Would it be fair to ask Scott Walker whether, knowing what we know today, he would have ordered the invasion of Iraq? Of course it would. Walker could point out that he was the County Executive of Milwaukee at the time — ordering war in Iraq was not in his portfolio — but that now, in retrospect, knowing there were no weapons of mass destruction, he would not have authorized the invasion. End of story.
The same for Rand Paul, who was an ophthalmologist in Bowling Green, Ky.; for Marco Rubio, who was a member of the Florida House of Representatives; for Mike Huckabee, who was the governor of Arkansas; and so on through the Republican 2016 field.
But the question is different for Jeb Bush. Not because he played a role in starting the war — he was the governor of Florida — but because the most fundamental question many voters have about him is: If elected president, how would you be different from your brother? Bush has suggested he would be quite different — why else would he say “I am my own man” so often — but the full answer to that question includes foreign policy, and that includes Iraq. Bush is in a unique position when it comes to Iraq, and there’s no getting around it.
Bush’s two attempts to answer the question will not put an end to anything. On Fox News’ “The Kelly File,” Bush said he would have authorized the invasion, an answer he later disavowed by saying “I interpreted the question wrong, I guess.” Then, in an interview with Sean Hannity, Bush gave a new, more considered, response: “I don’t know what that decision would have been — that’s a hypothetical.”
It would be very difficult for Bush to say that in retrospect he would not have ordered the invasion that his brother ordered. That would come very close to saying the war was a mistake, one that involved the deaths of 4,490 U.S. servicemen and women and the wounding of more than 30,000 others. Calling the war a mistake is a very, very difficult proposition to accept.
But that is the view of a majority of the voting public. For years now, Gallup has asked this question: “In view of the developments since we first sent our troops to Iraq, do you think the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, or not?” In Gallup’s most recent asking, in June 2014, 57 percent said yes, the Iraq war was a mistake, while 39 percent said it wasn’t. The “mistake” number has been over 50 percent for years.
George W. Bush has publicly grappled with the consequences of his order to go to war. But he has never, and likely will never, said the war was a mistake or the wrong thing to do, or that he would not have ordered the invasion knowing what he knows today.
On the other hand, in his memoir, the former president has admitted, “The reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false.” He has said that discovering the intelligence was false gave him “a sickening feeling every time I thought about it” — a feeling he still has today.
George W. Bush, who has taken part in countless events, public and private, for veterans, has also not tried to insulate himself from the suffering that resulted from the war. In her new book, former White House press secretary Dana Perino describes a 2005 visit to Walter Reed Hospital in which Bush met with grievously wounded servicemen and their families. Most expressed support for the war. But not all. “There were exceptions,” Perino writes:
One mom and dad of a dying soldier from the Caribbean were devastated, the mom beside herself with grief. She yelled at the president, wanting to know why it was her child and not his who lay in that hospital bed.
Her husband tried to calm her and I noticed the president wasn’t in a hurry to leave — he tried offering comfort but then just stood and took it, like he expected and needed to hear the anguish, to try to soak up some of her suffering if he could.
Later as we rode back on Marine One to the White House, no one spoke.
But as the helicopter took off, the president looked at me and said, “That mama sure was mad at me.” Then he turned to look out the window of the helicopter. “And I don’t blame her a bit.”
One tear slipped out the side of his eye and down his face. He didn’t wipe it away, and we flew back to the White House.
The war has had a hard legacy. Jeb Bush didn’t start it. But voters, especially the great majority who disapproved of the job George W. Bush was doing in his final White House years, legitimately want to know how a President Jeb Bush will be a different president from his brother. That includes answering the Iraq question — over and over.
