The unraveling of the Cheney
cabal By Ehsan Ahrari
The "Cheney cabal" that Lawrence
Wilkerson, aide to (former secretary of state)
Colin Powell, has recently accused of
"highjacking" US foreign policy, might eventually
be brought to light, now that one of its chief
architects, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is facing a
public trial and the prospect of a stiff sentence.
He has been indicted on three counts of perjury
and lying under oath about the disclosure of the
name of an undercover Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) agent to the media.
Those who read
James Mann's highly underpublicized, but excellent
book, The Rise and Fall of the Vulcans,
have known about the power that the
neo-conservatives (aka Vulcans) wielded in
President George W Bush's White House. The
indictment of Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's
chief of staff, only confirms
the
essence of that cabal. What is still to come out
are its details.
The real plan to invade
Iraq was originally hatched in 1991, when
then-president, George H W Bush, was at the helm.
Libby was only one of its planners. The "big
enchiladas" were Cheney, who then served as
secretary of defense, and Paul Wolfowitz, who
served as under secretary of defense. Current
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld became an active
participant as someone who was then outside the
government. Their plan to oust Saddam Hussein's
forces from Kuwait was reportedly far riskier than
the one promoted by then-chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell. Bush Senior
apparently vetoed the Cheney et al's plan and gave
a nod to Powell's.
The neo-conservative
architects of the invasion of Iraq were "deeply
disappointed" when Bush Senior decided against the
hot pursuit of the retreating Iraqi forces from
Kuwait. They knew they had lost only one battle.
They shelved their original plan, but only to use
it in the future.
With the election of
George W Bush and Cheney, the neo-cons were
provided a golden opportunity to resurrect the
plan to oust Saddam. The terrorist attack of
September 11 turned out to be the icing on the
cake, from their viewpoint. Bush had no experience
in foreign policy and as such he heavily relied on
his vice president, who aggressively staked out a
major role in US national security policy. He was
to become the most influential vice president in
American history.
Cheney had an elaborate
strategy in the realm of foreign policy. According
to Mann's book and other reports, instead of
hiring foreign-policy specialists, the vice
president "turned to noted neo-conservatives and
hawks, including Libby, who had been at the heart
of the conservative movement during their eight
years in the political wilderness [during the two
terms of Bill Clinton]".
As Mann points
out, even though the initial military target of
the US in the aftermath of the September 11
attacks was Afghanistan, Wolfowitz (then deputy
defense secretary) and Libby "laid out the case
for the invasion of Iraq just one week after the
Twin Towers fell".
Libby was also
reportedly responsible for the first draft of
Powell's now infamous presentation to the United
Nations a month before the US invasion of Iraq.
Powell discarded that draft and developed his own,
carefully checking and reworking the questionable
intelligence data. As it turned out, even that
intelligence data was way off the mark. Only
recently, Powell admitted during a TV interview
that he would be long remembered for that
erroneous speech.
The chief reason
underlying the current unmaking of the "Iraqi
cabal" is the overriding nature of secrecy under
which it operated. Only a small group of "true
believers" participated in it. More to the point,
they were driven by the notion that Bush so
unequivocally stated to the world, "Either you are
with us, or you are with the terrorists." The
domestic application of that assertion meant that
anyone who opposed the then-impending US invasion
of Iraq was envisaged as an "enemy". That frame of
reference also applied assiduously as a litmus
test of anyone's patriotism, especially those who
worked for the US government at any level. Allies
were derided as "Old Europe" versus "New Europe",
based on the fact that they opposed or supported
the invasion.
The neo-cons, at least
temporarily, got away with the invasion of Iraq
for a number of reasons. First, it was carried out
by spuriously linking it with transnational
terrorism. Even though there was no connection
between Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and Saddam, the
US citizenry believed its president when he made
claims to that effect.
Second, the
American media, internationally known for its
hard-nosed commitment to truth and investigative
reporting, rolled over and played patsy to the
Bush administration's persistent exaggerations and
unproved claims about Iraq's purported weapons of
mass destruction-related activities.
Third, Saddam was such a nefarious
character that not many anywhere in the world felt
comfortable arguing that his regime should not be
overthrown. And finally, there existed - as it
does even to this day - an absence of Muslim or
Arab leadership that had the moral standing or
courage to stand up to the US's blatant move to
violate international law by using the then highly
questionable "evidence" that Saddam was developing
weapons of mass destruction.
Even within
the domestic environment of the US, those who
opposed the impending invasion of Iraq could only
use constitution-based arguments to make a case
against the ouster of a sovereign leader in the
presence of flimsy or non-existent evidence. In
that duration, top national-security aides were
crisscrossing the country and parroting Bush's
highly contentious statement, "Facing clear
evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final
proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the
form of a mushroom cloud."
Aside from
their inordinate commitment to secrecy, the
undoing of the neo-con cabal is caused by their
resolve to destroy the reputation of those who
questioned the very basis of going to war with
Iraq. Libby's downfall came as a result of his
alleged persistent involvement in disclosing the
name of an undercover CIA agent (Valerie Plame)
because her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson,
publicly questioned the underlying reason of going
to war against Iraq. For a supposed smart lawyer,
Libby is accused of consistently lying about it
under oath.
What are the larger
implications of the Cheney cabal? To start with,
the US has gotten itself in a huge mess by
invading Iraq, by brandishing highly questionable
"evidence" and by telling the world to take a hike
if it did not like its actions. Now, as US
casualties surpass 2,000 in Iraq, the
international community seems to be sending the
exact same message to the Bush administration.
A war that was carried out with no regard
for world opinion or international law has created
such a quagmire for the US that it simply has to
extricate itself by eradicating the Iraqi
insurgency. However, that eradication will come
with a human cost that no US administration will
be able to pay. How long can the Bush
administration prolong its staying power in Iraq
at the same rate of American casualties? The
answer, simply, is not very long. That very fact
may be good news to those who wish America ill,
but certainly not to those who worry about its
long-term implications for Iraq, the Middle East
and the US.
By rhetorically tying the fate
of democracy in Iraq to its emergence in the
entire Muslim Middle East, the Bush administration
has painted itself in a corner. Just looking at
the US involvement in Iraq, it must win. It has no
other choices. However, the current ground
realities in Iraq appear quite the contrary.
One has to consider the dangers of
implementing a highly ideologically charged
foreign policy that has been the forte of this
administration. September 11 was, indeed, a
tragedy of epic proportions. However, an angry
response for a short period of time was both
understandable and imaginable. What the Bush
administration created was an ostensibly ceaseless
highly charged response that painted the picture
of America as a frenzied actor bent on taking
revenge. Anyone who got in the way was to become
the victim of its rage. Such a frame of mind also
created the prison abuses of Guantanamo Bay and
Abu Ghraib.
The continuing tragedy is that
the very same ideologically driven frame of
reference is still being used. That frame of
reference drove the policy of not engaging North
Korea until some cooler heads in the Department of
State prevailed. Then after much delay began the
six-nation dialogue with Pyongyang. More than five
years have been wasted because of the
intransigence of the neo-cons to engage North
Korea.
By refusing to engage Iran in a
dialogue regarding its nuclear program, the Bush
administration is using the very same approach.
Elliott Abrams, one of the remaining neo-cons in
the administration - and the man who was convicted
in the Iran-Contra affair of two charges of
misdemeanor, but was pardoned by Bush Senior - is
heading the policy of "non-engagement" toward Iran
in the National Security Council. As the current
administration enters the sixth year of the Bush
presidency, the turbulence related to Iraq
dominates its agenda. What the US needs is some
international endeavor to disentangle it from
Iraq. While no such breakthroughs appear to be
emerging any time soon, the unraveling of the
Cheney cabal is likely to cause more embarrassment
for Bush.
There are already calls from a
number of senior legislators for an inquiry into
the role of the vice president in the Cheney
cabal. What is even more interesting to see is
what Cheney will have to say when he is subpoenaed
as a witness in the Libby trial. Further public
disclosures on this controversy are likely to be
very interesting, to say the least.
Ehsan Ahrari is an independent
strategic analyst based in Alexandria, VA, US. His
columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online. He
is also a regular contributor to the Global Beat
Syndicate. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.
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