketable asset however: he was the son of the vice president. As he himself was once fond of quipping, "I'm all name and no money". Ironically Bush finally made his fortune not in the oil business, but as a result of a sweetheart deal to purchase the Texas Rangers baseball club in 1989, shortly after his father was elected president. The owners' consortium that bought the team, which included several prominent backers of his father, cut Bush in on the action even though he had virtually no money of his own to invest. He eventually contributed $600 000, 80% of which was borrowed from a bank where he was a director, representing about 1.8% of the purchase price. In spite of that his business partners gave him a 12% ownership stake in the team. The new owners successfully persuaded / blackmailed the city of Arlington into building a new stadium for the team, funded by sales tax increase. They then sold the team for three times the purchase price - Bush realized a profit of almost $14.5 million on his initial $600 000 investment. (It was Bush's efforts to pay back the bank loan by selling shares in Harken that led to allegations of insider trading).
The picture that emerges of Bush in these formative years before he won political office is of a man whose priviledged upbringing opened doors for him that would otherwise have remained closed, spared him some of the difficult choices faced by his peers, and, at several critical junctures, shielded him from failure. I can't help but feel he missed out on some important life lessons along the way, like how to accept responsibility for his actions, admit he was wrong, and deal with failure. I also think some of Bush's less desireable personality traits stem from this, such as his inability to empathize with people who lack the advantages which he takes for granted.
Which brings us to the 21 000 troop solution. After many, many months of insisting that things in Iraq were a lot better than his critics or independent observers claimed, Bush has finally come around to acknowledging, at least tacitly, that they were right all along. Unfortunately, his instinctive response to the crisis is to escalate it because he is psychologically unable to contemplate the alternative -admitting he was wrong and accepting the consequences of that error. After all, throughout his life friends of his father, or people who wanted to become friends of his father, have looked out for him and cleaned up after him. Why should this time be any different? (Indeed the Iraq Survey Group was very much in this tradition, even if Bush was characteristically too dumb to realize that the Group's whole mission was to save him from himself and from the cabal of neocon idealogues with which he has surrounded himself).
The net result is that more people are going to die, both American and (especially) Iraqi. The much vaunted "surge" will petter out after a few weeks, because the US has no strategic reserves to send to Iraq and is instead further straining an already exhausted force structure that is perilously close to collapse. The situation in Iraq post surge will look remarkly like the situation pre surge, with the US still facing imminent defeat.
The only thing that might be different is that the surge will buy the occupation a few months, ideally allowing the US presence to hang on past November 2008. Because at that point cleaning up the Iraq mess will be someone else's responsibility.
Which is after all, according to the internal logic of Bush's own particular understanding of how the world wags, exactly as things should be.
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