Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
calculation" -by actually using
a weapon of mass destruction
(WMD) against America or
its allies. .
Behind Bush's threats against
Iraq-and his vigorous waging
of the war on terrorism-is a .
broader agenda, say his closest
advisers. And that is nothing
less than the reassertion of
American power in the worldby
a greater willingness to use
force, with or without the support
of allies, even at the cost of
American casualties. Some of
Bush's top advisers believe that
after the Vietnam War, the pendulum
swung too far in the direction
of midtiiateralism and
anti-interventionism. Now they
are trying to shove it back.
This has come as something
of a surprise from a president
who, as a 'candidate, promised
to be strong yet "humble" in
the pursuit Of American interests
abroad. Especially since
9-11, Bush has shown unapologetic
leadership. "I don'tcare about the
polls;' the president tells advisers. (Easier
to say, concedes one, when the approval
rating is more than 80 percent.) But in
Iraq, at least, there is a real risk that the
president will overreach. Overthrowing
Saddam could transform the Middle East,
secure American interests, even give a lift
to, the bogged-down Israeli-Palestinian
peace process. But it could also lead to a
cataclysm of unforeseen dimensions.
'The chief proponents of this new assertiveness,
Vice President Dick Cheney
and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
have been waiting for their chance for a
long time. More than 25 years ago, when
Cheney and Rumsfeld were bright young
men in the Gerald Ford administration
(Cheney as Ford's crief of staff, Rumsfeld
in the same job he has today), the "imperial
presidency" was in retreat. Vietnam and
Watergate had given a bad name to executive
power. Congress and the press were in
the ascendancy. Scandals and the blame
game became the daily routine of government.
At the Pentagon and the CIA, once
bastions of gung-ho, can-do spirit, the bureaucracy
congealed, slowed, grew riskaverse.
Rumsfeld and Cheney came to believe
that in the eyes of the world, America
had become a paper tiger-formidable-
looking, but too often ponderous and gunshy.
More than a year ago, when he was first
chosen to be secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld
told Bush that a crisis was sure to
come, and that the new. president would
have to be willing to "lean forward"-to
show the world that America would no
langerback down. Bush heartily agreed,
Rumsfeld recounted to NEWSWEEK in an
interview last month. That crisis arrived
with a vengeance on September Il.
These days, the damn-the-torpedoes
mood at the top levels of the Bush adminis-
tration seems right out of the 1950s. In his
warning to the president, Rumsfeld's choice
of words was revealing of thetime warp.
"Forward leaning" is an old cold-war euphemism;
CIA officials in the late '50s and
early '60s were instructed to "lean forwarp"
in their "action memos" to higher-ups. After
a long period of self-doubt and decline, the
CIA is now urgently gearing up to run
covert actions-shades of the agency's plots
to overthrow the governments of Iran
(1953) and Guatemala (1954). "Psychological
warfare," all the rage in the early years of
NEWSWEEK MARCH 4, 2002
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