On May 9th, 2003, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz sat down to do an interview with reporter Sam Tannenhaus from Vanity Fair, and when the ensuing article appeared it caused great controversy because Wolfowitz had admitted that weapons of mass destruction had become the casus belli for the war in Iraq largely for “bureaucratic reasons” because it was the only justification everyone could agree to. As part of their push back against the fallout from the article, the Defense Department released the entire transcript of the interview in the hope that greater context would mitigate the damage. Then, as now, there were larger strategic considerations at play than WMD. Here is part of that interview, which was interrupted twice by phone calls. Mr. Kellems, I believe, was an aide to Mr. Wolfowitz.
Q: Was that one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being there, and bin Laden’s rage about that, which he’s built on so many years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there’s a logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much into —
Wolfowitz: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but — hold on one second —
(Pause)
Kellems: Sam there may be some value in clarity on the point that it may take years to get post-Saddam Iraq right. It can be easily misconstrued, especially when it comes to —
Wolfowitz: — there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there’s a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. Sorry, hold on again.
Kellems: By the way, it’s probably the longest uninterrupted phone conversation I’ve witnessed, so —
Q: This is extraordinary.
Kellems: You had good timing.
Q: I’m really grateful.
Wolfowitz: To wrap it up.
The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it’s not a reason to put American kids’ lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there’s the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we’ve arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation.
Q: So this notion then that the strategic question was really a part of the equation, that you were looking at Saudi Arabia —
Wolfowitz: I was. It’s one of the reasons why I took a very different view of what the argument that removing Saddam Hussein would destabilize the Middle East. I said on the record, I don’t understand how people can really believe that removing this huge source of instability is going to be a cause of instability in the Middle East.
I understand what they’re thinking about. I’m not blind to the uncertainties of this situation, but they just seem to be blind to the instability that that son of a bitch was causing. It’s as though the fact that he was paying $25,000 per terrorist family and issuing regular threats to most friendly governments in the region and the long list of things was of no account and the only thing to think about was that there might be some inter-communal violence if he were removed.
The implication of a lot of the argumentation against acting — the implication was that the only way to have the stability that we need in Iraq is to have a tyrant like Saddam keeping everybody in check — I know no one ever said it that way and if you pointed it out that way they’d say that’s not what I mean. But I believe that really is where the logic was leading.
There is a whole lot in that brief excerpt from ten and a half years ago that is extremely pertinent to today. One is that Wolfowitz discounted the degree of “inter-communal violence” that would result once Saddam was toppled from power. Related to that, he also justified risking that kind of outcome by pointing at the certainty that the status quo was problematic and unsatisfactory. Another point is that the administration had other, arguably better, reasons to intervene in Iraq than to disarm Saddam Hussein of his WMD, but they didn’t make those arguments for “bureaucratic reasons.” That might be forgivable if either the WMD had actually been there or the strategy had worked out well, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.
Prior to the chemical attacks in the Damascus suburbs that took place on August 21st, 2013, the administration had already committed to arming the rebels in pursuit of a negotiated settlement that would involve the removal of Assad from power, i.e., regime change. We cannot consider the events of August 21st in a vacuum. Again and again, during hearings over the last two days in both the House and Senate, Secretary of State John Kerry was forced to walk a highwire where he attempted to justify limited punitive strikes against the regime for their alleged culpability in the 8/21 attacks without falling completely over to the side of asking for permission to effect regime change. Again and again, he insisted both that the strikes were not meant to effect regime change and that they would be helpful in that regard.
The jig was eventually exposed when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was compelled to adopt two amendments from Sen. John McCain, the second of which made it crystal clear that regime change was being authorized.
The first amendment adds language that “absent decisive change to the present military balance of power on the ground in Syria, sufficient incentives do not yet exist” to topple Assad.
The second amendment adds two paragraphs to the resolution:
(a) It is the policy of the United States to change the momentum on the battlefield in Syria so as to create favorable conditions for a negotiated settlement that ends the conflict and leads to a democratic government in Syria.
(b) A comprehensive US strategy in Syria should aim, as part of a coordinated international effort, to degrade the capabilities of the Assad regime to use weapons of mass destruction while upgrading the lethal and non-lethal military capabilities of vetted elements of Syrian opposition forces, including the Free Syrian Army.
These amendments made explicit what was already implied. While the administration may be fighting to defend an “established norm” against the use of chemical weapons, they aren’t doing so dispassionately or without ulterior motives.
You might not be asking “why now?” since the 8/21 attacks provide the ostensible answer, but even absent those attacks, we have reason to act now.
As recently as late July, at a security conference in Aspen, Colorado, the deputy director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, David Shedd, estimated that there were at least 1,200 different Syrian rebel groups and that Islamic extremists, notably the Nusra Front, were well-placed to expand their influence.
“Left unchecked, I’m very concerned that the most radical elements will take over larger segments” of the opposition groups, Shedd said. He added that the conflict could drag on anywhere “from many, many months to multiple years” and that a prolonged stalemate could leave open parts of Syria to potential control by radical fighters.
U.S. and allied intelligence sources said that such assessments have not changed.
John Kerry made these concerns explicit during his answers to questions yesterday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He said that if we don’t act now, the foreign powers in the Gulf would ramp up their support for radical jihadists in the opposition. In other words, if we don’t intervene decisively now, we’ll face the choice between an Iran-backed Assad who uses chemical weapons and a government run by people who are associated with al-Qaeda.
This is an example of the administration giving us the real reason for their policy without being totally up front about it.
Today, as in 2003, we are not debating the totality of the concerns driving the policy.
I’ll have more on the merits in subsequent pieces.
