Destiny and Power by Jon Meacham

Author:Jon Meacham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

The last two sentences of Bush’s remarks endure in popular memory. Revealing, too, were his parting words: “I’ve got to go. I have to go to work. I’ve got to go to work.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

No Blood for Oil

I can’t see how we can get out of it without punishing Iraq.

—GEORGE H. W. BUSH

AFTER SPEAKING WITH THE PRESS, Bush walked into the West Wing to prepare for a five P.M. National Security Council meeting. His own men had been surprised by the certitude of their chief’s words on the South Lawn. They had not been privy to his musings on Marine One; no one except Bush himself quite understood the thinking that had led him to his resolution.

“How’d I do?” Bush asked Quayle and Scowcroft, who were with him in the Oval Office before the NSC meeting. His lieutenants praised him. Then Scowcroft asked the question on everyone’s mind: “Where’d you get that ‘This will not stand’?”

“That’s mine….That’s what I feel.”

In the world outside the White House walls, “This will not stand” was being played on CNN and parsed around the globe. “It was a very, very definitive line,” Quayle recalled. The president’s statement, Quayle added, had “caught everybody off guard a little bit because it was so definite and so dramatic.”

Colin Powell, who had been watching Bush’s arrival at the White House from home before leaving for the National Security Council session, sat straight up when he heard Bush’s declaration. “I just got a new mission,” Powell thought.

—

Half a world away, on Monday, August 6, 1990, Dick Cheney paid his call on King Fahd, who, as arranged, invited the offered U.S. forces and aircraft to Saudi Arabian soil. “Dick, you are authorized to go ahead and execute,” Bush told the secretary of defense by telephone.

It was a momentous hour. “I feel great pressure, but I also feel a certain calmness when we talk about these matters,” Bush told his diary on Monday, August 6. “I know I am doing the right thing. I know that the United States not only has to take a stand, but has to lead the rest of the world.” The same day brought Saddam’s first direct words to the United States since the invasion. The American embassy in Baghdad cabled Saddam’s threats back to Washington. “Convey to President Bush,” Saddam said, “that he should regard the Kuwaiti Emir and Crown Prince as history….We will never leave Kuwait for someone else to take….We would fight on….We will never capitulate.”

Watching Bush from London and taking in “This will not stand” and the permission to deploy to Saudi Arabia, Margaret Thatcher was impressed.

“Thanks for your leadership,” Bush said to Thatcher at the end of a call on Thursday, August 9.

“It was your leadership,” Thatcher replied. “I was just a chum.”

Brian Mulroney of Canada came down to dine at the White House with the president. Bush, who enjoyed Mulroney’s company, overindulged, drinking two martinis and a big dinner with four popovers. “I pay the price at night,” Bush told his diary. “The gut [is] ripped up.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.