Andrew Card looked on as the president announced his resignation as chief of staff. Card was the point person for selling the Iraq war during his tenure.
(MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images/File 2006)
VIJAY PRASHAD
A sheepskin of dishonor
IN APRIL, the student senate at the University of Massachusetts at Boston voted to revoke the honorary degree awarded to President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in 1986. That year, Mugabe's reputation was at a high point, as the long, drawn-out war of liberation he led finally resulted in independence for his country.
At the UMass-Amherst ceremony, Nelson Mandela's daughter, Makaziwe, put the hood over Mugabe's head. The future had promise.
It turns out that Mugabe's regime squandered those hopes and it now rules over a people discomforted by their lack of political rights and socio-economic well-being. Mugabe does not care whether he gets to keep the degree just as long as he can remain in power.
While this discussion continued at the level of student government, the UMass administration decided to grant an honorary degree to Andrew Card. Card is no stranger to the Bay State. A native of Holbrook, Card attended the Kennedy School of Government and was a member of the the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
Those experiences prepared him well for his career in the White House of the two Bush presidents. Most recently, Card was chief of staff for the second President Bush, distinguishing himself as the point person for the selling of the Iraq war and for arm-twisting Attorney General John Ashcroft to renew the NSA surveillance program.
When Mugabe got his degree, his history was relatively unblemished. It was in 1987, after he had his degree from UMass, that he began to dismantle the political checks against his authority (that year he abolished the post of prime minister and became the executive president, his current title). The rot set in when Mugabe had his degree in hand.
Card comes blemished. He helped orchestrate the rush to war with Iraq in 2002-2003. He set up the White House Iraq Group in August 2002, but did not go public because, as he put it, "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."
For Card, his job was to sell the war to the American people, who, in August 2002, had no appetite for a war of choice against an adversary that had already been neutralized. In January 2003, as part of his job to sell the war, Card told then Fox News commentator Tony Snow, "I think the Iraqi people would welcome freedom with jubilation."
The White House Iraq Group did not bother with the dry facts and analysis of the National Intelligence Estimate. As the
The costs of these blemishes are untold.
Unlike Mugabe, Card seems to want this degree. He took the unusual action of calling up a UMass-Amherst faculty member who opposed him; he spoke to her for close to an hour. During that conversation, and in an interview with the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Card repeatedly said that those people who spoke against him did not know him personally.
"Do your homework," he told the Gazette.
No one should criticize him without talking to him. But his actions as a public servant are part of the public record. What is being criticized is not his sense of himself, or his integrity, but the nature of his actions -- that he was a crucial participant in what might as well be called a conspiracy to take the United States to war without pretext.
The UMass board of trustees can easily say that it did not know what Mugabe would become in the years after 1986. But it cannot say the same of Card.
His legacy, despite what he does from now on, will also be that he played a central role in selling a war that was never necessary. The honorary degree to him tomorrow will tell college students across the country that lies earn them laurels, and that the stubborn adherence to truth is a quaint anachronism.
Vijay Prashad, who lives in Northampton, is director of the International Studies Program at Trinity College. 
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
