Executive Summary

 
The sorry national security legacy of the Bush administration can be measured in in the President’s failure to meet his own rhetorical objectives:  “victory” in Iraq, an Afghanistan cleansed of terrorists, a Middle East transformed and democratic, a US military strengthened, a global economy rejuvenated and a world in which democracy and freedom are “on the march.” It can also be charted in the renewal of terrorism, religious extremism and violence emanating from Central and South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia about which the administration can or will do little; the disintegration of our closest alliances and the rise of states openly hostile to us in our own hemisphere.  Perhaps most starkly it is marked in domestic and world public opinion, where President Bush plummeted from the highest – to lowest-ranked President in the history of public opinion research, and took global regard for the US to uncharted lows.  This dramatic decline, the largest in history, can be attributed first and foremost to the President’s failed national security policies.  While economic failure will undoubtedly mar the Bush’s legacy, it is his foreign policy which will define George W. Bush as one of the worst presidents in American history.

In reviewing traditional national security issues such as Iraq, Afghanistan, military policy and geopolitics, as well as domestic issues like energy policy and the economy, which intersect with core national security concerns, NSN extracts five core failures of leadership from which a new administration – and leaders of both parties – must learn if the US is to move forward:

1) Ignoring reality in favor of ideology;
2) Systematically running roughshod over our government institutions;
3) Weakening America’s global leadership;
4) Disregarding and undermining basic American values and traditions; and
5) Failing to govern competently.

Bush’s Bombs explores these themes in 11 chapters covering Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, terrorism, military policy, the national security infrastructure, detainees and torture, energy and the environment, international economics, proliferation, geopolitics and diplomacy. The chapters encompass years of work by the National Security Network and our many partners to hold the Bush administration accountable for its missteps. We have translated this effort into an exhaustive list of the national security impact of the Bush years.
 
1.     IGNORED REALITY IN FAVOR OF IDEOLOGY

BUSH’S BOMB: The Al-Qaeda Iraq Connection and Justification for War:  The Bush administration was so ideologically set on waging war with Iraq that it alleged a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.  Only days after 9/11, Paul Wolfowitz was drawing links between Iraq and the World Trade Center attacks.  When intelligence analysts found no proof of this relationship, Bush administration officials set up an office in the Pentagon to look at raw intelligence on the al-Qaeda Iraq connection.  This office was staffed with ideologues, instead of objective intelligence analysts.  Dubious reports, such as Mohammad Atta’s supposed meeting with Iraqi intelligence officials, and bad information obtained through the torture of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi were used to make the case for war. The result was a false link between al-Qaeda and Iraq that helped lead the United States into a disastrous war that should never have been fought.  [Chapters 1 and 5]

Other Duds:
•    Postwar Iraq:  Ignoring dissenting voices such as General Eric Shinseki, the administration argued that Iraq could be rebuilt on the cheap.  It assigned inexperienced political appointees who knew little about post-conflict reconstruction to run Iraq while excluding professionals like Tom Warrick who actually ran the State Department’s comprehensive “Future of Iraq” program.  [Chapter 1]
•    John Bolton to the UN:  President Bush appointed a man who doesn’t believe in the UN as Ambassador to the United Nations.  [Chapter 11]
•    Refusing to acknowledge Global Warming:  Despite consensus amongst the scientific community, for years the Bush administration refused to acknowledge that man had contributed to global warming.  [Chapter 7]
 
2.    DESTROYED GOVERNMENT INFRASTRUCTURE AND INSTITUTIONS

BUSH’S BOMB: FEMA and Hurricane Katrina:  In 2001, FEMA was a world model of crisis response.  Katrina made it a global laughingstock. President Bush took a well functioning agency and immediately politicized it by appointing as its head first the man who’d helped him win Florida, Joe Albaugh, and then the unqualified Mike Brown.  The organization was demoted from Cabinet level and lost much of its budget, causing many of its best personnel to leave.  As a result, when Hurricane Katrina made landfall, FEMA lacked the resources, manpower, leadership and knowledge it needed to respond.  Americans’ most basic trust that government would aid fellow-citizens in their greatest hour of need was violated, replaced by images of Secretary Rumsfeld watching a baseball game and President Bush uttering those famous words: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”  Then, instead of taking responsibility for this blunder, Bush attempted to blame overwhelmed state and local authorities.  [Chapter 5]

Other Duds:
•    Military readiness:  Eight years of negligence, lack of accountability, and a reckless war in Iraq have left our ground forces and National Guard facing shortfalls in both recruitment and readiness, while repeated deployments have taken a terrible personal toll on those who serve – spiking PTSD and mental illness for which the military infrastructure was left largely unprepared by its political masters.  [Chapters 4 and 5]
•    Intelligence Community:  President Bush ignored and misrepresented the assessments of the Intelligence Community to advance his goals of invading Iraq.  He then brought in a highly political CIA Director in Porter Goss, further damaging the agency’s credibility and causing many long serving civil servants to leave. [Chapter 5]
•    The Interagency Process:  Bush’s appointment of Condoleezza Rice, a weak national security advisor who was apparently unable or not empowered to referee among three Washington heavyweights – Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney – resulted in a breakdown of the foreign policy decision making process.  This lack of coordination had catastrophic consequences, especially in the planning for the postwar phase in Iraq.  [Chapter 5]

3.    WEAKENED AMERICAN GLOBAL LEADERSHIP

BUSH’S BOMB: The Financial Crisis:  The failure of the Bush administration to see the financial crisis coming, or do anything to avert it, has called American global leadership into question.  American capitalism has been at the center of the global economy since the end of the World War II, but now that system is in jeopardy. Bush’s slow and disjointed response has further damaged American credibility.  It was British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who led the way by pursuing the bank recapitalization strategy that has become the blueprint for international response.  It was French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy who took the lead in organizing the international response through the G20 Summit.  And it is the Chinese to whom many countries are now looking for financial help.  Overall, America’s economic influence and credibility have dropped dramatically.  [Chapter 8]

Other Duds:
•    Alienating Allies:  President Bush and his advisors have undermined our relationships with key allies by stating after 9/11 that they must be “with us or against us,” referring to them as “Old Europe,” and building a “coalition of the willing” for the invasion of Iraq that did not include many key allies. [Chapters 1, 10 and 11]
•    International Treaties:  The Bush administration has undermined its relationships and credibility abroad by refusing to enter, or withdrawing from, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to name a few. [Chapters 9 and 11]
•    Energy/Global Warming:  There is broad international consensus that global warming is one of the most serious challenges facing the world.  The Bush administration undermined American credibility by refusing to seriously work with other countries to tackle global warming.  [Chapter 7]

4.    UNDERMINED AMERICAN VALUES AND TRADITIONS

BUSH’S BOMB: Abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib: The abuse of prisoners held in American custody at Abu Ghraib and CIA secret prisons has violated core American values and traditions.  Rather than bring in intelligence professionals to conduct effective interrogations that used techniques in line with our values, the Bush administration made things up on the fly, condoned torture and found ways around the Geneva Convention.  The photographs of abuse taken at Abu Ghraib have become the billboards for perceptions of American power, especially in the Middle East, reversing an image of compassion and fairness dating back to the Civil War and World War II of American treatment of prisoners in time of war.  America’s claim as a force for democracy and human rights was dramatically undermined.  Rather than hold senior leadership accountable, the Bush administration claimed that this was simply the work of a few “bad apples.”  But a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report, released by John McCain and Carl Levin, concluded that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”  [Chapter 6]

Other Duds:
•    Illegal detention and military commissions at Guantanamo: The unprecedented parallel legal structure is neither fair, nor up to the standards of American constitutional traditions. The trials so far have allowed the use of hearsay testimony, required only four out of six jurors for conviction, and even allowed evidence procured from torture.  They have not even resulted in meaningful successful prosecutions and have been ruled against three times by Bush’s own conservative Supreme Court.   [Chapter 6]
•    Checks and Balances: From Vice-President Cheney’s perverse view of executive powers to the administration’s constant invocation of executive privilege, the Bush administration has marginalized Congress and shown nothing but contempt for our constitutionally required system of checks and balances.  [Chapter 5]
•    Redefining democracy promotion as simply elections: From Iraq to Lebanon to the Palestinian territories, the Bush administration gave democracy promotion a bad name by placing emphasis solely on elections, while ignoring liberal institutions, individual rights, rule of law, and the role of civil society that are necessary to build long-lasting democracy.  [Chapters 1 and 3]
•    Keeping our promises to veterans: The Bush administration did not anticipate prolonged conflicts in either Afghanistan or Iraq, and was unprepared for the influx of wounded veterans. Bush administration officials were aware of the horrible conditions at Walter Reed and did little to fix them, and stood against efforts to keep our promises of healthcare, dwell time, and educational benefits to our troops.  [Chapter 4]

5.    FAILED TO GOVERN COMPETENTLY

BUSH’S BOMB: Osama bin Laden’s Escape: The Bush administration’s incompetence has cost the U.S. its best shot at catching Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s senior leadership.  Seven years ago, American officials cornered bin Laden and his followers in the caves of Tora Bora.  However, through a series of negligent decisions, President Bush allowed bin Laden to escape.  The administration deemed that only three dozen Special Forces units were necessary for hunting down bin Laden, in spite of Tora Bora’s reputation for being dotted with miles of caves and tunnels.  Just as damaging was the administration’s choice to rely on local militias to weed out bin Laden, as later evidence found that these groups colluded in his escape.  Despite offers of  assistance from the Pakistani government, the Bush administration refused to help the Pakistani military transport troops to the region to seal off escape routes to Pakistan. And President Bush allowed Gen. Tommy Franks to direct the operation from Tampa, Florida, rather than sending senior leadership into Afghanistan to confront the challenge directly.  The result: Osama bin Laden, and a cohort of al-Qaeda’s leadership eluded U.S. capture, reconstituting a safe-haven in nearby Pakistan, where they continue to plot against the U.S.  [Chapters 2 and 3]

Other Duds:
•    Iraq postwar planning: The Bush administration failed to plan for Iraq’s reconstruction, a process that devolved into a free-for-all, marked by looting, violence, and the beginnings of an insurgency that would bedevil the U.S. for years.  [Chapters 1 and 5]
•    Katrina: The Bush administration failed to act swiftly to reduce the consequences of Hurricane Katrina, mismanaging every aspect of its response, from the initial rescue operations to the plan for recovery.  [Chapter 5]
•    Destabilizing the Middle East: The Bush administration completely miscalculated the impact the war in Iraq would have on the broader region – making bold proclamations about the road to Jerusalem going through Baghdad. As a result, Iraq is divided, Iran is empowered, and the Arab-Israeli peace process, neglected for eight years, is in dire straits.  [Chapters 1 and 3]