6.4 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, mid-2001
to January 2003
I don’t
think our troops ought to be used for what’s called
nation-building. I think our
troops
ought to be used to fight and win a war. I think our troops ought
to be used
to help
overthrow the dictator when it’s in our best interests. But in this
case it was
a nation-building
exercise, and same with Haiti. I wouldn’t have supported
either.”
75.
Dr Condoleezza
Rice, who was Governor Bush’s adviser on national security
before
becoming
President Bush’s National Security Advisor, explained that Governor
Bush
was
proposing a new division of labour in NATO:
“The United
States is the only power that can handle a showdown in the Gulf,
mount
the kind of
force that is needed to protect Saudi Arabia and deter a crisis in
the
Taiwan
Straits. And extended peacekeeping detracts from our readiness for
these
“Carrying
out civil administration and police functions is simply going to
degrade the
American
capability to do the things America has to do. We don’t need to
have the
82nd
Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten.”
77.
Similar views
were held by Mr Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense from
2001
to 2006.
78.
In his memoir,
Mr Rumsfeld described his views before the invasion of Iraq
as
“straightforward”.61
The US goal
was:
“… to help
the Iraqis put in place a government that did not threaten
Iraq’s
neighbours,
did not support terrorism, was respectful to the diverse elements
of Iraqi
society,
and did not proliferate weapons of mass destruction. Period
…
“As soon as
we had set in motion a process, I thought it important that we
reduce
the
American military role in reconstruction and increase assistance
from the United
Nations and
other willing coalition countries.”
“I
recognized the Yankee can-do attitude by which American forces took
on tasks
that locals
would be better off doing themselves. I did not think resolving
other
countries’
internal political disputes, paving roads, erecting power lines,
policing
streets,
building stock markets, and organizing democratic governmental
bodies
were
missions for our men and women in uniform.”
80.
The US adopted
the minimalist approach in Afghanistan, where military
action
began on 7
October 2001.
60
The New
York Times, 21
October 2000, The 2000
Campaign: The Military; Bush Would Stop
US Peacekeeping
in Balkan Fights.
61
Rumsfeld
D. Known and
Unknown: A Memoir. Sentinel,
2011.
127