By Dr Sharifullah Dorani*
Introduction
This article focuses on how President George W Bush acted upon his ‘gut feelings’ and ‘instincts’ and consequently made up doctrines without fully considering their vast consequences. Those doctrines contributed significantly to the making of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) strategy, with Afghanistan being its first station and Iraq the second. This article also brings to light what those doctrines are.
The article has three sections. Section one focuses on how Bush came up with those doctrines. Sections two and three briefly state how those doctrines became the backbone of the GWOT strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq. The article ends with some concluding remarks.
The making of the Bush doctrines
‘A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.’ Pressing his head next to the President, the White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr pronounced the above words to President Bush, whose inward reaction was then, ‘They had declared war on us and I made up my mind at that moment that we were going to war.’[1]
President Bush recalled his thoughts and emotions of the time when he learned about the planes’ crashes: he was outraged, as someone had dared to attack America, and they were to pay.[2] Later that morning in his first conversation with Vice President Dick Cheney, Bush declared that the US was at war. A moment later, President Bush told some of his staff in Air Force One, the President’s airplane, that the US was at war, and when he found out who the perpetrators were, they were not going to ‘like [Bush] as president’.[3] This declaration also allowed Article II of the American Constitution to kick in, giving the President wartime powers as a commander-in-chief.
It was an extraordinary declaration, not just because of Article II or because it was made spontaneously and in the heat of the moment without consulting anyone from his War Cabinet, but because it was a break with US past, which had treated terrorist acts as criminal or a law enforcement action (arresting and indicting). According to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the 9/11 attacks were treated as an act of war because Al Qaeda managed to kill thousands in the course of a few hours. Al Qaeda’s objective was ‘mass murder’ and, in the light of weapons of mass destruction, especially in the hands of rogue states, Al Qaeda could manage (and did manage) to achieve its aims. Feith concluded that the killing of thousands, and, if involving some forms of weapons of mass destruction, possibly hundreds of thousands, did amount to an act of war and was consequently treated as such.[4]
On the same day at 3:30 p.m. via a video conference President Bush called his first National Security Council (NSC) meeting following the terrorist attacks from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where he was taken for his own safety. CIA Director George Tenet told him that all the signs ─ known Al Qaeda members on the planes, Al Qaeda operatives being picked up by intelligence monitoring congratulating each other, and only Al Qaeda being capable of such sophisticated and coordinated attacks ─ linked the attacks to Al Qaeda based in Afghanistan.[5]
Bush declared his intention: he would not send a million-dollar missile to hit a five-dollar tent, but rather respond deliberately, forcefully, and effectively by involving US ground forces.[6] He was to start the war (for preventative self-defence) on the offensive by attacking the terrorists overseas before they could attack the US again at home.[7] As it seems, again Bush made the decision to involve ground troops in an offensive war in the heat of the moment.
On that very day, Bush declared to his principals that the US would not distinguish between terrorists and those who harboured them.[8] By inventing the ‘no distinction’ doctrine, Bush wanted to overturn ‘the approach of the past, which treated terrorist groups as distinct from their sponsors’.[9] Committing the US to this incredible task, asserted renowned American journalist Bob Woodward, was the decision of President Bush alone. Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell between them had a hundred years of experience in dealing with national security matters, while Bush did not have a single one, yet he consulted none of them.[10]
The doctrine later became known as one of the ‘most significant foreign policy decisions in years and yet the Secretary of State had not been involved’.[11]
However, the above three reportedly supported the doctrine.[12]
As a matter of fact, Rumsfeld had been one of the proponents of the doctrine of no distinction since 1984. In his speech in 1984, he had said that there was no distinction between terrorism and states sponsoring it, and he had characterised terrorism as a form of warfare, and must be treated as such.[13]
Cheney, too, was supportive of the doctrine of no distinction,[14] arguing that, before 9/11, the US had dealt with terrorism as law enforcement action, but that approach had not worked as Al Qaeda delivered a major blow to the US on 9/11. Thus, the US decided to wage war against terrorists so that it could go after them where they lived to root them out before they attacked.[15] They could not root out terrorists unless they treated equally those states that supported terrorists.[16]
Bush’s thinking might have been influenced by Rumsfeld and Cheney prior to the 9/11 events,[17] but, as has been seen above, Bush consulted no one between the 9/11 terrorist acts and the 9 p.m. NSC meeting, a period of twelve hours in which Bush made four major decisions on US foreign policies: the announcement of the US being at war with terrorism; the invention of the doctrines of no distinction; preventative self-defence; and taking the war overseas to the enemy. One could, therefore, claim that the announcement of war and the making of the three doctrines were decisions made by Bush alone; it was the outcome of his ‘gut reaction’, his ‘instincts’, to the 9/11 events.[18]
Both the articulation of war and the invention of the three doctrines potentially put the US at war with a faceless enemy scattered around many dozen countries, yet it took Bush a short time to make them.[19] These doctrines informed US foreign policy, especially the GWOT, for years to come,[20] but none of the advisors questioned them.
Even if they had disagreed, they perhaps could not have changed Bush’s mind since after the 9/11atrocities Bush was ‘much more in broadcasting mode – telling them [advisors] what he thought and what he was going to do and far less interested in hearing what they thought. Bush had no self-doubt; he was “the Decider.”’[21] Being a ‘gut player’ with a strong belief system and images, once Bush made up his mind, persuading him to do otherwise was difficult.[22] Bush would ignore any policy ideas that did not fit Bush’s intuitive sense. The President knew what to do, and all he wanted to hear, in Powell’s words, was how to get it done.[23]
The Bush doctrines and the Afghanistan War
Bush as a person, as President, was largely responsible for intervening in Afghanistan in October 2001 because it was these doctrines as well as the declaration of war that brought Afghanistan to the forefront of the US campaign against terrorism or the GWOT. Al Qaeda had been freely operating from Afghanistan since the Taliban had taken Kabul in 1996, and Al Qaeda was held responsible for the 9/11 terrorist strikes. The Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammed Omar was evidently supporting Al Qaeda by providing it with free movement and bases where Al Qaeda trained terrorists against US assets. Consequently, all the administration’s focus turned to bringing the harbourers, the Taliban regime, to justice.[24]
‘Justice’ was the main theme for President Bush in the first few days of 9/11 until he was advised by officials from the Defense Department, mainly Rumsfeld, that the main US goal was not to punish, reattribute or retaliate, but to protect America; Rumsfeld remarked that in the first days Bush blurted out what sprang to his mind,[25] including calling the US struggle against terrorism ‘a crusade against evil’.[26] The protection of Americans meant preventing further attacks. To prevent further attacks and keep the US safe, the US needed to take pre–emptive measures against Al Qaeda and the Taliban who jointly posed a ‘serious threat of further attacks’. In doing so, the US would take the fight overseas to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan where Al Qaeda had bases supported by the Taliban. According to Bush, Afghanistan intervention therefore was out of ‘necessity and self-defence, not revenge’.[27]
The Bush doctrines and the Iraq War
Likewise, the Bush doctrine, especially the doctrine of preventative war, brought many other countries to the forefront of the US campaign against global terrorism, including the’ axis of evil’ – namely Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The axis of evil states was accused of supporting terrorism.
Bush said in January 2002:
‘We’ll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons’.[28]
Thus, Iraq was perceived as threatening and launched Operation Iraqi Freedom on 19 March, 2003.[29] However, owing to ‘the bloody resistance to American control of Iraq’ and the absence of weapons of mass destruction (used by the administration as one of the main justifications to invade), the GWOT policy did not extend to Iran and North Korea.
Conclusion
The important lesson this article tries to highlight is that Bush’s inclination to make decisions without spending much time analysing them was one of the main factors in the launch of the GWOT that began in Afghanistan. Bush claimed he acted upon his ‘gut feelings’ and ‘instincts’ to make those decisions. None of the advisors seemed to question them. In fact, most of them, including Cheney and Rumsfeld, supported the doctrines.
Both the articulation of war and the invention of the three doctrines informed US foreign policy for years, including the Bush Administration’s strategy towards Afghanistan and Iraq. While the Bush doctrines may have ‘died’, their legacy arguably still persists in America and its foreign policy.[30]
Bush, George W. 2010. Decision points. New York: Crown publishers.
Bush, George W, Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks, 11 September, 2001, <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58057>
Bush, George W, Presidential Address to the Nation, The White House Archive, 7 October 2001, <https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011007-8.html>
Cheney, Richard B., and Liz Cheney. 2011. In my time: a personal and political memoir. New York: Threshold Edition.
Daalder, Ivo H., and I. M. Destler, ‘In the Shadow of the Oval Office; The Next National Security Advisor’,The Brookings Institution, January/February, 2009, <http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2008/12/01-national-security-adviser-daalder>
Dorani, Sharifullah. 2019. America in Afghanistan: Foreign Policy and Decision Making Approaches from Bush to Obama to Trump. I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury Publishing House.
Feith, Douglas J., 2008. War and decision: inside the Pentagon at the dawn of the year War on terrorism.New York, NY: Harper.
Gordon, Philip H., ‘Can the War on Terror Be Won? How to Fight the Right War’, Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2007, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63009/philip-h-gordon/can-the-war-on-terror-be-won>
Howard, Michael, ‘What’s In A Name?: How to Fight Terrorism’, Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2002, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/57615/michael-howard/whats-in-a-name-how-to-fight-terrorism>
Jones, Steve, ‘Understanding the Bush Doctrine’, ThoughCo., 04 October 2021.
Leffler, Melvyn P., ‘September 11 in Retrospect; George W. Bush’s Grand Strategy, Reconsidered’, Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2011, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68201/melvyn-pleffler/september-11-in-retrospect>
Michaud, Jon, ‘Bush’s Decisions’, The New Yorker, 19 November 2010.
Nye, Jr, Joseph S., ‘Transformational Leadership and U.S. Grand Strategy’, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61740/joseph-s-nye-jr/transformational-leadership-and-us-grand-strategy>
Rice, Condoleezza. 2011. No higher honour: a memoir of my years in Washington. London: Simon & Schuster.
Rumsfeld, Donald. 2011. Known and unknown: a memoir. New York: sentinel.
Singh, Robert. 2012. Barrack Obama’s post-American foreign policy: the limits of engagement. London: Bloomsbury academic.
Suskind, Ron, ‘Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush’, The New York Times, 17 October 2004.
Tenet, George, and Bill Harlow. 2007. At the centre of the storm: my years at the CIA. New York: HarperCollins Publisher.
Woodward, Bob. 2002. Bush at war. New York: Simon & Schuster.
*Dr Sharifullah has a PhD from Durham University in the UK on America’s Afghanistan War. He has authored several articles and two acclaimed books: The Lone Leopard, a novel set in Afghanistan, and America in Afghanistan, published by Bloomsbury Publishing. Sharifullah is the founder of CEPSAF and the South Asia and Middle Eastern Editor at CESRAN International.
[1] Woodward, Bob. 2002. Bush at war. New York: Simon & Schuster, p.15.
[2] Bush, George W. 2010. Decision points. New York: Crown publishers, p.128.
[3] Woodward, Bob. 2002. Bush at war. New York: Simon & Schuster, p.17.
[4] Feith, Douglas J., 2008. War and decision: inside the Pentagon at the dawn of the year War on terrorism.New York, NY: Harper, pp. 4, 17-21.
[5] Woodward, Bob. 2002. Bush at war. New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 26-27; Tenet, George, and Bill Harlow. 2007. At the centre of the storm: my years at the CIA. New York: HarperCollins Publisher, pp. 255-256, 259.
[6] Bush, George W. 2010. Decision points. New York: Crown publishers, p.135.
[7] Bush, George W. 2010. Decision points. New York: Crown publishers, p.137; Gordon, Philip H., ‘Can the War on Terror Be Won? How to Fight the Right War’, Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2007, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63009/philip-h-gordon/can-the-war-on-terror-be-won>
[8] Leffler, Melvyn P., ‘September 11 in Retrospect; George W. Bush’s Grand Strategy, Reconsidered’, Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2011, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68201/melvyn-pleffler/september-11-in-retrospect>; Bush, George W, Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks, 11 September, 2001, <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58057>
[9] Bush, George W. 2010. Decision points. New York: Crown publishers, p.137.
[10] Woodward, Bob. 2002. Bush at war. New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 30.
[11] Woodward, Bob. 2002. Bush at war. New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 31-33.
[12] Rice, Condoleezza. 2011. No higher honour: a memoir of my years in Washington. London: Simon & Schuster, p. 77.
[13] Rumsfeld, Donald. 2011. Known and unknown: a memoir. New York: sentinel, p. 342.
[14] Cheney, Richard B., and Liz Cheney. 2011. In my time: a personal and political memoir. New York: Threshold Edition, p. 331.
[15] Leffler, Melvyn P., ‘September 11 in Retrospect; George W. Bush’s Grand Strategy, Reconsidered’, Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2011, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68201/melvyn-pleffler/september-11-in-retrospect>
[16] Cheney, Richard B., and Liz Cheney. 2011. In my time: a personal and political memoir. New York: Threshold Edition, p. 330.
[17] It was: see Dorani, Sharifullah. 2019. America in Afghanistan: Foreign Policy and Decision Making Approaches from Bush to Obama to Trump. I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury Publishing House, Chapter 1.
[18] Suskind, Ron, ‘Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush’, The New York Times, 17 October 2004; Woodward, Bob. 2002. Bush at war. New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 16.
[19] Gordon, Philip H., ‘Can the War on Terror Be Won? How to Fight the Right War’, Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2007, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63009/philip-h-gordon/can-the-war-on-terror-be-won>
[20] Singh, Robert. 2012. Barrack Obama’s post-American foreign policy: the limits of engagement. London: Bloomsbury academic.
[21] Daalder, Ivo H., and I. M. Destler, ‘In the Shadow of the Oval Office; The Next National Security Advisor’,The Brookings Institution, January/February, 2009, <http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2008/12/01-national-security-adviser-daalder>
[22] Daalder, Ivo H., and I. M. Destler, ‘In the Shadow of the Oval Office; The Next National Security Advisor’,The Brookings Institution, January/February, 2009, <http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2008/12/01-national-security-adviser-daalder>
[23] Nye, Jr, Joseph S., ‘Transformational Leadership and U.S. Grand Strategy’, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61740/joseph-s-nye-jr/transformational-leadership-and-us-grand-strategy>
[24] Bush, George W, Presidential Address to the Nation, The White House Archive, 7 October 2001, <https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011007-8.html>
[25] Rumsfeld, Donald. 2011. Known and unknown: a memoir. New York: sentinel, pp. 342-343.
[26] Howard, Michael, ‘What’s In A Name?: How to Fight Terrorism’, Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2002, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/57615/michael-howard/whats-in-a-name-how-to-fight-terrorism>
[27] Bush, George W. 2010. Decision points. New York: Crown publishers, p.184.
[28] Jones, Steve, ‘Understanding the Bush Doctrine’, ThoughCo., 04 October 2021.
[29] Bush, George W, Operation Iraqi Freedom, President Bush Addresses the Nation, The White House Archive, 19 March 2003, <https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/iraq/news/20030319-17.html>
[30] For more analysis, see Jones, Steve, ‘Understanding the Bush Doctrine’, ThoughCo., 04 October 2021.
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