Bush Team Squabbles With Dad's Crowd Over Iraq War

by Jim Lobe

Rather, the war, which should switch into high gear when Congress returns from its August recess early next month, is for the heart and mind of President George W. Bush, who will come under heavy pressure until at least November to decide whether or not the United States will go to war against Iraq some time next year.

For now, the war is strictly among Republicans -- between the old-line conservatives from the administration of former President George H.W. Bush and the new-line hawkish conservatives among the civilians in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.

A series of leaks this month from senior military brass, who have grown increasingly distrustful of the warlike tendencies of their civilian bosses, marked the preliminary skirmishes in the conflict.

But the battle burst into the open last week when the elder Bush's national security adviser, Ret. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, lambasted the idea of war with Iraq in the editorial pages of the ever- hawkish Wall Street Journal.

Arguing that war against Baghdad would likely destroy international cooperation for the young Bush's war against terrorism, Scowcroft also warned that it "could well destabilize Arab regimes in the region, ironically facilitating one of Saddam's strategic objectives."

Scowcroft, who doubles as the chairman of the Presidential Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) and hence has access to top-secret intelligence, also cast doubt on rumors of any link between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, let alone Iraqi involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. None has been found as yet, despite arduous searching.

Left alone, the Scowcroft op-ed would have created a stir. But it became a sensation when The New York Times the next day cited Scowcroft's dissent in its lead article headlined, "Top Republicans Break with Bush on Iraq Strategy."

Citing Scowcroft's article and a column by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger -- who argued that war against Iraq could be justified but that Washington had to do much more to cultivate public support at home and abroad -- the Times also quoted unnamed senior State Department officials who said they were trying desperately to halt the course toward war in intra-administration debates.

The Times also quoted another former Republican secretary of state, Lawrence Eagleburger, as sharing Scowcroft's views, and cited a Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee as leading the forces opposed to the war. Soon afterwards, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, leader of the 1991 Desert Storm attack on Iraq, sounded a few dubious notes.

The response was not long in coming. On Monday, readers got a double blast, aimed at both the Times and Scowcroft, by two leading neo-conservative organs, the Wall Street Journal and the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard, which often speak for the Pentagon and Cheney hawks in the administration.

In its lead editorial titled "This is Opposition?" the Journal ridiculed the notion of a split in Republican ranks and went after Scowcroft, and Secretary of State Colin Powell as practitioners of "realpolitik."

That notion, it said, "striv(es) for balance of power in the old European sense, (and) resists a foreign policy with a strong moral component or one designed to expand U.S. principles and democracy."

"So it typically favors Ôstability," even when it's imposed by dictators, over democratic aspiration," according to the Journal, which went on to catalogue a series of "mistaken judgments" allegedly made by Scowcroft, Eagleburger and Powell during the first Bush administration.

On the list were: the failure to intervene against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic; favoring the continuance of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev; and, worst, urging Bush I to "stop the Gulf War early, based in part on a CIA fear that a divided Iraq without a dictator was worse than a "stable" Iraq ruled by Saddam or his Baath Party successor."

In a second article, the Standard weighed in with its own attack on Scowcroft and the Times. The article, "The Axis of Appeasement," was penned by the publication's chief editor, William Kristol, who doubles as co-founder of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a five-year-old front group that consists of close associates of the Pentagon-Cheney forces. (Both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Cheney signed PNAC's first declarations.)

It accused the Times of "shamelessly" mischaracterizing Kissinger's position, noting that "the establishment fights most bitterly and honestly when it feels cornered and thinks it's about to lose."

"Reading the Scowcroft/New York Times 'arguments' against the war, one is struck by how laughably weak they are," wrote Kristol.

"European international-law wishfulness and full-blown Pat Buchanan isolationism are the two intellectually honest alternatives to the Bush Doctrine," he added. "Scowcroft and the Times wish to embrace neither, so they pretend instead to be terribly "concerned" with the administration's alleged failure to 'make the case' (for going to war)."

But the central target of Kristol's attack was Powell, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Bush I and has long been a target of neo-conservative wrath. After citing defenses of Bush policy by Rumsfeld, Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (a Scowcroft protegee), Kristol asked, "Where is Colin Powell?"

"This secretary of state, because of his popularity at home and his stature abroad, could be particularly helpful if he were to join the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, and the defense secretary in making the case for the Bush Doctrine with respect to Iraq. Instead, he allows his top aides to tell The New York Times on background that he disagrees with the president and is desperately trying to restrain him."

"Colin Powell," the piece went on, "is an impressive man. He is loyally assisted by the able (Deputy Secretary of State) Richard Armitage. They are entitled to their foreign policy views. But they will soon have to decide whom they wish to serve -- the president, or his opponents."

This first exchange of cannon-fire took place in the sweltering mid-August heat, when most Washingtonians have fled for cooler climes in the mountains, the seashore or Europe. So a lull in the rhetorical fireworks can be expected over the next two weeks.

But battle lines have for the first time been clearly drawn, and an intensification of the war can be expected.

On one side, the ranks will be led by Rumsfeld and Cheney and their cheerleaders at the Journal, the Standard, and a handful of other publications; on the other will stand the Bush I veterans, led by Scowcroft outside the administration and Powell and the not inconsiderable help of the military brass within.

How the Democrats weigh in -- and they, too, face strong divisions on the issue of war with Iraq -- remains to be seen.