In an interview published Friday, former President George W. Bush suggested that the United States will have to deploy combat troops to Iraq to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Bush, more than six years after leaving office, was asked by the Sheldon Adelson-owned Israel Hayom newspaper, “is it possible to defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq without boots on the ground?”
“The president will have to make that determination,” he replied. “My position was that you need to have boots on the ground.” The former president described how a “fair number of people” were pushing him to get out of Iraq, that it was impossible to defeat al-Qaida. He said he chose the opposite, to increase troop levels.
“I think history will show that al-Qaida in Iraq was defeated. And so I chose the path of boots on the ground. We will see whether or not our government adjusts to the realities on the ground.”
This was right after he had been asked whether the war on terror was “currently being waged in the proper way,” and he replied that he did not want to criticize his successors.
“The temptation is to try to rewrite history or to make yourself look good by criticizing someone else. I think that is a mistake. I don’t think that is what leadership is all about.”
These comments came just days after President Obama authorized 450 additional troops to aid the Iraqi army in an advisory role. This is on top of the 3,100 already in the country in that role.
Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq came with serious costs: Over $2 trillion in debt, forgetting the war in Afghanistan, the physical and psychological toll on U.S. troops, and the strengthening of Iran and al-Qaeda.
Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told a British newspaper this week that his former boss had been wrong about Iraq.
“The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic,” he said. “I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.”
Rumsfeld departed the Pentagon after the 2006 midterm elections that swept the Democrats to power campaigning largely against the disastrous Bush foreign policy.
One of Rumsfeld’s deputies, former deputy undersecretary of defense Jed Babbin, told NewsMax TV that invading Iraq wasn’t worth it. “It’s harsh saying it because I was very vocal in supporting the war — [but] it clearly isn’t and it wasn’t.”
Babbin continued, “and at this point I really regret shedding any American blood over this and we sure as hell shouldn’t do anymore.”
Early in the interview Bush talked about how he had not been asked how to be commander-in-chief during the 2000 presidential campaign.
“The truth of the matter is that during the debates and the campaign no one asked me the question, ‘How will you conduct yourselves as commander-in-chief during war?’ And I vowed to defend our country.”
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush said he set about bringing the perpetrators to justice, with nearly universal acclaim. “Initially everyone was united — 90% of people approved of what we were doing,” he said. “And of course, over time, as your leaders have learned, war is very difficult; people lose their lives; stories get out.”
He then described how leaders had to remain “relentless” and avoid “self-pity.”
With so much chaos in Iraq fueled by ISIS and Iran, it can be hard to understand what the U.S. should do.
“First, we need to take a deep breath and avoid slipping into a reactive mode that focuses on tactics,” Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told ThinkProgress last month. “The events in Ramadi are troubling and should serve as a wake-up call and reminder that we need to be very judicious about how we respond. Some of the worst errors the United States made in its policies on Iraq through the years were unforced errors based on faulty analysis.”
Bush said one of his “big concerns” was about “the tendencies in the United States to be isolationist,” potentially a criticism of several of his brother Jeb’s likely primary opponents.
Last month, Jeb Bush said that the push to war in Iraq was justified because the administration was confronted with intelligence that left them with no choice. In fact, the CIA official who oversaw Middle East intelligence said that “intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made.”
Jeb Bush’s campaign is reportedly being advised by some of the same advisors who helped his brother mislead the nation on the rationale for the Iraq war, including Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, and Meghan O’Sullivan.