Why Did Bush Go To War?
Andy asks in comments whether I was comparing Lincoln’s war between the states with Bush’s war in Iraq. I was not. But, it is an interesting question. Why did Bush go to war?
I read Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack and Woodward makes it clear that although Bush may have believed Iraq had WMD, that was not his motivation for war. He knew the evidence for WMD was weak, but he endeavored to use what evidence we had for WMD to sell the war, even though he knew it was a sales job and not a true casus belli.
The most interesting thing in Plan of Attack is the discussion of Powell’s stance on the war. Powell believed that Bush never understood the ramifications of war. Bush made a show of serious deliberation and said over and over that this was the hardest decision that a president has to make. But, in Powell’s opinion, Bush never really knew how hellish, how unpredictable, war really is.
That said, I think Bush’s decision is best understood from a personal, psychological point of view. Bush went to war to be decisive, to be dramatic, to be tough. He went to war to let America stand tall. He went to war because he believed in American wars in general, not because this war was a good idea in particular. Remember, this is a man who thought the Vietnam war was a good idea at the time and who never stopped thinking that. He thought a bad war was a good war even after the fact. Once in power, he chose to fight another bad war, even though it could have been avoided.