President’s Address Defending the Use of Force When Necessary Was Reflective of the Elder Bush, Who Went to War to Stop Saddam Hussein’s Aggression Against Kuwait With the Broad Support of the World Community — Unlike the Younger Bush, Who Defied the World to Finish Off the Iraqi Dictator in Apparent Revenge For Saddam’s Attempt to Kill His Father

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, December 14, 2009)

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NEWS ANALYSIS

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By SKEETER SANDERS

Republicans are a fickle bunch. After months of attacking President Obama relentlessly, now, all of a sudden, they’re praising him.

Within hours after the president accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway on Thursday, Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee — and one of Obama’s most severe critics — actually applauded the president’s acceptance speech.

“I liked what he said,” Palin told USA Today in an interview after the speech. “I talked too in my book [Going Rogue: An American Story] about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times.”

Only a week ago, The ‘Skeeter Bites Report ripped Palin in a blistering editorial for lending tacit support to the “birther” movement — a movement motivated by racist and Islamophobic bigotry against Obama — after Palin told a right-wing radio talk-show host that she “didn’t have a problem” with people raising the issue of the president’s place of birth.

It should be noted that Palin’s eldest son, Track, is serving in the Army. Track Palin, 20, is currently stateside, having just returned from Iraq. It’s not known whether the younger Palin will return to Iraq or be sent to Afghanistan in the near future.

But Sarah Palin isn’t alone in her praise for the president. Other conservative Republicans, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, compared Obama’s speech, in which he said that there are times when the use of force is necessary for a greater good — the concept of a “just war”– to that of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.

Appearing on the public radio program “The Takeaway,” Gingrich said he thought the president’s speech was very good. “He clearly understood that he had been given the prize prematurely, but he used it as an occasion to remind people, first of all, as he said, that there is evil in the world,” Gingrich said.

“I think having a liberal president who goes to Oslo on behalf of a peace prize and reminds the committee that they would not be free, they wouldn’t be able to have a peace prize, without having force… I thought in some ways it’s a very historic speech,” Gingrich continued. “And the president, I think, did a very good job of representing the role of America which has been that of – at the risk of lives of young Americans – creating the fabric of security within which you could have a Martin Luther King Jr. or you could have a Mahatma Gandhi.”

Palin said the president’s remarks had a familiar ring. “We have to stop those terrorists over there,” she told USA Today. “We’ve learned our lesson from 9/11. George Bush did a great job of reminding Americans every single day that he was in office what that lesson is. And, by the way, I’d like to see President Obama follow more closely in the footsteps of George Bush and [Bush’s] passion keeping the homeland safe, his passion for respecting – honoring our troops.”

OBAMA: ‘THERE ARE TIMES WHEN THE USE OF FORCE IS NECESSARY . . .’

In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama acknowledged the irony of accepting the prize for peace as the commander-in-chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. “One of these wars [in Iraq] is winding down,” the president said. “The other [in Afghanistan] is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty-three other countries — including Norway — in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.”

The president told his audience that “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

Noting that he was accepting the Peace Prize exactly 45 years to the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accepted the 1964 Peace Prize for his leadership in the nonviolent movement to win greater civil rights for African-Americans, the nation’s first black president acknowledged that “As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive in the creed and lives of [Mahatma] Gandhi and King.”

But as a head of state “sworn to protect and defend my nation,” Obama continued, “I cannot be guided by their examples alone.” As president, said Obama, “I [must] face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world.”

Unfortunately, “A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies,” the president continued. “Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism. It is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason. I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.”

‘. . . BUT EVEN WHEN IT’S NECESSARY, WAR IS NEVER GLORIOUS’

Nonetheless, the president continued, “This truth must coexist with another — that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.”

Part of the world’s challenge “is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths — that war is sometimes necessary, and war is at some level an expression of human feelings,” Obama said. “Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President [John F.] Kennedy called for long ago. ‘Let us focus,’ he said, ‘on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions.'”

As president, Obama said, “I believe that all nations — strong and weak alike — must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I — like any head of state — reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates — and weakens — those who don’t.”

Obama noted that “The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense. Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait — a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.”

Without mentioning his predecessor by name — but reminding his audience of Bush’s actions that drew fierce international opposition — the president acknowledged that “America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our actions can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future intervention — no matter how justified.”

Obama acknowledged that in those situations where force is necessary, “we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe that the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength.

“That is why I prohibited torture,” the president continued. “That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard.”

REPUBLICANS COMPARING OBAMA TO THE WRONG GEORGE BUSH

It was clear from his speech that Obama was evoking several of his predecessors — including Jimmy Carter, who, in his 1980 State of the Union address following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, declared that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf region.

So it should come as no surprise that conservative Republicans would draw comparisons between Obama and George W. Bush. The trouble is, they’re comparing the president to the wrong Bush.

Obama’s speech was far more reflective of his predecessor’s father, George H.W. Bush — and, at the same time, a damning indictment of his son. For Bush 41 did something that Bush 43 failed to do: He went to war with the full support of the world community to stop an aggressor that attacked a neighboring nation.

The elder Bush — a World War II veteran — went to the United Nations and won a series of Security Council resolutions demanding Iraq withdraw its troops from Kuwait. When Iraq refused to comply, the Security Council ultimately authorized the use of force to remove them.

What’s forgotten is that the elder Bush also reached out to the Arab League, which passed its own resolutions condemning the Iraqi invasion. Saudi Arabia — the world’s most important oil producer and exporter — was particularly fearful that Saddam would later send his armies to seize its northern oil fields. At the request of King Fahd, Bush sent U.S. troops to northern Saudi Arabia to prevent such an invasion.

In the months that followed, the elder Bush succeeded in building a coalition of 34 countries — the largest international military alliance since World War II — to join forces with the U.S. in opposing the Iraqi invasion. Significantly, the coalition included 11 Muslim nations.

By the time the UN Security Council authorized the use of force against Iraq and the Gulf War began on January 17, 1991, there were forces on the ground from Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Spain, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Although they did not contribute any forces, the 33rd and 34th countries in the anti-Iraq alliance — Japan and Germany — made financial contributions totaling $10 billion and $6.6 billion respectively. Nonetheless, Americans made up 73 percent of the alliance’s nearly one million troops deployed against Iraq.

BUSH SR. WARNED IN HIS MEMOIRS THAT TOPPLING SADDAM WOULD HAVE ‘INCURRED INCALCULABLE COSTS’

After successfully driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, the elder Bush rejected strong urgings from conservatives to advance U.S. forces into Baghdad to topple Saddam’s regime. Indeed, after the Gulf War ended, conservatives sharply criticized Bush Sr. for allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power.

The elder Bush fired back in his 1998 memoir, A World Transformed, which was co-written by his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft. “Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq,” Bush wrote, “would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in ‘mission creep,’ and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. . .

“We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq,” the elder Bush wrote. “The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles.”

FLASHBACK: SADDAM TRIED TO KILL BUSH SR. DURING 1993 VISIT TO U.S. TROOPS IN KUWAIT

The 41st president’s son either never read his father’s memoirs or, if he did read them, chose to ignore his father’s warning about toppling Saddam Hussein. As it turned out, Bush 43 went to war in defiance of the world community and invaded another country without provocation to topple the very same dictator who had sent his army into Kuwait 13 years earlier.

The 43rd president’s publicly stated motivation was to rid Iraq of its stockpile of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. But it turned out that no such stockpile existed — nearly all of Iraq’s WMDs had been destroyed within six months after the Gulf War ended, but Saddam kept up the appearance that Iraq still had them to deter an attack, according to Hans Blix, the former chief weapons inspector for the UN.

But Bush 43 refused to see it that way — at least not publicly.

So what was George W. Bush’s real motivation for going to war to topple Saddam Hussein? Simply put, revenge. Bush 43 wanted to exact revenge against Saddam Hussein for his attempt to kill Bush’s father.

And he was going to take down Saddam no matter what the world thought of it, according to secret transcripts revealed in October 2007 by Spain’s largest daily newspaper, El Pais.

In case you’ve forgotten, let’s travel back in time to February 1993. The elder Bush — having turned the keys to the White House over to his successor, Bill Clinton, just a month earlier — was visiting U.S. troops stationed in Kuwait, ostensibly to say farewell as their commander-in-chief and to congratulate them for liberating Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.

But Bush had a target on his back. Saddam Hussein — his armies driven out of Kuwait and much of his country’s infrastructure laid waste by U.S. and allied bombs and missiles — saw an opportunity to exact revenge against his nemesis, the United States, by killing the man who routed his army.

So Saddam sent a team of assassins to Kuwait to kill Bush — but they were quickly captured by Kuwaiti security forces. The Kuwaiti authorities arrested 17 people who allegedly planned to drive a car loaded with explosives near Bush and detonate it, killing the former president.

Through interviews with the suspects and examinations of the bombs’ circuitry and wiring, the FBI established that the plot had been carried out by the Iraqi Intelligence Service, according to the PBS documentary series, “Frontline.” A Kuwaiti court later convicted all but one of the defendants.

Two months after it was foiled, the assassination plot was revealed to the world. In retaliation, President Clinton ordered the firing of 23 Tomahawk cruise missiles to destroy the Iraqi Intelligence Service’s headquarters in Baghdad. The day before the strike commenced, Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, went before the Security Council to present evidence of the Iraqi plot.

After the missiles were fired, Vice President Al Gore said the attack “was intended to be a proportionate response at the place where this plot” to assassinate Bush “was hatched and implemented.” The Clinton administration subsequently authorized the CIA in 1996 to organize a coup against Saddam, only to be foiled by the dictator’s intelligence service.

BUSH 43 PLOTTED TO OVERTHROW SADDAM FROM THE DAY HE TOOK OFFICE

That the younger Bush wanted to exact revenge against Saddam for attempting to kill his father was revealed by Bush himself, when in an address to the UN General Assembly in September 2002, he let it slip that “In 1993, Iraq attempted to assassinate the Amir of Kuwait and a former American president.”

Bush later admitted publicly that he made preparations to overthrow Saddam as soon as he took office. “The stated policy of my administration toward Saddam Hussein was very clear — like the previous administration, we were for regime change,” Bush told reporters in 2004 in a joint news conference with Mexico’s then-President Vicente Fox. “And in the initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with (enforcing a no-fly zone over Iraq) and so we were fashioning policy along those lines.”

Bush said the September 11 attacks put him “on a hair trigger” to take pre-emptive action against Iraq rather than wait for evidence of a new threat to Americans. But the fact is, Bush 43 used the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to move forward with his months-long plans to overthrow Saddam.

While neither of the Bushes, father and son, will admit it publicly, there was a deep ideological divide between them, according to author Craig Unger in his book, The Fall of the House of Bush.

“George H.W. Bush was a genial man with few bitter enemies,” Unger writes, “but his son had managed to appoint — as secretary of defense no less — one of the very few who fit the bill: Donald Rumsfeld. Once Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney took office — the latter supposedly a loyal friend — they had brought in one neoconservative policymaker after another to the Pentagon, the vice president’s office, and the National Security Council.

“In some cases,” Unger continued, “these were the same men who had battled the elder Bush when he was head of the CIA in 1976. These were the same men who fought him when he decided not to take down Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War. Their goal in life seemed to be to dismantle his legacy.”

And, indeed, they did. How else can you explain today’s Republicans comparing Obama to the younger Bush, who brought disgrace to this country’s good name during his eight years in the White House?

A more intriguing question: Given the apparent ideological rift between father and son, was Bush 43 out to “one-up” his father by getting rid of Saddam? The answer to that question perhaps can be better answered by the historians.

But for today’s Republicans to compare Obama to Bush 43 is an insult — not only to Obama, but also to Bush 41.

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Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.