An Arrogant Nation That Creates Its Own Reality:: The Impact of Christianity on American Society

By Rogene A. Buchholz

Americans seem prone to create their own reality in situations that have faced them over the past several years and this arrogance cost the country dearly. Three events stand out as prime examples this arrogance. The first of these events was the war in Iraq which was based on the false reality that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to terrorist organizations. The second example was the financial crisis of 2008 which was precipitated by the invention of new and complicated investment vehicles. The last example is the current Trump administration which was filled with falsehoods during the campaign and his first years in office, such that one could not believe anything that this administration said. This book is going to focus on religious reasons for this situation as I believe that it is the Christian religion that is largely at fault for this condition. It is religion that has set up most Americans to believe our leaders when they outright lie and claim to know things beyond what the evidence will support and create a false reality that eventually comes crashing down to disrupt American life. If our nation is ever going to be great it must quit living in a fantasy world and give up a belief in magic as far as its future is concerned. Decisions in government and business must be based on reality as it is and not on what we arrogantly think we can create. The two go together as the more we try and create our own reality the less able we are to come to grips with the reality that actually exists. The place to start is by recognizing the role the Christian religion has played in this phenomenon and letting go of the fantasies that comprise this religion and live a secular life that finds meaning and purpose in this world rather than in some hereafter. We will not successfully deal with all the problems with which we are faced and have a political and economic system that works for everyone until this happens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728333915

Rogene A. Buchholz

Rogene A. Buchholz is currently the Legendre-Soule Chair in Business Ethics Emeritus at Loyola University New Orleans. He held this endowed chair at Loyola for thirteen years until his retirement in 2002. Prior to this position he taught at various business schools as a full-time faculty or visitor. Dr. Buchholz received a B.S. Degree from North Central College in 1959, a M.S. Degree in Economics from the University of Illinois in 1960, an M.Th. Degree from Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in 1964, and a Ph.D. Degree from the Business School at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974. In 1995 he received the Summer Marcus Award for outstanding contributions to the field of Business and Society and outstanding service to the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management. He is the author or co-author of 15 books that were mostly textbooks while in academia and has had four scholarly books published by Routledge since he retired. Dr. Buchholz currently lives with his wife, a former philosophy professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, in Denver Colorado.

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© 2019 Rogene A. Buchholz. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/13/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-3392-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-3390-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-3391-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019917345

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Part 1    Mugged By Reality

No Doubts

Musical Chairs

Alternative Facts

Part 2    Religion In America

White Christian America

The Rise Of The Religious Right

A Christian Nation Or A Nation Of Christians

Part 3    The Christian Religion

The Christian Worldview

Religion And Science

The Transcendental Temptation

Critiques Of Christianity

Part 4    The End Of Christianity

The New Atheism

Beyond Atheism

An Honest Christiantiy

Selected Bibliography

PREFACE

This book was made possible by many people including my wife with whom I have had many conversations over the years about religion in general and Christianity in particular. These were very enlightening discussions and eventually made me be honest with myself and my lack of belief in God and all the other supernatural baggage that goes with Christianity. In time I came to realize that I was a thoroughgoing naturalist that did not believe in any supernatural realm. Everything we experience and know anything about comes from the natural world in which we live and there is nothing beyond like a deity that resides in some other place that deserves to be worshiped or looked to for guidance. Since Christianity is only possible unless one believes in a supernatural realm it was obvious I did not have the kind of faith Christianity requires. But I did not want to call myself an atheist for reasons explained in this book so I consider myself to be just a nonbeliever.

This is rather strange considering that I went to seminary for three years and was a clergyman for another three years as a campus minister for two of those years and pastor of an inner-city church for another. Seminary was a great experience for me as I actually enjoyed the study of theology and received good grades despite having a part-time job that took up at last 20 hours a week. This may also sound strange but most of the professors I had in seminary encouraged me to challenge the great theologians of the time rather than just write an exposition of their thinking. In this sense they taught me how to think not only about theological matters but about issues in general. So when I left seminary I kept on reading and thinking about theological and philosophical matters and ended up in a place that they would probably not be pleased about, but in a sense it was all their fault and I thank them for helping me think for myself about theological and philosophical issues.

After I left the church I worked for a large Fortune 500 company in the Management Information Systems department designing computer systems. This was a good position and had a good future but I wasn’t satisfied with such a technical job that provided no outlet for my theological and philosophical interests. So I went back school and got my Ph.D. in a field that was most often called Business and Society where I taught and did research in corporate social responsibility. Later on I also got into Business Ethics and taught myself about ethical theories and issues which was right up my alley. And then I also learned about environmental issues in a project with the National Wildlife Foundation and taught a course about environmental issues in the business school where I was employed.

When I retired from teaching I audited courses in philosophy, sociology, and political science at the University of Colorado at Denver which broadened my horizons and introduced me to new ways of thinking. Thus I would like to thank all the instructors and students who I interacted with in these courses that gave me new ideas about many things including religion and introduced me to books and articles that were relevant to this book. So I have kept on reading and thinking and the more I read and thought about the matter the less sense Christianity made and I came to see it as downright harmful as described in this book. It is something that I think needs to be eradicated from our society in order for us to come to grip with problems like global warming and gun violence because it involves living in a fantasy world rather than the beautiful world we were actually given and are rapidly destroying.

Many thanks are due to Mikayla Gamboa, a Senior Publishing Consultant of AuthorHouse, who persisted in keeping in contact with me as I sent my proposal to numerous publishers including academic as well as commercial publishers. All of them turned it down whether I submitted it as a religious or sociology book, and that seemed to be the problem. It is really an interdisciplinary book and didn’t fit into any of their categories so they didn’t know where to fit it in to their scheme of things. Some may have also turned it down because of its controversial nature. In any event, the only thing left for me was to self-publish. Since I had put months of work into it I wanted at least to see it in print and put it on the shelf with the rest of my books. The people at AuthorHouse have been a pleasure to work with and have produced a fine product. In particular I would like to thank Eve Ardell, the Check-In Coordinator at Author House, who I worked with closely on the entire project.

Finally I would like to thank Roman and Littlefield Publishing Group for permission to use and rewrite content from a book entitled America In Conflict: The Deepening Values Divide that I had previously published with their subsidiary Hamilton Books, and to Taylor and Francis Group LLC Books for permission to use and rewrite content from two previous books I published with Routledge entitled Reforming Capitalism: The Scientific Worldview and Business and Restructuring Capitalism: Materialism and Spiritualism in Business. Their generosity is greatly appreciated.

INTRODUCTION

Americans seem prone to create their own reality in situations that have faced them over the past several years and this arrogance has cost them dearly. There are many examples of this phenomenon that could be mentioned but three events in particular stand out as prime examples of this arrogance. The first of these events was the war in Iraq, a completely unnecessary and unjustified war which was based on the false reality that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to terrorist organizations. Neither of these alleged facts proved to be true and led to the loss of almost 4,000 American lives and countless Iraqi casualties as well as the destruction of large parts of their country and over a trillion dollars in expenditures according to some estimates. This war affected our standing in the world as the United States became known as a rouge nation acting alone according to its own view of reality and invaded a sovereign country for no good reason.

The second example was the financial crisis of 2008 which was precipitated by the invention of new and complicated investment vehicles called Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that were made up of shaky mortgages that could not be afforded by the people who entered into them and which were bound to be defaulted on when interest rates adjusted to higher rates. Yet these CDOs were rated as AAA investments in many cases and sold to the public or warehoused by the investment banks themselves. Everyone involved in this massive Ponzi scheme was making money hand over fist for a while, but the whole thing eventually came crashing down leading to what has been called the Great Recession that bankrupted all the major investment banks as well as other institutions drying up credit in the country as a whole. It took a major government bailout to keep this crisis from getting any worse than it was and years for the economy to recover.

The last example is the current Trump administration which was filled with falsehoods during the campaign and his first years in office, such that one could not believe anything that this administration said. There were lies upon lies as Trump created his own reality in almost everything he said and left people spinning as to the magnitude of it all which far surpasses anything that any campaign or administration had done before. This still goes on as the Trump administration makes things up as it goes along and seems to have no qualms about making claims that can’t be substantiated and for which there is no evidence. Such an arrogance is unprecedented in American life and reflects a disrespect for the truth that is frightening. While the Bush administration wanted to spread American values all over the world, the Trump administration has abdicated its leadership role and pulled out of international agreements thinking this country can go it alone and doesn’t need any ties that bind it to other countries in its America first propaganda campaign.

There are many reasons for the appearance of this phenomenon in American life including political reasons, cultural reasons, and philosophical reasons, but what the rest of this book is going to focus on are religions reasons for this situation. This focus on religion is not meant to suggest that the other reasons are unimportant, but only to say that I am going to focus on just this one aspect of the problem as I believe that it is religion, namely the Christian religion, that is largely at fault for this condition. It is religion that has set up most Americans to believe our leaders when they outright lie and claim to know things beyond what the evidence will support and create a false reality that eventually comes crashing down to disrupt American life.¹

Most Americans are used to being lied to, as they are lied to every Sunday morning in church by clergy and priests who make claims about knowledge of transcendent things for which they have absolutely no evidence. It is only by the method of authority that these claims are substantiated and passed on to people who buy into the whole religious system for some reason. There are many reasons people think they need religion some of which will be discussed in subsequent chapters. But religious claims are only supported by the method of authority; the authority of the Bible, the authority of the church, and the authority of the priesthood. There is no evidence to support most of the claims that are made in the name of religion and passed on from generation to generation.

And Americans have for centuries been creating their own reality of belief in God, an afterlife, angels, the devil, and all the other supernatural stuff that goes with Christianity. There is no proof that such a supernatural realm exists expect in the minds of believers. Christianity lumps all this supernatural stuff together and calls it faith, a faith in a reality that has been literally created out of whole cloth what with claims of a creation of the universe out of nothing and a transcendent realm where God supposedly resides and where we will go after our death if we have been faithful and walked the straight and narrow path to salvation.

This reality which is called faith exists only in the minds of those who need to believe in the supernatural realm in order for life to have meaning and purpose. It is argued in the following chapters that we can no longer afford to believe in these fantasies if we want to survive as a nation and as a species as we are experiencing record hurricanes, record floods, and record fires that threaten our very existence as human beings. Our planet in under stress that is created by our unending quest for economic growth that is undergirded by a religious quest for eternal life. The two go together as one fuels the other in the creation of a fantasy world where decisions are made that are not consistent with the actual world we live in and are dependent on for our existence. This self-destructive streak comes from Christianity which rather than celebrating life and all it entails is fixated on death and a fantasied afterlife that allows us to escape the consequences of our actions.

The role of religion in public life is one of the most important issues facing the country. Surveys show that religion is vitally important to the majority of Americans and that rather than becoming a more secular society as is Europe, we are in the process of becoming a more religious society. Most of the growth of religion in this country has taken place in the so-called evangelical denominations making them more important over the past several years in the life of the nation as a whole as they are more involved politically than mainstream religions. The religious right seems to have captured the Republican Party over the past several decades which has become a religious party as no Republican candidate can ignore them and win the election. The involvement of the religious right in politics has been democracy’s greatest problem for the past several decades and threatens the separation of church and state that was of great concern to the founders of this country. There is good reason to keep religion out of politics, and yet we seem to be going in the opposite direction.

While the constitution specifically forbids a religious test for public office, what we have in this country is a de facto religious test that has become quite apparent in recent years during the primaries and the presidential election. Every candidate who wants to be taken seriously has to tout their religious faith before the electorate and make a public display of how religious they are and how much their faith means to them. They devote considerable time to making sure the public know they are believers and that their faith informs their decisions. Every politician has to parade his or her religion before the American public and tout his or her faith as if to prove that he or she believes in something beyond politics. It is abundantly clear that an atheist would never have a chance to get elected to anything in this country.

Religion in my day was largely a private matter kept to oneself by and large, and to make a public spectacle out of it was seen to be inappropriate. The public expression of one’s faith was largely confined to the churches and synagogues and most politicians did not make reference to their faith in campaigning. But in the past decade or so it has entered the public arena in a way that seems unprecedented. Issues such as stem cell research, abortion, gay marriage, and the teaching of creationism or intelligent design as it is now called, are all tied up with religion and are the issues of concern in the so-called culture wars. Issues such as poverty, inequality, and the safety and well-being of workers and consumers, which one would think would be a concern of religious communities, do not seem to be on their agendas.

Why has religion become so important in our public life and how did in become so influential? What does it mean for the future of the country? Do we think religion is going to save this country and help us deal with our problems? Has it made us more moral in our dealings with each other and with foreign peoples? Has it made us more civilized or has it only added to the partisan rhetoric and further divided the country? These are important questions to discuss and will be the subject of this book which will examine Christianity and its influence on politics and life in this country.

What is involved in this discussion are two worldviews, the scientific and the religious, and these two worldviews inform the way people think about the world and the behavior they exemplify. These worldviews are for the most part incompatible, as they involve different ways of looking at nature and our place in nature as well as how we should behave with respect to the world and other people. One has to choose between the scientific and religious worldview when it comes to many issues such as abortion, stem cell research, and evolution, but this difference is present in many other issues as well such as global warming and our responsibility for nature. But it is the religious worldview that seems dominant in today’s politics and contributes to the tendency Americans have to create their own reality.

The first part of the book examines in great detail the three main examples mentioned at the outset where this phenomenon of creating one’s own reality is shown most clearly. The first chapter is called No Doubts referring to the statements of Bush and Cheney that there was no doubt that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al Qaeda. The second chapter is entitled Musical Chairs which refers to the statement made by the head of Citibank who seem to know the nature of the game they were playing but did not get out in time to save his own company. The third chapter called Alternative Facts comes from the statement of one of Trump’s advisers in defending the statement the Press Secretary had made about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration. These three examples show how creating a reality that is based on fantasy can have serious consequences for the country.

The second part of the book deals with the religion and its role in American society. The first chapter in this section deals with the rise of the Religious Right and the influence it exercises in the political system of our country. It has practically taken over the Republican Party which is in some sense the political arm of the Christian Right and represents their interests by and large. The next chapter describes the election of Trump as the last gasp of White Christian America and shows how their influence is bound to wane in the future as the demographics are against them. The last chapter in this section treats the question of whether the United States is a Christian nation and answers in the negative by suggesting it is more accurate to describe this country as a nation of Christians. Most Christians who make this claim do not know what a Christian nation would look like anyhow.

The next section of the book deals with the Christian religion by first telling the story of Christianity and describing its main characteristics. Science has a different story to tell and the relation between science and religion is the subject of the next chapter. The following chapter deals with the concept of God as understood in Christianity and describes certain problems the concept causes those who have thought about the problem. Next the subject of transcendence is discussed and what belief in a transcendent dimension does for Christians and why belief in the supernatural is so important to them. Finally other critiques are examined that question whether Christianity is relevant to today’s world.

The last section of the book first treats the new atheism as it is characterized; the attempt by some critics of Christianity to discredit it entirely and suggest that atheism is the only way to go with respect to any religious tendency. Another chapter suggests that atheism keeps religion alive by needing it to react against and that we must get to a point in our society where we get beyond atheism itself and religion simply is not relevant as we create a completely secular society where religion is of no importance. The final chapter of this section and of the book describes what an honest Christianity would look like; a Christianity that gave up any metaphysical claims to know anything about how the world came into being and how it will end, but leaves this to science and focuses on helping people cope with the world and living their lives to the fullest.

If our nation is ever to be great again it must quit living in a fantasy world and give up a belief in magic as far as its future is concerned. Decisions in government and business must be based on reality as it is and not on what we arrogantly think we can create. The two go together as the more we try and create our own reality the less able we are to come to grips with the reality that actually exists. The place to start is by recognizing the role the Christian religion has played in this phenomenon and letting go of the fantasies that comprise this religion and living a secular life that finds meaning and purpose in this world rather than in some hereafter. We will not successfully deal with all the problems with which we are faced and have a political and economic system that works for everyone until this happens.

PART ONE

MUGGED BY REALITY

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CHAPTER ONE

NO DOUBTS

There are many examples that have taken place in recent years in this country that involve attempts to create a reality that ultimately proves to be wrong. This phenomenon has been a feature of American life that has come into more prominence in the new century as we have seen numerous attempts to create a reality that is more in tune with what people would like to believe, but in all these cases the leaders who created this reality and the people who bought into it have been mugged when the fantasy they were living became exposed and reality imposed itself in a rather disastrous fashion. Three such major events will be examined in the next three chapters starting with the invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration which proved to be based on false assumptions about weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorist groups.

THE MYTH

The war in Iraq was one of the most controversial, if not the most controversial war in which this country has ever become engaged. Hundreds of books and thousands of articles were written about the subject, some supporting the war wholeheartedly and others questioning the entire enterprise. Many supported the initial invasion but were critical about the lack of postwar planning and the way the Bush administration handled the situation after declaring mission accomplished. Others accused the Bush administration of fighting a bogus war that at best was completely unjustified and at worst actually illegal according to international standards. It should come as no surprise that there was an extensive discussion about this war as it was a radical departure from previous wars this country fought and represented something of a watershed in the use of military power to accomplish political objectives.

Before the invasion I paced the floor night after night in utter disbelief that we were actually going to involve ourselves in what I thought from the very beginning would be a fiasco. All the propaganda coming from the administration as to how the Iraqis would embrace democracy and all would be well once Saddam was removed from power seemed to me to be sheer fantasy. During my teaching career I had many students from the Middle East who almost to a person wanted me to understand how much the Sunnis and Shiites hated each other, a hatred that had its origins in the legitimate successor to the prophet Mohammed. If we removed Saddam and created a power vacuum this hatred was bound to be unleased and anything but a peaceful Iraq would emerge from the ruins. And in my opinion, it did not take a rocket scientist to see that officials in the Bush administration, in particular Bush himself and his sidekick Cheney, were obviously lying about weapons of mass destruction and ties Iraq supposedly had to the terrorist group al- Qaeda. There was no hard evidence in my opinion that either of these accusations had any basis in reality.

After a while, I became thoroughly disgusted with the macho attitude the Bush administration exemplified. First there was the bin Laden dead or alive rhetoric. Then the ultimatum to Saddam to get out of his own country in 48 hours or he would be removed from power. After the war was supposedly over Bush strutted around a carrier deck in a flight suit in effect saying to the world how we showed those Iraqis what America is made of. Soon there was the bring it on remark and indeed the insurgents brought in on much longer and stronger than expected. And finally, there was the remark that we were not going to ask permission from the United Nations (UN) to defend our national interest. Of course we weren’t and neither is any other country in the world if they perceive an imminent threat to their security. They might ask the UN for help but not permission. So what was the big deal? Did we have to state the obvious in such belligerent terms as if to prove to the world how tough we were? Was this the mark of a mature nation that knew how to use its power responsibly? It seemed as if the country was trying to grow up and find a new role in the world as the only superpower left standing after the demise of the former Soviet Union.

The real issue is whether Iraq posed any kind of real threat to our security. Looking at the evidence it seems as if the Bush administration was committed to invading Iraq and forcing a regime change from the very first day it took office. There were people in high places, including the vice-president, who had Iraq in their sights and were only looking for some kind of justification that they could sell to the American people to put their commitment into action. Only 10 days after the inauguration, according to Paul O’Neill, the first Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush administration, the focus of foreign policy was already on Iraq and how to depose of Saddam Hussein. There was never a discussion as to why this action was advisable according to O’Neill. The discussion focused on building a case against Saddam and figuring out how he could be disposed of and changing Iraq into a new country.²

This commitment came in large part from the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think tank dedicated to a few fundamental propositions that American leadership is both good for America and for the world, and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle³ In its statement of principles, PNAC asked: Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests? The document goes on to say America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge and to meet threats before they become dire.⁴ The document lists four consequences of this doctrine of foreign policy.

• We need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future.

• We need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values.

• We need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad.

• We need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.⁵

This document lays the groundwork for American intervention anywhere in the world and advocates a preemptive strategy to meet threats before they materialize. The goal of this organization seemed to be to extend American hegemony across the world by force of arms, if necessary, as a show of resolve to promote American values throughout the world. It is an arrogant document that believes America has a right to impose its will on the rest of the world and shape it according to its own interests. There was nothing in this document regarding respect for diversity and rights of other nations to pursue their own interests and develop their own future free from domination by a foreign power.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz were members of this organization. Thus people at the very top of the Bush administration shared these views of American foreign policy and were more than happy to be put in positions where they could implement this vision for America. Iraq was unfinished business for these people and their interests meshed with Bush’s own personal vendetta against Saddam and, as it later became apparent, his conviction that he was chosen by both God and history to liberate Iraq and bring democracy to the Middle East. The ultimate goal was to establish a democracy in Iraq more in tune with Western values that would hopefully spread to other countries in the region. Democracy would, it was believed, promote our interests in a stable Middle East to reduce the threat of terrorism and keep the oil flowing so our way of life could continue.

An important part of the motivation for this war seemed to be the importance of showing our resolve. As Paul O’Neill stated: A weak but increasingly obstreperous Saddam might be useful as a demonstration model of America’s new, unilateral resolve. If it could effectively be shown that he possessed, or was trying to build, weapons of mass destruction—creating an ‘asymmetric threat,’ in the neoconservative parlance, to U.S. power in the region—his overthrow would help ‘dissuade’ other countries from doing the same.⁶ We would show the world not to mess with America, an extension of the Don’t Mess with Texas signs that appeared alongside highways in Bush’s home state in reference to litter. Bush himself stated over and over again that We had to show the world that the United States means what is says. It was important for the United States to be not only respected but also feared because of its military might that was unopposed in the world.

The 9/11 attacks opened the door to manufacture a justification for invading Iraq and forcing regime change. Even though it was quickly ascertained that al-Qaeda was responsible for these attacks, Bush immediately wanted to start building a case against Saddam and find a way to prove his involvement in the attacks.⁷ But Afghanistan had to be dealt with first as after all that is where al-Qaeda had established its base of operations and where its training facilities were located. Bush bided his time to get his ducks in order and then attacked the country in an action that was absolutely justified and had international support. While there was some criticism about the way this campaign was conducted, it was quickly successful in driving the Taliban from power and establishing a new regime.⁸

Once we had the Taliban on the run and it became clear we were not going to get Osama bin Laden anytime soon, attention shifted to the real goal of this administration. Planning for an invasion of Iraq had begun even before the Taliban were routed. The Bush administration mounted a masterful propaganda campaign to convince the American public and the world that Saddam had developed weapons of mass destruction and had links to al-Qaeda and thus constituted an immediate threat to the country and the world. They also created the impression that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks, and polls indicated that a great many Americans believed this was the case. Later on Bush explicitly denied this connection but the impression remained.⁹

The administration kept sounding a constant drumbeat for war with all the no doubt statements about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction. The president said that "intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. Vice President Dick Cheney said, There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. When asked about the location of the WMDs, Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, answered: We know where they are.¹⁰ On another occasion Cheney declared that the high-strength aluminum tubes Saddam had imported constituted irrefutable evidence that Saddam was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.¹¹ As for George Tenet, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), justification for the war was a slam dunk," two words he came to regret he had ever uttered.¹²

Thus a preemptive strike was justified because Bush had a constitutional duty to protect the country from threats of this nature.¹³ When propaganda didn’t work, the administration tried to bully the United Nations and European countries into submission, and we had the audacity to criticize France for not going along with this charade. Before anyone realized it, we were amassing troops in great numbers in Kuwait getting ready to strike into Iraq. The Democrats proved to be just as warmongering as anyone else as a bipartisan Congress gave the president carte blanche to go to war with little opposition. Everyone seemed ready to rush into war with Iraq, the press included, and there was something of a gleeful attitude in this country as if going to war was like going on a new and exciting adventure.

Meanwhile, the UN weapons inspectors were doing their job, and the buildup of troops on Iraq’s border had the beneficial effect of getting Saddam to open up more places for inspection. However, these inspectors could find nothing in the way of weapons of mass destruction. After it became abundantly clear there were no such weapons, most commentators focused on intelligence failures on the part of the CIA, and at least two commissions were formed to look into this problem and eventually blamed the intelligence community for faulty intelligence and let the administration off the hook.¹⁴ But there was no intelligence failure. The Bush administration had the best intelligence anyone could hope for from the UN inspectors who were on the ground in Iraq having access to people and places they never had before. Yet the administration chose to discredit this whole process focusing on surveillance photos from the CIA they could interpret any way they wanted.¹⁵

Thus every factory was producing chemical weapons, every truck was a mobile biological weapons lab, and every aluminum tube had something to do with nuclear bombs. O’Neill described a meeting of the National Security Council where a grainy photograph of a factory was laid out on the table that Tenet believed might be a plant producing either chemical or biological materials for weapons manufacture. O’Neill mentioned that he had seen a lot of factories around the world that looked like the one in the photograph and asked what made us suspect that this one produced chemical or biological agents for weapons. In response Tenet mentioned a few items of circumstantial evidence but had to admit that there was "no confirming intelligence’ as to the materials being produced by the factory.¹⁶

Perhaps the most flagrant fabrication of evidence was reference to Iraq’s purchase of uranium from Africa in Bush’s State of the Union address, a claim that was highly dubious at the time it was uttered. Officials writing the speech wanted to refer specifically to Niger, the supposed source of the uranium, but after being told there were problems with the information they had, substituted a more vague Africa reference. They then referred to the information as coming from British sources in order to make the point without having to vouch for its authenticity. The whole claim was later proven to be a total fabrication.¹⁷ After a former ambassador by the name of Joseph Wilson was hired by the CIA to investigate this claim and found it to have no basis, his wife, a CIA operative, was outed in what supposedly was an attempt to undermine her husband’s criticism of the use of this information about uranium purchases.

This sparked another investigation into the source of the leak about Wilson’s wife leading to the indictment of I. Lewis Scooter Libby, a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby was charged with lying and obstructing justice, and later revealed that the president himself had ordered declassification of parts of a pre-war intelligence report and indirectly authorized Libby to leak this information to reporters to rebut critics who said the administration was exaggerating the nuclear threat posed by Iraq. This information suggested that Saddam was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger for nuclear weapons.¹⁸

A former national intelligence officer responsible for the Middle East from 2000-2005 stated that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions about Iraq that had already been made and that the intelligence community’s work was politicized. The Bush administration cherry picked raw intelligence that had not been analyzed or interpreted to make its case for war to the public.¹⁹ A reporter who covered national security for the New York Times described what he called the culture of deceit that existed at the CIA where, because of pressure from the administration, only information supportive of its position surfaced and information that did not support its case for war, even information from inside Iraq itself that denied the existence of WMDs, was buried.²⁰And so it went with most of the so-called evidence supporting a justification for the war against Iraq.

The Bush doctrine of preemption required near perfect intelligence about the enemy’s intentions and capabilities. After Saddam did not use any biological or chemical weapons in his country after we invaded, and after we did not immediately find WMDs, we should have begun to doubt our justification for the invasion. But the Bush administration continued to insist that WMDs were there and would eventually be found. All we had to do was look harder, a claim that had less and less credibility as time went on. If they were so hard to find with complete access to the country how could we ever have had any confidence that they actually existed before we occupied the county? While we would not give the UN weapons inspectors another 10 days to search for them before the war started, we now said we needed months to find them.

THE REALITY

Then came the official denials of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and of any links to al-Qaeda. David Kay led the 2003 search for WMDs in Iraq, and in his first report to Congress admitted stocks of such weapons had not yet been found. But he also added that we are not yet at the point where we can say definitely either that such weapons do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone.²¹ When he left his post in early 2004, however, he was more certain that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the war and was critical of the National Security Council for not protecting the president from faulty pre-war intelligence.²²

The most definitive statement on WMDs came in a 1,000-page report from his replacement, the administration’s new chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Charles Duelfer. The report concluded that at the time of the invasion Iraq had no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons and there were no active programs to produce them. Its capacity to produce such weapons, the report continued, had significantly eroded by the time of the invasion. Iraq had essentially destroyed its illicit weapons ability by the end of 1991 and in 1996 had eliminated its last secret factory which was a biological-weapons facility. Duelfer concluded that between 1991 and 2003 Saddam had in effect sacrificed his illicit weapons program to the long-term goal of winning an end to the UN sanctions.²³

However, even though Saddam had destroyed his WMDs to escape the sanctions, he still wanted to perpetuate the belief that he had them, mainly, the report suggested, to keep Iran in check. Saddam apparently considered WMDs as essential in this effort, and while the U.S. was focused on the threat Iraq posed, he was focused on maintaining the fiction of WMDs as a strategic deterrent to keep Iran from invading or otherwise interfering in his country. This presented Saddam with a difficult balancing act in getting rid of his WMDs to win relief from the sanctions while at the same time pretending he still had them for regional security. This balancing act obviously did not work out to his advantage.²⁴

This report was the result of some 15 months of work by the Iraq Survey Group, a military and intelligence team of more than 1,200 people who inspected scores of sites, interviewed hundreds of former Iraqi scientists and officials, and reviewed thousands of documents in an effort to reach a definitive judgment.²⁵ This report clearly destroyed the rationale used by the Bush administration to justify the war claiming that Iraq actually possessed chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. However, Duelfer also argued that Saddam was using this period to exploit avenues opened by the sanctions, like the oil-for-food program to lay the groundwork for a long-term program to restart weapons production once the sanctions were lifted. Supporters of the war used this statement as proof that Saddam needed to be taken out, that he was a threat to world peace, and had never given up his dream of reshaping world history. They argued that the report was the best argument yet that the war was necessary. The issue was when—not if—Saddam would put his banned weapons program back on track.²⁶ These arguments made clear that this war was not a preemptive war but as best a preventative war that was much more problematical in nature.

The second pillar of the Bush administration’s justification for the war was the alleged links between Saddam and al-Qaeda, linkage that was crucial to the case for war in that Saddam then had the capability to provide terrorists with biological and chemical weapons. The 9/11 commission quashed this argument with its findings that there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam and the terrorist organization. Based on its examination of relevant classified information, the commission found that while there had been contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda, they could find no evidence of actual cooperation.²⁷

The commission said that Osama bin Laden had explored possible cooperation with Iraq while in Sudan through 1996, but Iraq apparently never responded. There were also contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda after bin Laden went to Afghanistan in 1996, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.²⁸ It also stated that while Osama bin Laden had made a request to establish training camps in Iraq and had asked for help in obtaining weapons, Iraq ignored these requests. And a meeting alleged to have taken place in Prague between Mohamed Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers, and a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack never took place.²⁹

This alleged meeting had been used by the administration as clear evidence of cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaeda and to show that Saddam was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks, an impression that the administration went out of its way to create.³⁰ Cheney and other administration officials often asserted that there were extensive ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, saying the evidence of a link was overwhelming. The public came to believe this as polls showed that almost half of the public thought that clear evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaeda has been found. ³¹ Even after this report debunked such a myth President Bush continued to insist that the existence of numerous contacts between Saddam and al-Qaeda showed that Saddam was a threat to the United States.³²

In a speech to the UN in September 2004 Bush defended the invasion of Iraq and rebutted the assertion by Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the war violated international law because it lacked UN authority. Bush argued that the U.S. and its allies were enforcing a Security Council resolution threatening serious consequences if Saddam did not disarm, disclose Iraq’s banned weapons, and permit inspectors to roam the country. The Security Council promised serious consequences for his defiance, Bush said, and the commitments we make must have meaning. However, Saddam had allowed weapons inspectors more access to the country before the invasion and they could find no weapons of mass destruction, and we later knew that Saddam had nothing to disclose or disarm. Apparently the president did not see the contradictions in his own statements.³³

Thus every major claim made to justify the invasion including the existence of weapons of mass destruction to cooperating with terrorist networks was proven to be wrong. None of these revelations seemed to faze the administration as Bush continued to maintain that he did the right thing in invading Iraq and that freeing Iraq from Saddam’s brutal tyranny was a noble cause in itself no matter what the casualties. Whether or not Saddam was an imminent threat to us made no difference as the U.S. was justified to invade the country under any circumstances. The Bush administration used so many rationales for the war that it became almost impossible to keep up with them. As one rationale became discredited they came up with another one and seemed to have an endless series of rationalizations.³⁴

CONSEQUENCES

The war against Iraq was not a preemptive war based on incontrovertible evidence that an attack of some kind was imminent. The truth is that there was nothing Saddam or anyone else could have done to stop the invasion.³⁵ We were going to war with Iraq come hell or high water. The result was we invaded a country that had not done us any harm, that was boxed in by no-fly zones and economic sanctions, and that posed no threat to this country. These are not the values of the country I grew up in and served for four years of my life. We do not attack people for no good reason; just to change the world more to our likeness. We are not called to rid the world of all the bad guys and play Texas Ranger all over the globe.³⁶

There was no moral justification for this war on any grounds. The war was illegal from an international perspective and absolutely had no legitimacy. The war violated Resolution 1441 adopted by the UN Security Council in November 2002, and thus we went to war outside the framework of international law and became a law unto ourselves. Under this resolution the UN reserved for itself the right to make a decision whether Iraq was or was not in compliance with its obligations. This was not a decision for the United States or any other country to make. Thus we tried to obtain a second resolution declaring Iraq was in violation of the resolution and authorizing the use of force to obtain compliance. When it became apparent that this was not going to happen, we acted as if a second resolution was of no importance.³⁷

The war also violated the United Nations Charter which obligated member states to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. There was only one exception to this rule: that force could be employed in self or collective defense against an armed attack.³⁸ Thus it seems clear that Bush’s real justification for invading Iraq was not a commitment to uphold international law and in going to the UN he was not acting in good faith. Bush took his case to the UN hoping the decision would go his way thus giving him some cover from criticism, but he had already decided to invade no matter what the UN said or did.

As for legitimacy, Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson writing in Foreign Affairs argued that Bush doctrine of preventive war, which was misnamed the strategy of preemption, replaced the doctrines of containment and deterrence that had governed our relations with the Soviet Union for many years and called into question all four of the pillars that supported U.S. legitimacy after the Second World War. These four pillars were (1) commitment to international law, (2) acceptance of consensual decision making, (3) reputation for moderation, and (4) identification with the preservation of peace. According to the authors, the Bush doctrine was severely wanting in all four of these elements.³⁹

Even if weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, a preemptive strike would not have been justified because the possession of such weapons is not proof of an impending attack. As for deposing of a tyrant and freeing the Iraq people from the yoke of Saddam’s reign, what this means is that the United States on its own can decide to invade any nation that fails some kind of democratic litmus test and force regime change. The fact of the matter was that the Bush administration did not care about international law or legitimacy at the international level because it was so certain about its moral cause that none of this mattered. As a result the United States was perceived as a rouge and lawless nation feared by the rest of the world. It could attack where and when it pleased for any reason it deemed legitimate.

If we needed to pick a fight with someone to show our resolve why not North Korea, as there was ample reason even at that time to believe that the county was actually developing nuclear weapons along with the missile capability to deliver those weapons to other countries like the United States where it perceives a threat to its existence. North Korea now actually has nuclear weapons and a missile delivery system that is a threat to the United States, and if we had invaded them rather that Iraq this capability might have been destroyed. We opened the door to preemptive strikes, and if North Korea should ever launch a missile in our direction we have no moral grounds to criticize such an action. Perception of a threat that justifies a preemptive strike is obviously in the eye of the beholder. The invasion of Iraq gives North Korea plenty of reason to think we may invade them for purposes of regime change.

Our actions with respect to Iraq made a rethinking of the traditional approach to war and respect for the sovereignty of nations imperative. The new world of terrorism may require a preemptive strike in certain circumstances to protect American citizens from experiencing another 9/11 attack. Bush had a point. Perhaps the old doctrines of containment and deterrence do not work against terrorism and we need to take the fight to the enemy under certain conditions to confront the worst threats before they emerge. A statement appearing in a document called The National Security Strategy of the United States of America issued by the White House in September 2002 makes the following case for a preemptive strike.

…the United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. The inability to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today’s threats, and the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries’ choice of weapons do not permit that option. We cannot let our enemies strike first.⁴⁰

This idea of preemption needs extensive discussion in the world community as to the conditions under which such a strike is morally justified as it is a radical departure from the traditional approach to war and respect for the sovereignty of nations. Bush had an opportunity to lead the world in this discussion but instead chose to act unilaterally and assume this action was justified. But what constitutes a threat that justifies a preemptive strike? What standards of intelligence should apply? It would seem that the beyond a reasonable doubt standard of our court system would be a good candidate. And most important of all is who makes this kind of decision, the leader of a country that perceives a threat or some international body acting on behalf of the world as a whole? An extensive discussion of these issues has not as yet taken place by the United States or any other country to my knowledge.⁴¹

Certainly Saddam was a brutal dictator who at times made war on his own people as Bush pointed out on several occasions. But who decides what dictators among the many in the world deserve to be replaced? At best the Iraqi war can only be seen as a preventive war and this is much more problematical than a preemptive war where a threat actually exists. Many countries such as North Korea and Iran have the capability of developing weapons of mass destruction, some with much more capability than Saddam had at the point of invasion. How do we decide which ones are justified to invade to destroy this capability? Do we rely solely on the president’s instincts and a belief that he or she was called for this task? Is this a sound basis for foreign policy?

The Bush administration had a grand vision regarding the outcome of the war in Iraq, one in which the consequences were a win-win situation for virtually everyone involved. The threat that Saddam supposedly posed to the United States would be removed and Bush would receive accolades for having taken this bold step against a brutal dictator. The Iraqi people would be freed from his rule and would quickly establish a democracy in which freedom for all the people of Iraq would prevail. The oil fields in Iraq would be modernized so that more oil could be produced to reduce our dependence on Saudi Arabia for the cheap oil we needed to keep our economy and way of life going. And Bush’s friends in corporate America would be rewarded with lucrative contracts to rebuild the country and so would be additionally motivated to contribute even more money to his campaign to keep the Bush administration in power. This was a rosy scenario that had no basis in reality. As one author noted:

The policy makers in the Bush administration also grandly assumed and asserted that U.S. soldiers would be greeted by the Iraqi masses with flowers as conquering heroes; that after short, low-intensity occupation of three months or so, democracy would flourish; that deep-seated historical antagonisms among Shiites, Baathists, and Kurds would not create power conflict; that Iraqi oil production would be dramatically boosted from 3 million barrels a day to 6 million; that the invasion would create a reverse domino effect in which one autocratic regime after another in Iraq, Libya, and Iran would fall, paving the way for a new democratic Middle East.⁴²

The Bush administration did little or no planning for what would happen after the country was conquered assuming that the Iraqis and certain exiles that would return would take over the country and govern it effectively after Saddam was removed from power. Bush did not listen to the advice of his secretary of state who warned that after the invasion we would own the country and be responsible for putting it back together. Our priorities were to win the war as quickly as possible and let the rebuilding of the country begin. But what happened was that the country was thrown into something of a civil war over who should govern the country and what kind of society should Iraq become. An insurgency developed that kept this conflict going for several years and cost almost 4,000 American lives to say nothing of the thousands of Iraqi lives that were lost as a result.⁴³

Far from reducing the threat of terrorism the invasion of Iraq only increased the threat as Iraq became a hotbed of terrorism. A report released by the National Intelligence Council in January 2005 stated that before the invasion Saddam had only circumstantial ties with several members of al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden rejected the notion of forming some kind of alliance with Saddam because Saddam rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular government.⁴⁴ But after Saddam was overthrown and instability increased, hundreds of foreign terrorists flooded into the country across its unguarded borders. They were able to utilize tons of weapons in unprotected caches that they used against the U.S. military and Iraqis themselves. These foreign terrorists formed tactical, ever-changing alliances with former Baathists who were removed from power in Iraq and with other insurgents. The conflict with Iraq that the U.S. started only deepened solidarity among Muslims and helped spread radical Islamic ideology throughout the country and the region resulting in the creation of other radical groups like ISIS that for a while spread in the northern region of Iraq like wildfire. Instead of spreading democracy throughout the region the war spread terrorism instead.⁴⁵

In the 1991 Gulf War there were those who wanted our troops to push on to Baghdad and force a regime change at that point. But George H.W. Bush’s then secretary of defense said, Once You’ve got Baghdad, it’s not clear what you would do with it. It’s not clear what kind of government you would put in…How much credibility is the government going to have if it’s set up by the United States military…To have American military forces engaged in a civil war inside Iraq would fit the definition of Quagmire, and we have absolutely no desire to get bogged down in that fashion. These were the words of a younger and seemingly wiser Dick Cheney.⁴⁶ Bush senior himself said in defense of his decision not to advance to Baghdad:

Trying to eliminate Saddam…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs…We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and in effect, rule Iraq…There was no visible exit strategy we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish.⁴⁷

Would that George W. Bush, his son, had listened to his earthly father rather than some supernatural being that he used to justify his grand vision for the Middle East. But Bush and his sidekick Cheney had created a reality in their own minds that proved to be wrong on all counts.⁴⁸ They firmly believed, despite the lack of credible evidence, that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction which would be found after we had access to the country, and that he had ties to al Qaeda that would also be discovered. They choose to ignore the history of the Shiites and Sunnis and believed that they would work together to form a government soon after Saddam was deposed and sold all this fiction to Congress and the American public.