[Excerpt from Weisberg's new book, The Bush Tragedy.]

There's some support for the dynastic reading that George W. Bush intended to invade Iraq from the outset of his presidency to avenge his father. "After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad at one time," Bush declared at a political fund-raiser in Houston in September 2002. Considerable doubt has since arisen around the incident Bush was referring to, a supposed plot by Saddam to blow up the former president with a car bomb on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. But there's little doubt that Bush himself believed what intelligence officials told the family after that incident: that Saddam planned to murder not just George W.'s father, but the other family members visiting Kuwait with him: his mother, Barbara, his wife, Laura, and his two youngest brothers, Neil and Marvin. The incident cast a long shadow in the family. According to family intimates, the Bushes felt they were at risk so long as Saddam remained in power.

Yet of the top-level players in the administration, only Paul Wolfowitz directly advocated military action against Iraq before September 11. From the collective perspective of Bush's foreign-policy team, Iraq fell into the category of big problems that weren't urgent. His people were instinctually critical of Clinton's proportionate responses to Saddam's provocations and felt they might have to act more decisively at some point in the future. But the same category of problem also included North Korea and Pakistan's nuclear programs, Russia's growing authoritarianism, and China's belligerence toward Taiwan. There were no preparations or significant planning for war in Iraq until September 2002 and no point-of-no-return buildup until January 2003.

In other words, George W. Bush did not arrive in the White House determined to invade Iraq. So why did he ultimately decide to do it? Bush's struggle to vindicate his family and outdo his father predisposed him toward completing a job his dad left unfinished. But it was his broader attempt to develop a foreign policy different from his father's that led him into his biggest mistake. Act One of the Bush Tragedy is the son's struggle to be like his dad until the age of forty. Act Two is his growing success over the next fifteen years as he learned to be different. The botched search for a doctrine to clarify world affairs and the president's progressive descent into messianism constitute the conclusive third act....

[The book goes on to claim that it was the anthrax attacks which led to the invasion of Iraq.]

Arnold Shcherban - 1/30/2008

It should also be asked: since when the practical foreign policy of any country (not already mentioning superpower) has become based on the ideological rhetoric of foreign leaders that had nothing to do with the actual capability of those leaders to execute the threat?
And, aren't, following the same logic, the terrorist actions on the part of many countries, whom the US threatened with the war in the course of the last and this century(since the real war was, and still is, out of the question for any adversary, on obvious reasons) against the US government and its citizens would have been fully justifiable? (Being fully aware, at least now, that such terrorists acts were quite easy to pull out at the time?)

david maclaren mcdonald - 1/30/2008

If I remember my high school English classes correctly, tragedy befalls great figures with a besetting vice or flaw. I'm trying to figure out wherein Bush's greatness lay? He reminds more of Spalding in Caddy Shack than Achilles, MacBeth or Caesar . . .

Glenn Scott Rodden - 1/29/2008

Vernon:

What exactly is Islamic encroachment? And what does this concept have to do with the Bush administration decision to invade and occupy Iraq?

When did Bush and his advisers figure out that Saddam was an evil dictator?

What country was Saddam planning to invade in 2003?

When did Saddam become a leader of an Islamic movement that was out to destroy the US?

Glenn Scott Rodden - 1/29/2008

Sally Gee:

Weisberg's book about evolution of Bush's foreign policy is worth reading. He shows how Bush has lurched from one grand strategy to another in order to justify is disasterous decisions.

Vernon Clayson - 1/27/2008

You historians should allow history to unfold rather than get all melancholy about today's news opinions. The media trots out daily results and you proceed, also daily, from there. You are not studying, you are Monday morning quarterbacking. Eventually, in the long context of history George Bush will be acclaimed for recognizing the danger of Islamic encroachment and there will be little mention that he was less than gifted as a speaker and even less that he lied, people died, etc. There was no way to deal with the attacks of 9/11 other than to retaliate. Iraq may not have been the ideal target but it was the logical target, WMDs aside, they had a violent dictator who had attacked his neighbors and posed a continuing danger. A bonus was that Iraq is centrally located in the Muslim Middle East and our establishing a presence there has to influence the conduct of all countries in the area. It proves we can come and go into any of those countries as it suits us. This is not a war about oil, it is ideological on their end, they want us dead, and naivete on ours, we speak of civil and human rights as if we have a patent on that, silly us. When Saddam Hussein spoke of the mother of all wars, he did not mean the brief periods of conflict we call the Gulf Wars, he meant the battle between Islam and the Infidels that will last for many hundreds of years.

Sally Gee - 1/26/2008

Jacob Weisberg seems to have a great familiarity with untruth but, alas, little skill in its delivery. Michael Byers' very important LRB article published in February, 2001, in a previous posting on Iraq for readers to consider:

..”The Bushes know that a second war against Iraq will not receive the approval of the Security Council. But a diminished role for the UN is undoubtedly part of the plan. The consequent violation of the UN Charter, which forbids the unauthorised use of force except in situations of self-defence, will not be condemned by the Council because the US will cast (or threaten to cast) its veto. Condemnations from individual countries will be dismissed as statements that merely conceal - but do not deny - a growing acceptance that American power defines the new world order.”... (The full article is available at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n03/byer01_.html)

Bush fully intended to invade Iraq with or without allieseven before he had stepped through the door of the White House,and the USA may well have gone to war against Iraq alone - although the lack of a British ally may well have increased congressional doubts. That is a relatively minor issue for me because I am not an American citizen and do not have any political responsibilities in the USA other than to offer the advice you would expect of a friend. I am, however, a subject of the Crown and I fully regret the criminal waste of British and Iraqi blood, and honour the lost blood of Muslims seeking to free a Muslim land of oppression and its occupiers - as I do in all occupied Muslim lands.

Sally Gee - 1/26/2008

Jacob Weisberg seems to have a great familiarity with untruth but, alas, little skill in its delivery. Michael Byers' very important LRB article published in February, 2001, in a previous posting on Iraq for readers to consider:

..”The Bushes know that a second war against Iraq will not receive the approval of the Security Council. But a diminished role for the UN is undoubtedly part of the plan. The consequent violation of the UN Charter, which forbids the unauthorised use of force except in situations of self-defence, will not be condemned by the Council because the US will cast (or threaten to cast) its veto. Condemnations from individual countries will be dismissed as statements that merely conceal - but do not deny - a growing acceptance that American power defines the new world order.”... (The full article is available at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n03/byer01_.html)

Bush fully intended to invade Iraq with or without allieseven before he had stepped through the door of the White House,and the USA may well have gone to war against Iraq alone - although the lack of a British ally may well have increased congressional doubts. That is a relatively minor issue for me because I am not an American citizen and do not have any political responsibilities in the USA other than to offer the advice you would expect of a friend. I am, however, a subject of the Crown and I fully regret the criminal waste of British and Iraqi blood, and honour the lost blood of Muslims seeking to free a Muslim land of oppression and its occupiers - as I do in all occupied Muslim lands.

Stephen Kislock - 1/26/2008

Bush Tragedy, no W.'s election, became a Tragedy for the World.

The story of Saddam, wanting to Kill the G.H. Bush family in Kuwait, reminds me of "Operation Northwoods" and the Iraq War, that followed is by the book.