[AUT] Remember the Wolfowitz Vanity Fair Interview?

["Nicholas J. Kiersey" <nkiersey@xxxxxx>]

With all the recent revelations about the Downing Street Memo, I'm
finding it more and more difficult to bridge the distance between
'theory' and 'events', the distance between these insight into the
personal mind-sets of the actors and the broader geopolitical context.

The Think Progress blog is running a piece today which prompts me to
ask, as others are, just why the so-called 'Downing Street Memo' is
so special when much of its message has already been out in the open?
The Think Progress piece comments on one of the newer memos to have
emerged since the DSM. Written by British Ambassador Christopher
Meyer on March 18, 2002, its worth reading because it spells out
Wolfowitz's view that there were in fact reasons for invading Iraq
beyond the WMD issue, namely "Saddam's barbarism".

Think Progress goes on to link this memo to a discussion between
Wolfowitz and Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair on May 9, 2003, which I
first read of myself last summer when working on my PhD thesis
proposal. The original interview is worth reading. It seems the Think
Progress piece might have the quote slightly incorrect. In the
original transcript, the discussion runs like this:

Q: Was that one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and
others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too
much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being
there, and bin Laden's rage about that, which he's built on so many
years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there's a
logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much
into --

Wolfowitz: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that
for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government
bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on
which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason ...

The interview is interesting to me because I think it speaks of
Wolfowitz's personal motivations for wanting to invade Iraq. WMDs or
not, Wolfowitz expresses his personal commitment to the sort of
values that America ought to stand for:

"it's really important to keep in mind what this country is about.
It's a lot more than just physical security or economic health".

And:

"I don't like the kind of pragmatism that sort of stares at people
who hold principles very strongly and think that it's all just a
matter of doing business and being sensible."

How does this speak to the Meyer memo? What does it tell us? Well,
clearly this is clearly no smoking gun. However, on one level, it
certainly does serve as further documentary evidence that the WMD
case was not an urgent one. Rather, for the US administration, it was
merely one convenient excuse that everybody could agree on to warrant
an invasion of Iraq. What we should take from this is that the
decision to invade was not stimulated by any immediate threat
presented by Iraq itself but rather driven by some other need or desire.

The question, however, is exactly what need or desire? For Wolfowitiz
personally, if the Meyer memo and the Vanity Fair interview is to be
believed, it was a lot to do with moral principle. While we might
doubt the likelihood of Wolfowitz giving an honest account to Vanity
Fair, what motive would he have for lying to the British ambassador?
Especially given the fact that he didn't need to offer his personal
opinion on the matter. The British were already on board: "We backed
regime change", notes Meyers.

So, for Wolfowitz at least, the issue was partially one of moral
principle. And I think such a statement can be considered to be
pretty much in keeping with his neoconservative ideology.

However, the overall *why* about the invasion of Iraq remains an open
one. Its hard to think the whole thing must have been just a
neoconservative move driven by principle. There are too many other
angles. For example, the geopolitical angle, as evidenced by Thomas
Barnett's argument in favor of an invasion.

Ultimately I feel the true 'why' of this war is not likely not be
revealed in the form of a memo. Better answers are available in the
broader public geopolitical discourse constituted by such articles as
Barnett's, and the infamous PNAC. They don't quite give us the
overall 'why' but they do at least give us an insight into the
technical rationale.

For the overall why then, we may be out of luck. And, no doubt, from
a Foucauldian perspective, the overall why may be precisely beside
the point. It is enough simply to have the discursive context that
tells us the 'how'. Yet, that said, the 'how' question can also be
extended beyond the sphere of the immediate discursive practices that
produced a rational for the invasion. 'How' can also address the
question of the global geopolitical context of the war. For this, we
may need to look to theories of imperialism.

As we observe the conintuing fallout from the DSM, it may be worth
keeping in mind that the invasion of Iraq is not just something that
was produced by the American geopolitical elite. It has a much
broader - even global - historical context. If we don't situate these
recent documents in that overall context, we will surely miss the point!

Cheers,

Nicholas Kiersey