Brent Scowcroft badly served his friend George H. W. Bush on Iraq by not doing all he could to stop Bush’s son from committing a war of aggression, writes Ray McGovern, who used to brief H.W.
By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News
Some of the praise being accorded the late Brent Scowcroft is deserved. As national security adviser to President George H. W. Bush, the unassuming Scowcroft was a voice for relative reason and moderation (compared to the neoconservatives who would follow him), as the USSR imploded and U.S. forces chased Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.
But few pundits commenting on Scowcroft’s legacy are likely to raise an awkward, but important, question that haunts me. It is of such consequence that it belongs in his obituary—and his eulogy. Scowcroft knew the attack on Iraq was not only a war crime but a reflection of insane hubris. Why didn’t he join his voice to the 30 million people in 800 cities who demonstrated against the war on Feb. 15, 2003, five weeks before the invasion?
Friends Don’t Let Friends’ Sons Drive Drunk
President George H. W. Bush examines papers with Sec. Dick Cheney and Gen. Brent Scowcroft in the Oval Office, April 19, 1989. (George Bush Presidential Library and Museum)
I believe Scowcroft badly served his friend George H. W. Bush on Iraq by not doing all he could to stop Bush’s son from committing a war of aggression — “the supreme international crime” as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Two years after the invasion, Scrowcroft told The New Yorker that Saddam Hussein “wasn’t really a threat. His army was weak, and the country hadn’t recovered from sanctions.” Colleagues pointed out that although Scowcroft was chairman of George W. Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, he was “frozen out” of planning for Iraq, as were Bush’s secretary of state, James Baker, and others.
From the neocon viewpoint, it was essential to shut out anyone with practical, strategic, legal, or moral qualms about launching a pre-emptive war with nothing to pre-empt.
Scowcroft had had copious experience with “the crazies”, the so-called “neoconservatives.” They’d gained critical mass when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Chief-of-Staff Dick Cheney ran President Gerald Ford’s White House. Scowcroft had watched as Rumsfeld and Cheney maneuvered H. W. Bush into what they thought would be a dead-end job directing the CIA.
Then they sicced the crazies on Director Bush in the form of the infamous Team B, which did all it could to exaggerate the Soviet threat. I worked for DCI Bush in 1976; my colleagues and I did what we could to help him stave them off. In the end the Team B alarmists and their neocon descendants, “the crazies”, got more of a hearing than they deserved.
When he became vice president, I gave Bush the early morning briefings based largely on the President’s Daily Brief from 1981-85. He and I had an unusually longstanding professional and, later, cordial personal relationship. For several years after he left Washington, we stayed in touch — mostly by letter.
Bush Sr.’s answer to Ray McGovern
On Jan. 11, 2003, as the invasion of Iraq was gaining steam, I wrote him a letter asking him to speak “privately to your son George about the crazies advising him on Iraq,” adding, “I am aghast at the cavalier way in which the [Richard] Perles of the Pentagon are promoting the use of nuclear weapons as an acceptable option against Iraq.”
My letter continued:
“That such people have the President’s ear is downright scary. I think he needs to know why you exercised such care to keep such folks at arms length. (And, as you may know, they are exerting unrelenting pressure on CIA analysts to come up with the ‘right’ answers. You know how that goes!)”
His reassuring answer not to worry about any influence the “crazies” might have on his son was a big letdown.
The elder Bush may not have been fully aware of it, but he was in the dark whistling while leaving surrogates like Scowcroft and Baker the task of publicly opposing the criminal insanity of attacking and occupying Iraq. H.W. Bush may or may not have tried privately, but it was a tragedy he did not speak out publicly.
Could Scowcroft Have Stopped the Invasion?
He didn’t try very hard. There’s no doubt he saw it coming. He had to be acutely aware that writing a Wall Street Journal op-ed “Don’t Attack Saddam” on August 15, 2002 would not be enough to stop the war, even though Baker wrote a similar op-ed in The New York Times ten days later. Cheney launched the juggernaut to war the next day with a major speech greatly exaggerating the Iraqi threat. After that, resistance from Establishment figures petered out.
Scowcroft’s erstwhile protege Condoleezza Rice, the younger Bush’s national security adviser, made it abundantly clear. The New Yorker article shows how Rice for whatever reason, she had drunk what Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld were serving.
“Rice’s split with her former National Security Council colleagues was made evident at a dinner in early September of 2002, at 1789, a Georgetown restaurant. Scowcroft, Rice, and several people from the first Bush Administration were there. The conversation, turning to the current Administration’s impending plans for Iraq, became heated. Finally, Rice said, irritably, ‘The world is a messy place, and someone has to clean it up.’ The remark stunned the other guests. Scowcroft, as he later told friends, was flummoxed by Rice’s ‘evangelical tone.’”
That was six months before the invasion. It’s a pity that those who perceived the impending catastrophe and had the experience and credibility to shout that out, limited themselves to op-eds and head-scratching at Rice’s inanities.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A 27-year CIA analyst, he served as an Acting National Intelligence Officer in 1976 when George H. W. Bush was Director of Central Intelligence. When Bush became vice president, Ray gave him the early morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief from 1981 to 1985.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Always worth reading what Ray McGovern has to say. His being there makes what he has to say all the more compelling.
I agree on both counts and am sure many more do as well.
I well realize, Ray, that this question is very much off topic, yet because it also concerns what might or might not be done by someone whose action, or non action, we have already discussed and agreed that such action may well be crucial to ending the Russiagate flogging, I shall ask the question anyhow.
Have you reason, or any indication, to consider that John Durham will announce any findings from his investigation of the origins of Russiagate before or on September 04, 2020?
Otherwise, of course, the 60-day limitation on releasing information that might affect the November presidential election, will go into effect and nothing can be released until after the election.
If Biden were to be victorious, of course, then all of Durham’s efforts would be moot, as Biden could simply ignore anything he did not wish to be pursued by his DoJ.
I think that several things may be taken as hints that such revelations will occur before September 04, but wonder if you have the same sense of that possibility?
The War Machine has too much power.
You know JFK got a bullet to the brain and many mysteries about that remain. 911 was next.
The Bushes and the Clinton’s and the other families of political power including the Kennedy’s of yore I suppose seem to me to be an unhealthy thing for any country. Too big for their own britches.
In the end, it is up to the peasants to decide (so says this peasant), but old geezers who might have some wisdom to share can certainly make a huge difference. Don’t you think?
Yes, a relative moderate.
But I seem to remember him defending the burying of Iraqi conscripts alive during Gulf War 1.
George H.W. Bush was no saint. The 1991 Gulf war is remembered as a great war. In reality, worldwide sanctions would have forced Iraq to peacefully withdraw. The Gulf war cost billions of dollars, killed or sickened a million people, left the region much worse off, assisted Iran, and caused a worldwide economic recession. Here is short video about this Bush 1 disaster and related crimes.
hXXps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2KpG9fFCc4
Thank you. This grim film of our history proves, once again (see CN piece on the nuclear weapon horror we created on the Bikini Island people) that we behave like a brutal criminal enterprise.
You’re correct, IMO, that GHWB was far from a saint. As much as establishment Republicans (and Dems) rail against our current demented con man president pretending that the country was once a shining beacon on a hill with noble just warriors at the helm, it was clear from GHWB’s refusal to reject Floyd Brown’s ugly racist Willie Horton attacks on his political opponent Gov Dukakis that deep in their souls they’ve always been ruthless sniveling corrupt racists greedy for power and recklessly dangerous to the survival of this world because they stand for nothing, serving the short term financial interests of the most powerful.
A decent honest man like Bernie Sanders who actually cares about what happens to people and tries to craft sustainable stabilizing policies never has a chance – Henry Wallace couped at convention to insert the criminal Atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima Truman – similarly, as Marianne Willimason blurted out after Whip Clyburn’s SC manipulation of the narrative, scaring people to stay with the status quo and then in lock step the other DNC candidates fell in line – Bernie was couped.
Good luck to the young activists! They’re our only hope – on the right track against heavy odds.
I’m left with one thought. The elegant senior Bush WAS the CIA just before he was President and I don’t think he ever stopped being both figures until he turned it all over to his boy and gave Dick Cheney the position. In terms of foreign affairs only the Bush family had full and total control of foreign affairs – not domestic, but the totality of foreign policy. Bill Clinton was a straw man who had been promised exactly what he and his occasional wife got – fortune and fame.
Brent Scrowcroft seemed a nice quiet man, because he was exactly that, nice and quiet; leaving all the decisions to Bush Sr. and by the time the question of dealing with the poppy fortune came around, Scrowcroft and Bush, Daddy, were both old, tired, and had no control over Cheney who made the decision for the weak W as front man. If you remember, it was then Jeb who was supposed to pick up up the flame of Endless War.
Would it help if a law could be passed stating that people serving in the military may not be sent into harm’s way unless the country is under imminent threat of an invasion?
People who serve in the military should not be subject to the whims of power to wage wars for profit.
Can that be a law?
Thanks
There is international law. A nation may not go to war without approval of the UN Security Council (and the permanent five members can veto it) or if self-defense (Article 51) can be legitimately invoked, i.e., if under imminent threat of an invasion. The article actually says an armed attack must take place first. (“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”) Since the U.S. Senate ratified the UN Charter on July 28, 1945 the charter is also U.S. law. Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution makes international treaties, including the UN Charter, part of the “supreme law of the land.” The short answer: yes, there is a U.S. law against going to war without approval of the U.N. Security Council, or in legitimate self-defense, a law violated by the U.S. on many occasions.
Evelync, nice question about a law limiting war to self-defense. No one has ever managed to define “self-defense,” but, that aside,
we could:
1. have a law that a President who authorized troop movements into a battlefield must resign within 24 hours and be replaced by a member of the other party temporarily, while the country voted for a new president;
2. have a law that prohibited any arms producer from advocating war;
3. have a law that prohibited corporate officials of any arms producer from earning a salary during a war;
4. have a law that the U.S. could not hire mercenaries;
5. have a law that arms manufacturers be denied sole-source contracts to support U.S. forces overseas;
6. have a law that military operations by anyone overseas cannot be supported by the U.S. without Congressional oversight and approval;
7. have a law that key Congressional committee chairs and ranking members have immediate and total access to all conversations between the President and a foreign leader.
We could even have a law arranging a process whereby Congress could arrest any Executive Branch official who refused to answer a subpoena by a Congressional committee.
But if you couldn’t snub Congress and play with toy soldiers, then who would want to be King?
re:
Consortiumnews.com
August 9, 2020 at 00:08
There is international law. A nation may not go to war without approval of the UN Security Council (and the permanent five members can veto it) or if self-defense (Article 51) can be legitimately invoked, i.e., if under imminent threat of an invasion. The article actually says an armed attack must take place first. (“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”) Since the U.S. Senate ratified the UN Charter on July 28, 1945 the charter is also U.S. law. Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution makes international treaties, including the UN Charter, part of the “supreme law of the land.” The short answer: yes, there is a U.S. law against going to war without approval of the U.N. Security Council, or in legitimate self-defense, a law violated by the U.S. on many occasions.
Why is the government not held accountable for violating its own laws?
Who is responsible for enforcing these laws?
It would have to be the Department of Justice.
Am I making this up or did I read somewhere that Scowcroft owned a company that made oil drilling equipment and sold the slant-drilling gear to Kuwait so they could drill under their border into Iraqi oil? That might have been someone’s invention and the memory is faint but still there. Wasn’t that Iraq’s complaint to the UN at the time?
Brent Scowcroft started the Scowcroft Group, a consultancy firm that among many industries works with energy, in 1994, three years after the First Gulf War.
Sad truth about Scowcraft which could equally apply to Bush Sr. (since if “friends don’t let friends’ sons drive drunk,” than even more so, fathers should certainly not let their own sons drive drunk).
Thank you Ray for this reflection. Saner voices, likely more informed, aware voices would seem rarely to get a word in edgewise when there is money to be made (MIC and related corporate interests, e.g. Halliburton), when the (apparently) American psychological, psychopathic, need for ensuring that the rest of the world *heed* our pure, shining RIGHT to determine the fate of any other people, nation, country, government, their natural resources. Rice’s statement epitomizes that worldview: WE rule the world, OK.