Gulf War II: The Vengeance will appear often on this list of the twenty worst Bush moments. And it appropriately makes its debut here, with the Congressional resolution that spawned it. Not just because the vote on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 was a travesty — though it was most certainly that. No, because the vote was everything wrong with the way the Bush Administration operated.
An administration looking to depoliticize international affairs would schedule a vote on going to war for sometime distant from an election. President George H.W. Bush did just this in 1991, waiting until January to put forward the AUMF for the first Gulf War. We were gearing up for war against Iraq, of course, before the vote. But Bush pere waited through an election and for a new Congress to be seated before going to get authorization. He did so for a variety of reasons, but he did so in part so that members of Congress would not be pressured to vote one way or another based on their fears of getting re-elected. Had he been more concerned with politics, he could have put forward the resolution in, say, October of an election year. Which was exactly what his son would do in 2002.
It is hard to remember now, but 2002 was a different political world than 2009 is. George W. Bush was popular and trusted — it’s crazy, I know, but we were but a year removed from September 11 and people wanted to believe we had a decent leader. Bush leveraged that to get his Iraq resolution before the mid-terms, cynically calculating that he could pressure Democrats into supporting the measure, for fear of being branded weak on terror. And of course, many Democrats caved exactly as Bush expected, including a junior senator from New York who would come to rue the decision six years later. Of the Senators seeking re-election in 2002, only one — Paul Wellstone, bless his soul — voted against it.
Wellstone gave that speech knowing it could cost him the election; it wouldn’t have, but it could have. No other Democrat was as brave. 20 other Democrats, one Republican, and one independent did join with Wellstone, but none was up for re-election that year.
29 Democrats joined 48 Republicans in voting for it.
The AUMF was a failure of Bush, of course — he used political fears to boost his support artificially, part of his broader strategy of using the War on Terror as a political cudgel. It was also a failure of the opposition, one of many. Given the opportunity to ask hard questions, to push for real information, to serve as an opposition — given that chance, the Democrats caved. It was a bad moment for Bush. It was a far worse one for the country.
