THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 212, October 4, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
JUAN COLE'S DISTORTIONS
By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE OUTBREAK OF THE IRAQ WAR IN 2003: THE ABSURD THESIS OF JUAN COLE REGARDING
BUSH ADMINISTRATION DECISION-MAKING BETWEEN THE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, ISLAMIST TERROR ATTACKS ON THE U.S.A.
& THE U.S. MILITARY INVASION OF IRAQ ON MARCH 20, 2003 -- EVIDENCE INDICATING THAT THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE
SINCERELY BELIEVED THAT SADDAM HUSSEIN'S BAATHIST REGIME HAD WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION & THEREFORE
POSED A POTENTIAL THREAT TO THE STABILITY OF THE MIDDLE EAST REGION -- COLE'S BASELESS CONTENTION THAT THE
DRIVE TOWARD WAR WITH IRAQ WAS MAINLY THE WORK OF U.S. OFFICIALS WHO WERE PART OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY IN
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION -- THE LESSONS THAT WESTERN GOVERNMENTS & INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES SHOULD DRAW
FROM MORE RECENTLY EMERGING EVIDENCE RELATING TO GOVERNMENTAL DECISION-MAKING IMMEDIATELY BEFORE
THE IRAQ WAR
FULL STORY:
Juan Cole badly misunderstands a recently declassified set of documents regarding decision-making within the Bush
administration between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Nowhere does the memo written by then U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and highlighted by Juan Cole
recommend starting a war "under false pretenses," either through "baiting Saddam Hussein into an attack on the
Kurds in the north" or "breathlessly announcing from the White House" a connection between Saddam and Osama
Bin Laden.
Rather, the November, 2001, notes -- which discuss a contingency plan for a potential war, as a debate continued, at
the time, over the best way to implement a policy of regime change -- suggest using the triggers outlined to initiate a
war only if Saddam actually acted out of aggression against the American-protected enclave of the north, or if a real
link between Saddam and 9/11 could be ascertained.
The notes do not imply provoking Saddam to attack the Kurds or fabricating links between the Ba'athist regime and
Al-Qa'ida.
The memo, entitled "Focus on Iraqi WMD," illustrates that the Bush administration sincerely believed that Saddam's
regime had Weapons of Mass Destruction and therefore posed a potential threat to the stability of the Middle East
region. For instance, the memo emphasizes the importance of preventing the "movement of WMD materials." To
suggest, however, as Cole does, that the administration knew that the primary rationale for the war was false, is
contradicted by the notes themselves: In deciding to remove Saddam's regime by a full-scale invasion in 2003, and in
feeling certain that the war would be a quick operation, administration officials knew that the question of whether
those WMDs actually existed would be unequivocally resolved at least by the end of the year.
It is illogical, therefore, to claim that George W. Bush, as a first-term president at the time, sent in troops on a rationale
he knew would be proven wrong by the time of the next election, especially as he was seeking re-election himself.
Most importantly, when it was becoming clear that no significant stockpiles of WMDs were being found, the
administration admitted it was wrong; it did not try to cover up the mistake.
Cole's hypothesis would also have to explain why troops were sent in with protective gear against chemical weapons,
and why the Iraq Study Group was commissioned by the Coalition forces to find out what had happened to those
supposed WMDs.
Cole then goes on to suggest his oft-repeated statement that the drive toward war was mainly the work of officials
whom Cole alleges to have been part of "the Israel Lobby in the Bush administration, whose obsession with Iraq
derived from their Rightwing Zionist commitments." This assertion ignores the fact that the Israeli government at the
time, supported by pro-Israel lobby groups such as AIPAC, repeatedly warned officials in the Bush administration
not to invade Iraq -- arguing instead, as former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson noted, that the U.S.A.
"should not be distracted by Iraq and Saddam Hussein" from the threat of Iran.
Further, the Israeli government and the Likud Party generally thought that removing Saddam's regime would shift the
balance of power in the region in favor of Iran. As late as October, 2002, the Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff and
the head of military intelligence made it clear that they disagreed with the Bush administration's contention that
Saddam's alleged quest for nuclear weapons made him the main threat in the region.
Even Noam Chomsky appreciates the absurdity of the thesis -- originating with John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M.
Walt [1] [2] -- that the "Israel lobby" was responsible for pushing the administration into invading Iraq: it
contradicts their contention that the Israel lobby persuaded the U.S. government to accept Operation Defensive
Shield in 2002, and thereby undermined support for war with Iraq. Does Juan Cole realize how alone he is in his
advocacy of Mearsheimer and Walt's baseless argument?
When Defensive Shield was launched to counter Palestinian terrorist operations against Israel, Arabic media
portrayed the ongoing battle between the IDF and Palestinian militants in Jenin as akin to the Sabra and Shatila
massacre, so Arab leaders made clear their feelings of resentment to Washington. Walt and Mearsheimer then
contend that this dampened support amongst some U.S. officials at the time for invading Iraq for fear of further
provoking popular resentment in the Arab world. Walt and Mearsheimer thus suggest that the "Israel Lobby"
somehow undermined support for what Bush administration officials saw as being in the U.S. national interest (i.e.
invading Iraq), yet their suggestion contradicts their other idea that the "Israel Lobby" was responsible for driving
the U.S.A. to war with Iraq -- a war which Walt and Mearsheimer claim to have arisen not because U.S. officials
thought it was in the U.S. national interest, but because they caved in to pressure from the "Israel Lobby" and
Israeli interests. It is a strange thesis, but Juan Cole is a big fan of it.
Of course, by persisting in these distortions, Juan Cole distracts attention from the real lessons that are to be drawn
from the evidence that has since emerged regarding pre-war decision-making: that Western governments and
intelligence agencies should never engage in "groupthink" when evaluating potential threats to national security or
interests, or try to reach a dogmatic consensus at the expense of critically examining ideas and lines of empirical
data.
Such mistakes have occurred before: the failure to anticipate a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, for example,
in spite of abundant evidence that the attack was imminent, was the product of the same sort of mentality.
Promoting conspiracy theories, as Juan Cole does, only leads to even more "groupthink" -- often inaccurate -- rather
than its abandonment.
NOTES:
[1] John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, "The Israel Lobby," London Review of Books, Volume 28,
Number 6, March 23, 2006.
[2] John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York, N.Y.:
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, August 27, 2007).
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a student at Oxford University and an intern at the Middle East Forum.
The foregoing article by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi was originally published in Hudson New York, October 4,
2010, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(URL: http://www.meforum.org/2757/juan-cole- distortions)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
October 4, 2010
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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