urged this country to take up "the burden of leadership." For many, the reference was
clear:
Take up the White Man's burden-- Ye dare not stoop to less Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness,
had written Rudyard Kipling in 1899 as part of a British campaign to convince the United
States to set up a colonial administration in the Phillipines. (As the Omaha World Herald
had noted in that far-off time, "In other words, Mr. Kipling would have Uncle Sam take
up John Bull's business." The racist jingo doggerel of imperialism caught Bush's mood
precisely.
After the war, it would be shown that the US bombers had concentrated their fire on the
civilian infrastructure of Iraq, choosing targets of no immediate military relevance. The
bombing was concentrated on systems providing potable water to cities, electrical
generating facilities, bridges, highways, and other transportation infrastructure. This was
cynically called the "bomb now, die later" strategy, since the goal of the bombing was to
destroy civilian infrastructure in order to lower the relative potential population density of
the country below the level of the Iraqi population, thus producing an astronomical rise in
infant mortality, plagues, and pestilence. It was, in short, a population war. It was a
cowardly, despicable way to fight.
Bush had ordered all this, but he lied compulsively about it. After 3 weeks of bombing,
he told a press conference that his bombers were going to "unprecedented lengths to
avoid damage to civlians and holy places. We do not seek Iraq's destruction, nor do we
seek to punish the Iraqi people for the decisions and policies of their leaders. In addition,
we are doing everything possible and with great success to minimize collateral
damage...." [fn 85] The air war was designed to gut the economic infrastructure of Iraq;
an additional objective was to kill at least 100,000 members of the Iraqi armed forces.
This could only be accomplished by storming the Iraqi positions of the ground, and this is
what Bush was determined to do. Published accounts suggested that the original
executive order that started the war also contained instructions for a land battle to follow
extensive bombing. This meant that all peace feelers must be vigorously rebuffed, on the
model of what Acheson and Stimson had done to Japan during July of 1945.
In those days, anti-war protesters had camped out in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania
Avenue from the White House. They had been there since December 13. Bush had
referred once to "those damned drums" and how they were keeping him awake at night.
At his press conference of February 6, Bush told reporters that the drummers had been
removed, not because he had ordered it, but because they were disturbing the guests at
the posh Hay-Adams Hotel on the other side of the park. There was a law on decibels, he
explained:
And lo, people went forth with decibel count auditors. And they found the man got up to
- this drummer, incessant drummers, got over 60, and they were moved out of there, and I