Hey, in comparison with no. 43, maybe no. 41 ain't looking so bad.
Following his presidency, George H. W. Bush (i.e.,, no. 41), in (the 1998 book, A World Transformed, coauthored with Brent Scowcroft [Knopf]), explained why he didn't send Desert Storm forces into Baghdad at the end of the 1991 gulf war. His rationale, i.e., following a strict code of maintaining an internationalsit stance, makes striking reading now:
"Trying to eliminate Saddam... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. . . . There was no viable `exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post–cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nation's mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land" ...
In the November 28, 2003, nyt, David Sanger disclosed how no 43, unlike 41, is trying to have it both ways.
On the one hand, the international communitiy, especially Europe, likes to hear that the US still embraces an internationalist code, i.e., working throught the UN security council, and really not wanting to go it unilaterally.
On the other hand, for domestic consumption, where Bush's supporters like to hear something along the lines of, in Sanger's words, that "the president as a man who pre-empts first and asks questions later."
What is most striking about this message is that it is the content of the Republican National Committee's new advertising campaign.
...The advertisement, which ran in Iowa this week and is to be broadcast in New Hampshire in December, portrays Mr. Bush in precisely the terms many White House aides have been trying to live down. For months, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, have been orchestrating speeches in which Mr. Bush affirms his faith in a strong United Nations and emphasizes how he is working with Asian and European nations to put diplomatic pressure on North Korea and Iran to disarm....
It was a rude awakening, then, when the foreign policy team returned to Washington last weekend and saw the political advertisement from the Republican National Committee, with its suggestion that voters call their Congressional representatives and "tell them to support the president's policy of pre-emptive self-defense."
"What was that all about?" one of Mr. Bush's senior aides asked after returning from Britain, where the president took his appeal for collaborative action against common enemies to new heights. Saying the advertisement ignored Mr. Bush's recent series of speeches, the official complained, "Don't these guys read the papers?"
In fact, what both the White House and the Republican National Committee wandered into was the gulf between George Bush the president and George Bush the candidate for re-election. Just shy of 12 months from Election Day, Mr. Bush's political team and his foreign policy team are emphasizing opposite messages, leading one senior State Department official to say this week, in exasperation, "Karl Rove ought to learn that any ad he broadcasts in Iowa gets rebroadcast in Italy."...
