WASHINGTON – In his new memoir out Tuesday, former US president George W. Bush
flatly rejects the notion that Israel was behind his decision to invade
Iraq.
Referring to critics who cast aspersions on his motives, Bush
dismisses those who “alleged that America’s real intent was to control Iraq’s
oil or satisfy Israel.”
RELATED:Abbas was ready to back Olmert deal, Bush memoir saysBush: Olmert asked me to strike Syria, but I refused He stresses, “Those theories were false. I was
sending our troops into combat to protect the American people.”
In the 30
pages he spends in
Decision Points detailing the frantic diplomacy, military
planning and consultations with international figures in the run-up to the Iraq
war, Bush never once mentions a conversation with an Israeli official or member
of a pro-Israel organization.
Bush does mention the threat of Israel
being bombarded with missiles among his many concerns about fallout from an
invasion – including the well-being of Iraqi civilians and the possibility of
chemical weapons being used against US soldiers.
But when it comes to
Middle Eastern pressure to declare war, he only describes Arab input: from Saudi
Arabian Prince Bandar, who urged him to make a decision on whether to attack,
and from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who said Iraq had biological weapons
and would certainly use them against the US, an assessment Mubarak wouldn’t make
public “for fear of inciting the Arab street.”
The picture Bush paints
stands in stark contrast to the assertions of critics who charged that the
“Israel lobby” was a major factor in the decision to go to war. Among the most
vocal were scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who said of the Israel
lobby that “the war would almost certainly not have occurred had it been
absent.”
The only reference Bush makes to a pro-Israel figure having a
role in his Iraq deliberations is the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize
winner Elie Wiesel, a supporter of military intervention whose opinion the
president solicited as he weighed his options.
“Elie is a sober and
gentle man. But there was passion in his seventy-four-year-old eyes when he
compared Saddam Hussein’s brutality to the Nazi genocide,” Bush
writes.
The other major pro-Israel figure whose influence Bush notes in
his work comes during his discussion of the “Freedom Agenda.” Bush cites a
passage from Natan Sharansky’s book The Case for Democracy in making the
argument that America needed to “put pressure on the arms of the world’s
tyrants.”
Bush sees his Freedom Agenda as being most needed in the Middle
East to help diminish the appeal of terrorism, and speaks sympathetically of the
terror that visited Israel during the second intifada.
“I was appalled by
the violence and loss of life on both sides. But I refused to accept the moral
equivalence between Palestinian suicide attacks on innocent civilians and
Israeli military actions intended to protect their people,” Bush writes, saying
his views on the right of countries to defend themselves were magnified by
September 11.
And he points out, “The Israeli people responded to the
violent onslaught the way any democracy would. They elected a leader who
promised to protect them, Ariel Sharon.”
Though he scores Sharon for
making a “provocative” visit to the Temple Mount after the collapse of the Camp
David talks in 2000, Bush says the blame for the violence that followed fell
squarely on Yasser Arafat, whom he describes as someone who “didn’t seem very
interested in peace.”
His wariness about Arafat only increased in early
2002 after Israel intercepted the Karine A, an Iranian ship it believed was
smuggling deadly weapons to Palestinians. Arafat pleaded his innocence in a
letter to Bush, who notes that both the US and Israel had evidence refuting his
claim.
“Arafat had lied to me. I never trusted him again,” Bush relates.
“In fact, I never spoke to him again. By the spring of 2002, I had concluded
that peace would not be possible with Arafat in power.”
Bush also details
differences with Sharon, particularly his feeling that Sharon’s sweeping West
Bank offensive against Palestinian terrorists following the Pessah bombing of
the Park Hotel in Netanya had gone too far and become
“counterproductive.”
“‘Enough is enough,’ I said.
Still Sharon
wouldn’t budge,” he writes.
During the offensive, Crown Prince Abdullah
of Saudi Arabia arrived at Bush’s ranch in Texas for a visit. Bush recounts that
the Saudis expected the US to have put a stop to the operation by then, and
threatened to leave soon after arriving should it continue.
“They were
insisting that I call the Israeli prime minister on the spot. I wasn’t going to
conduct diplomacy that way,” Bush writes.
He was, however, able to
convince a miffed Abdullah, who happened to be a farming enthusiast, to take a
tour of the ranch. While driving along, a hen turkey stood in the middle of the
road, blocking their progress.
Bush recalls that he then felt Abdullah
grab his arm and tell him, “It is a sign from Allah. This is a good
omen.”
The visit continued without a hitch, with Bush concluding, “I had
never seen a hen turkey on that part of the property, and I haven’t seen one
since.”