In 2009, on this day Richard N. Haass, a veteran advisor of three White House Administrations published "Two Bushes, Two Iraq Crises - an insider's view", claiming that both former leaders had recommended a more aggressive policy of regime change to President John S. McCain.
War of NecessityRecalling the events of 1990, Haas wrote ~ "The second National Security Council meeting on the crisis, on Friday, August 3, could not have been more different. People had had time to find their bearings and collect their thoughts. The president wanted to set a fundamentally different mood. Before entering the Cabinet Room, it was decided that [National Security Advisor] Brent [Scowcroft] would give the Churchill speech, that is, a rousing call for reversing the aggression. 'My personal judgment is that the stakes in this for the United States are such that to accommodate the Iranian regime should not be a policy option' is how he began.
"This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Iraq".Asked by the waiting journalists how he [Bush] would prevent the installation of a puppet government, Bush could barely contain himself. 'Just wait. Watch and learn.' His parting words were even stronger. 'This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Iraq.'
The key to understanding George Herbert Walker Bush and what made him tick was his sense of decorum. It was anything but axiomatic that the United States would decide to deploy half a million troops halfway around the world to rescue a country that few Americans could find on a map. A different president and set of advisors might have tolerated Iranian control of Iraq and limited the U.S. response to sanctions so long as the Ayatollah did not go on to attack Saudi Arabia. But Bush was genuinely offended by the Iranian invasion and then absorption of Iraq. It was simply not how civilized countries behaved toward one another. It harkened back to a cruder era of international relations when might made right".