HNN Poll: Why Do Presidents Lie Us into Wars?
Time and again presidents have lied about wars, beginning with James K. Polk. Is this because the public cannot accept the complicated reasons which actually drive presidents to make war?
Richard Nixon told Monica Crowley that the American people will only go to war for idealistic purposes. Cold calculations of self-interest, therefore, must perforce be well-concealed.
Presidents who forget the necessity of framing decisions for war in idealistic terms can leave themselves open to harsh criticism. In the first Iraq war Secretary of State James Baker admitted the practical reason behind the American decision to force Saddam to retreat from Kuwait."We cannot permit a dictator such as this to sit astride that economic lifeline," Baker told the media, adding: "And to bring it down to the level of the average American citizen, let me say that means jobs." Howls of protest greeted his candid statement. President Bush himself made a simpler and moral argument for war: Saddam was Hitler.
Do Presidents have to fudge the hard realities about war in order to win public support? If the answer is yes, is this a sign of the weakness of American democracy?
Food for Thought
Benjamin Schwarz, writing in the LA Times (Oct. 30, 2003):
The precise intelligence and specific policy calculations that impelled the Bush administration's decision to make war on Iraq will probably remain unascertain- able for decades. From what we know now, however, it's clear that the administration massaged the truth, to put it charitably, concerning Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda and the imminence of the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — the administration's two most important publicly stated rationales for war.
But does this imply that the administration didn't go to war in defense of what it believed to be — and what perhaps were — the vital security interests of the United States? No, it merely suggests that the public arguments for war weren't the most important reasons the Bush administration chose war....
The decision to go to war may have been foolish and even dangerous; if the war and its aftermath hinder, rather than bolster, the war against Al Qaeda, it was both. It may, on the other hand, have been wise. The eventual perception of the war's results will alone determine how the administration's duplicity will be judged.
Democrats especially should take heed. They should remember that two of their party's most revered leaders deceived Congress and the public concerning matters of national defense, for what those leaders believed to be the most patriotic reasons. Franklin Roosevelt, while professing the neutrality that the overwhelming number of Americans desired, attempted surreptitiously to maneuver the country into war (the U.S. was in combat against Germany in the North Atlantic — including helping the British navy in its hunt for the German cruiser the Prinz Eugen — long before Pearl Harbor).
And the Truman administration, to rouse the country to the Soviet menace and to gain public support for the new and ambitious global role it perceived to be in the U.S. interest to pursue, knowingly hyped the threat posed by Moscow. The purpose, in the words of Secretary of State Dean Acheson, was to "scare hell out of the American people" by painting a picture "clearer than the truth."
Most Democrats and other Americans now readily forgive FDR's and Truman's mendacity (which was almost certainly on a scale grander than anything for which the Bush administration might be guilty) because history has judged (rightly or not) that those administrations understood the threats confronting the U.S. better than did the country at large.
Then again, another Democratic administration, that of Lyndon Johnson (made up largely of John Kennedy's men), fearing the international ramifications for the U.S. of a communist takeover in South Vietnam, conjured a North Vietnamese naval attack in the Gulf of Tonkin to gain congressional and public support for an escalation of the U.S. war in Indochina.
That history castigates LBJ and Richard Nixon for their deceitfulness concerning war in Indochina is largely a reflection of the country's opinion not of the dishonesty itself but of the wisdom of that war and the price it exacted. By contrast, history disregards the less-than-forthright rationales for military action avowed by Ronald Reagan (Grenada), George H.W. Bush (Panama) and Bill Clinton (Kosovo) because, unlike the Vietnam War and the present intervention in Iraq, those were cheap in blood and money and were over quickly.
In short, fair or not, and partisan posturing aside, in war lying doesn't matter in the end. All that ultimately matters is getting the threat right and winning the war at a reasonable cost.
Related LinksThomas Fleming, Well, At Least President Bush Is Trying to Go To War the Right Way (HNN) John Dean, Did Bush Lie Us into War? (HNN)