People rewrite history everyday.  It is an amazing process, really, and integrity plays very little part.  I’ve seen two or more like-minded people essentially agree to lie, in order to move a minority perspective in some direction or other: “The boss said we should all get together this afternoon and discuss such-and-such, because he did not like the original proposal.”  Whatever.  You get the idea.  The boss didn’t really ask for a specific meeting, certainly not at a specific time; and his rationale had nothing to do with dispensing entirely with an original or draft plan.  Still it was in the interest of those in league to stretch the truth a little to get buy-in from everyone, or to persuade the requisite expertise to join in and participate. 

The revised product will, after one or more fabricated meetings suit someone’s agenda better—but it bears no relationship to history or fact, except for the way a few people lied about it.  Minutes from meetings are famous vehicles for introducing some quote or position or rationale that is inaccurate.  The failure of participants to contest and/or revise the meeting minutes results in the minutes becoming official record and thus history.  On the other hand, I’m not certain how much sausage making is really very deliberative.  Surely the process is defined, the overall recipe, but so much difference and detail simply gets spun up in the blender.  Hopefully the outcome tastes okay. 

If foreign policy works out, people are likely to rewrite its origin and to attribute foresight when/where there may not have been any in the first instance.  The process has already started.  Unless memory deceives (which it does quite often), I remember George W. Bush adopting explicitly neoconservative foreign policy principles in the aftermath of 9/11.  On September 20, 2001 he declared “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make: either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists….  From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” 

Soon after President Bush made clear he would replace rogue regimes/state sponsors of terror with “democracies” beginning with Afghanistan.  Hitting back at the Taliban, which had provided safe haven to al Qaeda for its operation against the U.S. homeland, required little convincing.  Less visible to the American people were implications that lay behind a much larger and dramatic shift in policy.  The more problematical aspect that lay behind this first move is based on neoconservative logic that democracies are always peaceful and will naturally align with the United States.  Moreover, we are liberators and will be viewed as such forever; and the North and South never slugged it out either. 

So Bush moved logically to his next regime change in Iraq in 2003.  Following the grand strategy, he said, “Iraqi democracy will succeed, and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran—that freedom can be the future of every nation.  The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.”  During the presidential campaign in 2000, Bush had made clear he was opposed to nation building, which he said President Clinton had engaged in carelessly.  Subsequently after 9/11, Bush determined that world building was much more like it!  Regime changes and the spreading of democracy, country by country became America’s foreign policy.  Besides sausage making, omelets now come to mind. 

In 2008, however, we can give credit to where credit isn’t due.  After success of the troop surge, we can now withdraw five combat brigades (25% of the force) and leave just 140,000 troops in place for the next president to secure strategic advantage against Iran and promote stability and peace in the region.  The next president should thank this president for such a fabulous opportunity!  Strategic Forecasting rewrites contemporary history in its Annual Forecast, this way: “The first phase of the Bush solution was to procure an anchor against Afghanistan by forcing Pakistan into an alliance.”  The second phase was to invade the state that bordered on Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran—Iraq, in order to intimidate the remaining trio into cooperating against al Qaeda!  “The final stage was to press both wars until al Qaeda [we’re talking about the core organization that launched the 9/11 attack and sought the creation of a pan-Islamic caliphate and not the myriad local extremists who later adopted its name] broke.”  This final stage has been very successful too since, notwithstanding “unforeseen costs,” American forces have ground al Qaeda down “into non-functionality.”  I knew Bush was a genius. 

Furthermore, in case you thought you heard something about democracy in the mix, your memory is defective.  STRATFOR again: “Washington does not care what Iraq looks like, so long as the Sunni jihadists or Tehran do not attain ultimate control.”  I’ve heard about minimizing expectations to start with, but this is an interesting twist in reverse!  In point of fact, we are simply back to more realistic expectations about foreign policy, as well as the right and proper preference which must go to American security interests over anybody and anything else, especially nation building of democracies in Islamic countries.  The funny thing is how we came to the conclusion, and change the record along the way.  If it doesn’t turn out the way you hoped, just change the plan or the date on the plan and say that’s the way it always was.  People won’t remember anyway. 

Wes Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford.  Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican Primary.

Comments (3)

Comment	smaller | bigger
Name
Write the displayed characters
Subscribe via email (Registered users only) I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.
	Add Comment