3 Strategic Fallacies of the Bush Admini stration

“It has become glaringly obvious that Bush simply isn't up to the job.


"It is Worse than a Crime; It is a Mistake" The Three Strategic Fallacies of the Bush Administration

By Michael Lind
Whitehead Senior Fellow,
Program Director American Strategy Project

New America Foundation
March 13, 2003

The United States is now more isolated from its major allies and more internally divided over foreign policy than at any time since 1945. The strategy of the Bush administration-and not merely its style-is to blame.

The grand strategy of the Bush administration rests on three axioms: American global hegemony; preventive war; and the so-called “war on terror.” All three axioms are fallacies that inevitably produce counterproductive and misguided policies. What the great French diplomat Talleyrand said of Napoleon’s execution of the Duc d’Enghien applies with equal force to Bush’s grand strategy: “It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake.”

American Global Hegemony. George W. Bush has adopted, as official U.S. policy, the grand strategy of unilateral American global hegemony or domination devised by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and other leading “neoconservatives” during the 1990s. The hegemonic strategy requires the conversion of America’s temporary Cold War alliance system in Europe and East Asia into permanent American military supremacy within those regions, reinforced by American military domination of the Middle East.

As a vision for American national security, global hegemony is profoundly flawed. According to theorists of hegemony like Paul Wolfowitz, the U.S. should indefinitely dominate Europe and East Asia, in order to prevent Germany, Japan, France, and other allies from developing the capability to defend themselves independently of the U.S. This policy naively assumes that America’s former Cold War allies will indefinitely tolerate the use of their countries as launching-pads for actions in the Middle East and elsewhere of which they disapprove. Equally naïve is the assumption that other major countries will defer to the U.S. in security matters-as the opposition of every significant great power except Britain to America’s Iraq policy has now proven.

Preventive War. The Bush administration has announced that it reserves the right to invade countries and topple regimes that pose speculative-not imminent-threats to the United States. This repudiates centuries of international diplomatic and legal custom, which permit countries to pre-emptively defend themselves against imminent attacks, but not to attack other countries merely on the chance that they might be threats in the future.

It is not clear whether the Bush administration regards preventive war as a prerogative of the United States alone, or as a newly recognized right of all countries. If the former is the case, then the U.S. is claiming that it is exempt from the rules that govern other nations. If the latter is the case, then Pakistan could wage a preventive war against India today, on the grounds that India might be a greater threat in a decade or two. The distinction between wars of defense and aggression would collapse entirely, if the United States, alone or along with all other nations, had the right to wage war on the basis of speculative future threats. And it is deeply troubling that the Bush administration has now adopted, as its own strategy, a “Pearl Harbor” strategy for which Japanese war criminals were hanged by the U.S. after World War II.

“The War on Terror.” The conceptual confusion of the Bush administration is at its worst and most dangerous in its approach to terrorism. This administration has used the vague term “the war on terror” to treat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to “rogue states” like Iraq and North Korea and anti-American terrorism by non-state groups like al-Qaeda as one phenomenon instead of two. The argument that states might give terrorists weapons of mass destruction remains tenuous, despite many attempts by the Bush administration to connect Iraq and al-Qaeda.

In addition to lumping together a variety of anti-American states with different goals and capabilities, the Bush administration has used the trite phrase “the war on terror” to obscure the differences between al-Qaeda, a transnational Muslim terrorist group with members from many nations that targets the United States and Western European countries, and Hamas and Hezbollah, militant groups targeting Israel. If Hamas and Hezbollah are treated as America’s enemies, even though their quarrel is not with the United States, why aren’t the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Basque terrorists in Spain, Chechen terrorists in Russia and Tamil terrorists in Sri Lanka part of America’s “war on terror,” too?

The phrase “war on terror” produces a confusion of methods, as well as of alleged enemies. With the exception of the war to overthrow the Taliban regime that sheltered al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, most of the successes in the campaign against al-Qaeda have been the result of international police and intelligence efforts, not unilateral U.S. military action.

Beyond Bush’s Blunders. The strategic fallacies of the Bush administration need to be replaced by strategic common sense. The United States can begin to recover from the self-inflicted disaster of the Bush administration by replacing the misguided policies of hegemony and preventive war, and ill-conceived rhetoric about the “war on terror” with sound policies based on sober analysis of America’s national interest.

Repudiating the aberrant Wolfowitz-Bush Doctrine of quasi-imperial global hegemony, the United States should return to its post-1945 policy of leading consensual great-power alliances (not rag-tag collections of bribed and dependent satellite states) against genuine common threats. Repudiating the idea of preventive war, which undermines the very distinction between war and peace in the global state system, the United States should reassert the distinction it has long drawn between wars of defense and wars of aggression, while reserving the right for pre-emptive wars to forestall imminent attacks on the U.S. or its allies. Finally, the term “war on terror” should be abandoned, by policymakers and commentators alike. In the interest of moral clarity and intellectual rigor, different terms should be used for unrelated subjects, such as the campaign against al-Qaeda and the disarmament of Iraq. Then, and only then, will the United States once again have a national security strategy that protects American interests without subverting American ideals.”

“Excellent article! I don't think anyone is listening up there, though.

For anyone who might not know about the New America Foundation:

The New America Foundation is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit public policy institute that was conceived through the collaborative work of a diverse and intergenerational group of public intellectuals, civic leaders, and business executives. New America's Board of Directors is chaired by James Fallows, and Ted Halstead is the organization's founding President and CEO. Based in our nation's capital, the Foundation opened its doors in January 1999.
”

“ANALYSIS
Summit, 'Road Map,' Signal Collapse of Diplomacy

By Robin Wright, LA Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's two bold steps Friday -- announcing a last-ditch summit with Britain and Spain and pledging to release the "road map" soon for a final Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement -- effectively signal the breakdown of diplomacy on Iraq, U.S. officials and analysts say.

The summit, in the remote Azores islands, is expected to pave the way for war, because the three leaders have now concluded that they almost certainly will not be able to win sufficient backing for a United Nations resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, U.N. and U.S. officials say.

The United States, Britain and Spain will still lobby hard behind the scenes over the next 48 hours for votes, U.N. diplomats say. And inducements are clearly still being offered to key Security Council members. But the administration is increasingly likely to pull the resolution altogether rather than even go for a vote to make a point, discouraged U.S. officials said Friday.

The United States has gradually lost the psychological edge in recent days, U.N. envoys say, because of three events: France's declared intention to veto sapped the interest of small countries to stand with Washington. The Turkish parliament failed to approve access to U.S. troops for a northern front.

And Mexico and Chile have so far balked at providing the votes that might have cemented the necessary nine votes for the resolution, which could have provided grounds to squeeze veto -- holders Russia, China and even France.

Barring a last-minute turnaround at the Security Council, the Azores summit is expected to be followed quickly by a U.S. ultimatum to President Saddam Hussein to go into exile -- or face the consequences.

"We are in the end game for U.N. diplomacy," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Friday in an interview with Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular television network. "A moment of truth is coming soon, and that's what the leaders are going to meet to discuss in the Azores."

Added an envoy from a country involved in the summit, "This is the beginning of the preparations for war."

One sign of the now-imminent final decision came when the Pentagon on Friday began moving about 10 Navy ships out of the Mediterranean into the Red Sea, where they can launch missiles at Iraq without flying over Turkey.

But the bigger clue to the status of U.S. diplomatic efforts, six months after Bush's speech appealing for U.N. action to disarm Iraq, was his Rose Garden pledge Friday to jump-start peace efforts on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The administration insisted that its abrupt action was not connected to Iraq in any way but was instead produced by the confluence of three factors: Israel has formed a new government after January elections. The Palestinian Authority is soon to put in place a new prime minister, weakening the autocratic control of Yasser Arafat. And the so-called quartet -- the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia -- had in place a road map for peace. "This is not new. This has been bubbling for weeks," a senior State Department official said. "These three elements have come together, and now we can talk about them more publicly."

Yet both Republicans and Democrats, Israelis and Arabs greeted the move with cynicism. It is widely seen as a kind of diplomatic quid pro quo that will make it easier for Britain and Spain to stay on board for war by addressing a key concern of both governments and their publics.

The timing of Bush's announcement "gives the impression that it is far more related to the upcoming war with Iraq and coalition-building than with a realistic settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute," said Geoffrey Kemp, a Nixon Center fellow and Reagan administration analyst on the Middle East.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Marie Aznar have both badly needed a U.S. commitment to act on the other, older Middle East conflict before they take the last step on Iraq. But so do Arab allies and others among the two dozen nations that administration sources claim are willing to play some role in supporting a U.S.-led war to oust Saddam.

"Do they expect us to believe this is new thinking on the peace process? It's not credible. Bush did this to help the British and to indirectly recognize that world opinion believes that progress on (the) peace process is essential to get through the Iraq transition in the least violent and tumultuous way possible," said Ellen Laipson, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council and now president of the Henry L. Stimson Center.

The administration promised Friday to remain engaged, not simply make a pledge in principle. U.S. officials even offered to deal with the new Palestinian prime minister, after long shunning Arafat.

"I think there would be nothing better, at some point in time, when it is appropriate, for a Palestinian prime minister to visit the White House. But the timing will be important and we will be in touch with them about this," Rice said on Al Jazeera.

But some experts were skeptical about the administration's sincerity.

"I'm not convinced the president does believe this is the right moment to increase momentum behind a new Palestinian state. Behind closed doors, there are also some in this administration who would like to take the road map and the commitment to a Palestinian state off the table," Laipson added.

Analysts and interested parties also said they doubt whether the move will lead to concrete action on the conflict any time soon.

"After the collapse of the regime in Baghdad, the administration is more likely to focus on other issues, like protecting thousands of U.S. forces in the region, or it will get back to issues now on hold like the economy, North Korea and the war on terrorism," said Shibley Telhami, Brookings Institution fellow and University of Maryland professor.

The abrupt move to resurrect the peace process at this delicate juncture adds to the overall impression that diplomacy has been somewhat "piecemeal," a core problem in U.S. strategy, said Judith Kipper of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"There's a little bit here and a little bit there. Last week there was no peace process on the horizon; this week there is. Last week, there was a resolution; now it looks like there won't be one next week," she added. "No one diplomacy is failing."”

“Intelligence documents that U.S. and British governments said were strong evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons have been dismissed as forgeries by U.N. weapons inspectors.

The documents, given to International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, indicated that Iraq might have tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, but the agency said they were "obvious" fakes.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to the documents directly in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council outlining the Bush administration's case against Iraq.

"I'm sure the FBI and CIA must be mortified by this because it is extremely embarrassing to them," former CIA official Ray Close said.

Responding to questions about the documents from lawmakers, Powell said, "It was provided in good faith to the inspectors and our agency received it in good faith, not participating ... in any way in any falsification activities."

"It was the information that we had. We provided it. If that information is inaccurate, fine," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press" last Sunday.

"We don't believe that all the issues surrounding nuclear weapons have been resolved [in Iraq]," he said.

How were forgeries missed?
But the discovery raises questions such as why the apparent forgeries were given to inspectors and why U.S. and British intelligence agents did not recognize that they were not authentic.

Sources said that one of the documents was a letter discussing the uranium deal supposedly signed by Niger President Tandja Mamadou. The sources described the signature as "childlike" and said that it clearly was not Mamadou's.

Another, written on paper from a 1980s military government in Niger, bears the date of October 2000 and the signature of a man who by then had not been foreign minister of Niger in 14 years, sources said.

"The IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts that these documents -- which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger -- are not in fact authentic," ElBaradei said in his March 7 presentation to the U.N. Security Council.

Close said the CIA should have known better.

"They have tremendously sophisticated and experienced people in their technical services division, who wouldn't allow a forgery like this to get by," Close said. "I mean it's just mystifying to me. I can't understand it."

A U.S. intelligence official said that the documents were passed on to the International Atomic Energy Agency within days of being received with the comment, " 'We don't know the provenance of this information, but here it is.' "

If a mistake was made, a U.S. official suggested, it was more likely due to incompetence not malice.

"That's a convenient explanation, but it doesn't satisfy me," Close said. "Incompetence I have not seen in those agencies. I've seen plenty of malice, but I've never seen incompetence."

Who made the forgeries?
But the question remains -- who is responsible for the apparent forgeries?

Experts said the suspects include the intelligence services of Iraq's neighbors, other pro-war nations, Iraqi opposition groups or simply con men.

Most rule out the United States, Great Britain or Israel because they said those countries' intelligence services would have been able to make much more convincing forgeries if they had chosen to do so.

President Bush even highlighted the documents in his State of the Union address on January 28.

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Bush said.

U.S. officials said that the assertion by the president and British government was also based on additional evidence of Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from another African country. But officials would not say which nation and a knowledgable U.S. official said that there was not much to that evidence either. From David Ensor

(CBS) While diplomatic maneuvering continues over Turkish bases and a new United Nations resolution, inside Iraq, U.N. arms inspectors are privately complaining about the quality of U.S. intelligence and accusing the United States of sending them on wild-goose chases.

CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports the U.N. has been taking a precise inventory of Iraq's al-Samoud 2 missile arsenal, determining how many there are and where they are.

Discovering that the al-Samoud 2 has been flying too far in tests has been one of the inspectors' major successes. But the missile has only been exceeding its 93-mile limit by about 15 miles and that, the Iraqis say, is because it isn't yet loaded down with its guidance system. The al-Samoud 2 is not the 800-mile-plus range missile that Secretary of State Colin Powell insists Iraq is developing.

In fact, the U.S. claim that Iraq is developing missiles that could hit its neighbors – or U.S. troops in the region, or even Israel – is just one of the claims coming from Washington that inspectors here are finding increasingly unbelievable. The inspectors have become so frustrated trying to chase down unspecific or ambiguous U.S. leads that they've begun to express that anger privately in no uncertain terms.

U.N. sources have told CBS News that American tips have lead to one dead end after another.


Example: satellite photographs purporting to show new research buildings at Iraqi nuclear sites. When the U.N. went into the new buildings they found "nothing."


Example: Saddam's presidential palaces, where the inspectors went with specific coordinates supplied by the U.S. on where to look for incriminating evidence. Again, they found "nothing."


Example: Interviews with scientists about the aluminum tubes the U.S. says Iraq has imported for enriching uranium, but which the Iraqis say are for making rockets. Given the size and specification of the tubes, the U.N. calls the "Iraqi alibi air tight."

The inspectors do acknowledge, however, that they would not be here at all if not for the threat of U.S. military action.

So frustrated have the inspectors become that one source has referred to the U.S. intelligence they've been getting as "garbage after garbage after garbage." In fact, Phillips says the source used another cruder word. The inspectors find themselves caught between the Iraqis, who are masters at the weapons-hiding shell game, and the United States, whose intelligence they've found to be circumstantial, outdated or just plain wrong.”

“From The Atlantic


The Bubble of American Supremacy

_{A prominent financier argues that the heedless assertion of American power in the world resembles a financial bubble—and the moment of truth may be here}

by George Soros

.....


It is generally agreed that September 11, 2001, changed the course of history. But we must ask ourselves why that should be so. How could a single event, even one involving 3,000 civilian casualties, have such a far-reaching effect? The answer lies not so much in the event itself as in the way the United States, under the leadership of President George W. Bush, responded to it.

Admittedly, the terrorist attack was historic in its own right. Hijacking fully fueled airliners and using them as suicide bombs was an audacious idea, and its execution could not have been more spectacular. The destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center made a symbolic statement that reverberated around the world, and the fact that people could watch the event on their television sets endowed it with an emotional impact that no terrorist act had ever achieved before. The aim of terrorism is to terrorize, and the attack of September 11 fully accomplished this objective.

Even so, September 11 could not have changed the course of history to the extent that it has if President Bush had not responded to it the way he did. He declared war on terrorism, and under that guise implemented a radical foreign-policy agenda whose underlying principles predated the tragedy. Those principles can be summed up as follows: International relations are relations of power, not law; power prevails and law legitimizes what prevails. The United States is unquestionably the dominant power in the post-Cold War world; it is therefore in a position to impose its views, interests, and values. The world would benefit from adopting those values, because the American model has demonstrated its superiority. The Clinton and first Bush Administrations failed to use the full potential of American power. This must be corrected; the United States must find a way to assert its supremacy in the world.

This foreign policy is part of a comprehensive ideology customarily referred to as neoconservatism, though I prefer to describe it as a crude form of social Darwinism. I call it crude because it ignores the role of cooperation in the survival of the fittest, and puts all the emphasis on competition. In economic matters the competition is between firms; in international relations it is between states. In economic matters social Darwinism takes the form of market fundamentalism; in international relations it is now leading to the pursuit of American supremacy.

Not all the members of the Bush Administration subscribe to this ideology, but neoconservatives form an influential group within it. They publicly called for the invasion of Iraq as early as 1998. Their ideas originated in the Cold War and were further elaborated in the post-Cold War era. Before September 11 the ideologues were hindered in implementing their strategy by two considerations: George W. Bush did not have a clear mandate (he became President by virtue of a single vote in the Supreme Court), and America did not have a clearly defined enemy that would have justified a dramatic increase in military spending.

September 11 removed both obstacles. President Bush declared war on terrorism, and the nation lined up behind its President. Then the Bush Administration proceeded to exploit the terrorist attack for its own purposes. It fostered the fear that has gripped the country in order to keep the nation united behind the President, and it used the war on terrorism to execute an agenda of American supremacy. That is how September 11 changed the course of history.

Exploiting an event to further an agenda is not in itself reprehensible. It is the task of the President to provide leadership, and it is only natural for politicians to exploit or manipulate events so as to promote their policies. The cause for concern lies in the policies that Bush is promoting, and in the way he is going about imposing them on the United States and the world. He is leading us in a very dangerous direction.

The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognize that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. The supremacist ideology postulates that just because we are stronger than others, we know better and have right on our side. The very first sentence of the September 2002 National Security Strategy (the President's annual laying out to Congress of the country's security objectives) reads, "The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom—and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."

The assumptions behind this statement are false on two counts. First, there is no single sustainable model for national success. Second, the American model, which has indeed been successful, is not available to others, because our success depends greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist system, and we are not willing to yield it.

The Bush doctrine, first enunciated in a presidential speech at West Point in June of 2002, and incorporated into the National Security Strategy three months later, is built on two pillars: the United States will do everything in its power to maintain its unquestioned military supremacy; and the United States arrogates the right to pre-emptive action. In effect, the doctrine establishes two classes of sovereignty: the sovereignty of the United States, which takes precedence over international treaties and obligations; and the sovereignty of all other states, which is subject to the will of the United States. This is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm: all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

To be sure, the Bush doctrine is not stated so starkly; it is shrouded in doublespeak. The doublespeak is needed because of the contradiction between the Bush Administration's concept of freedom and democracy and the actual principles and requirements of freedom and democracy. Talk of spreading democracy looms large in the National Security Strategy. But when President Bush says, as he does frequently, that freedom will prevail, he means that America will prevail. In a free and open society, people are supposed to decide for themselves what they mean by freedom and democracy, and not simply follow America's lead. The contradiction is especially apparent in the case of Iraq, and the occupation of Iraq has brought the issue home. We came as liberators, bringing freedom and democracy, but that is not how we are perceived by a large part of the population.

It is ironic that the government of the most successful open society in the world should have fallen into the hands of people who ignore the first principles of open society. At home Attorney General John Ashcroft has used the war on terrorism to curtail civil liberties. Abroad the United States is trying to impose its views and interests through the use of military force. The invasion of Iraq was the first practical application of the Bush doctrine, and it has turned out to be counterproductive. A chasm has opened between America and the rest of the world.

The size of the chasm is impressive. On September 12, 2001, a special meeting of the North Atlantic Council invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty for the first time in the alliance's history, calling on all member states to treat the terrorist attack on the United States as an attack upon their own soil. The United Nations promptly endorsed punitive U.S. action against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. A little more than a year later the United States could not secure a UN resolution to endorse the invasion of Iraq. Gerhard Schröder won re-election in Germany by refusing to cooperate with the United States. In South Korea an underdog candidate was elected to the presidency because he was considered the least friendly to the United States; many South Koreans regard the United States as a greater danger to their security than North Korea. A large majority throughout the world opposed the war on Iraq.

September 11 introduced a discontinuity into American foreign policy. Violations of American standards of behavior that would have been considered objectionable in ordinary times became accepted as appropriate to the circumstances. The abnormal, the radical, and the extreme have been redefined as normal. The advocates of continuity have been pursuing a rearguard action ever since.

To explain the significance of the transition, I should like to draw on my experience in the financial markets. Stock markets often give rise to a boom-bust process, or bubble. Bubbles do not grow out of thin air. They have a basis in reality—but reality as distorted by a misconception. Under normal conditions misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble bursts.

Exactly when the boom-bust process enters far-from-equilibrium territory can be established only in retrospect. During the self-reinforcing phase participants are under the spell of the prevailing bias. Events seem to confirm their beliefs, strengthening their misconceptions. This widens the gap and sets the stage for a moment of truth and an eventual reversal. When that reversal comes, it is liable to have devastating consequences. This course of events seems to have an inexorable quality, but a boom-bust process can be aborted at any stage, and the adverse effects can be reduced or avoided altogether. Few bubbles reach the extremes of the information-technology boom that ended in 2000. The sooner the process is aborted, the better.

The quest for American supremacy qualifies as a bubble. The dominant position the United States occupies in the world is the element of reality that is being distorted. The proposition that the United States will be better off if it uses its position to impose its values and interests everywhere is the misconception. It is exactly by not abusing its power that America attained its current position.

Where are we in this boom-bust process? The deteriorating situation in Iraq is either the moment of truth or a test that, if it is successfully overcome, will only reinforce the trend.

Whatever the justification for removing Saddam Hussein, there can be no doubt that we invaded Iraq on false pretenses. Wittingly or unwittingly, President Bush deceived the American public and Congress and rode roughshod over the opinions of our allies. The gap between the Administration's expectations and the actual state of affairs could not be wider. It is difficult to think of a recent military operation that has gone so wrong. Our soldiers have been forced to do police duty in combat gear, and they continue to be killed. We have put at risk not only our soldiers' lives but the combat effectiveness of our armed forces. Their morale is impaired, and we are no longer in a position to properly project our power. Yet there are more places than ever before where we might have legitimate need to project that power. North Korea is openly building nuclear weapons, and Iran is clandestinely doing so. The Taliban is regrouping in Afghanistan. The costs of occupation and the prospect of permanent war are weighing heavily on our economy, and we are failing to address many festering problems—domestic and global. If we ever needed proof that the dream of American supremacy is misconceived, the occupation of Iraq has provided it. If we fail to heed the evidence, we will have to pay a heavier price in the future.

Meanwhile, largely as a result of our preoccupation with supremacy, something has gone fundamentally wrong with the war on terrorism. Indeed, war is a false metaphor in this context. Terrorists do pose a threat to our national and personal security, and we must protect ourselves. Many of the measures we have taken are necessary and proper. It can even be argued that not enough has been done to prevent future attacks. But the war being waged has little to do with ending terrorism or enhancing homeland security; on the contrary, it endangers our security by engendering a vicious circle of escalating violence.

The terrorist attack on the United States could have been treated as a crime against humanity rather than an act of war. Treating it as a crime would have been more appropriate. Crimes require police work, not military action. Protection against terrorism requires precautionary measures, awareness, and intelligence gathering—all of which ultimately depend on the support of the populations among which the terrorists operate. Imagine for a moment that September 11 had been treated as a crime. We would not have invaded Iraq, and we would not have our military struggling to perform police work and getting shot at.

Declaring war on terrorism better suited the purposes of the Bush Administration, because it invoked military might; but this is the wrong way to deal with the problem. Military action requires an identifiable target, preferably a state. As a result the war on terrorism has been directed primarily against states harboring terrorists. Yet terrorists are by definition non-state actors, even if they are often sponsored by states.

The war on terrorism as pursued by the Bush Administration cannot be won. On the contrary, it may bring about a permanent state of war. Terrorists will never disappear. They will continue to provide a pretext for the pursuit of American supremacy. That pursuit, in turn, will continue to generate resistance. Further, by turning the hunt for terrorists into a war, we are bound to create innocent victims. The more innocent victims there are, the greater the resentment and the better the chances that some victims will turn into perpetrators.

The terrorist threat must be seen in proper perspective. Terrorism is not new. It was an important factor in nineteenth-century Russia, and it had a great influence on the character of the czarist regime, enhancing the importance of secret police and justifying authoritarianism. More recently several European countries—Italy, Germany, Great Britain—had to contend with terrorist gangs, and it took those countries a decade or more to root them out. But those countries did not live under the spell of terrorism during all that time. Granted, using hijacked planes for suicide attacks is something new, and so is the prospect of terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. To come to terms with these threats will take some adjustment; but the threats cannot be allowed to dominate our existence. Exaggerating them will only make them worse. The most powerful country on earth cannot afford to be consumed by fear. To make the war on terrorism the centerpiece of our national strategy is an abdication of our responsibility as the leading nation in the world. Moreover, by allowing terrorism to become our principal preoccupation, we are playing into the terrorists' hands. They are setting our priorities.

A recent Council on Foreign Relations publication sketches out three alternative national-security strategies. The first calls for the pursuit of American supremacy through the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action. It is advocated by neoconservatives. The second seeks the continuation of our earlier policy of deterrence and containment. It is advocated by Colin Powell and other moderates, who may be associated with either political party. The third would have the United States lead a cooperative effort to improve the world by engaging in preventive actions of a constructive character. It is not advocated by any group of significance, although President Bush pays lip service to it. That is the policy I stand for.

The evidence shows the first option to be extremely dangerous, and I believe that the second is no longer practical. The Bush Administration has done too much damage to our standing in the world to permit a return to the status quo. Moreover, the policies pursued before September 11 were clearly inadequate for dealing with the problems of globalization. Those problems require collective action. The United States is uniquely positioned to lead the effort. We cannot just do anything we want, as the Iraqi situation demonstrates, but nothing much can be done in the way of international cooperation without the leadership—or at least the participation—of the United States.

Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent, but international politics is still based on the sovereignty of states. What goes on within individual states can be of vital interest to the rest of the world, but the principle of sovereignty militates against interfering in their internal affairs. How to deal with failed states and oppressive, corrupt, and inept regimes? How to get rid of the likes of Saddam? There are too many such regimes to wage war against every one. This is the great unresolved problem confronting us today.

I propose replacing the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action with preventive action of a constructive and affirmative nature. Increased foreign aid or better and fairer trade rules, for example, would not violate the sovereignty of the recipients. Military action should remain a last resort. The United States is currently preoccupied with issues of security, and rightly so. But the framework within which to think about security is collective security. Neither nuclear proliferation nor international terrorism can be successfully addressed without international cooperation. The world is looking to us for leadership. We have provided it in the past; the main reason why anti-American feelings are so strong in the world today is that we are not providing it in the present.”

“Just now I was struck by what a glaring self-referent paradox that is... 'Bush Administration'.”

“Does 'Misadministration' work better for you?”

“A bit closer to reality, perhaps, yes.

I find it timely that Mr. Soros brings 'fair trade' into the mix. Over the last few months, I've noticed prior 'free trade' agreements being described more and more as 'investor protection agreements'. Did you happen to catch Noam Chomsky on Charlie Rose last week?


Also -- describing the current policy of supremacy as being a sort of reinforcing 'bubble' reminds me of something I noted the other day re: the war in Vietnam. I don't mean to casually invoke Vietnam, but this passage caught my eye...


"Each step seems to have been taken almost in desperation because the preceding step had failed to check the crumbling of the South Vietnamese government and its troops -- and despite frequently expressed doubts that the next move would be much more effective. Yet the bureaucracy, the Pentagon papers indicate, always demanded new options; each option was to apply more force. Each tightening of the screw created a position that must be defended; once committed, the military pressure must be maintained. A pause, it was argued, would reveal lack of resolve, embolden the Communists and further demoralize the South Vietnamese. Almost no one said: "Wait -- where are we going? Should we turn back?"

(Pentagon Papers: The Secret War)


More specifically, I wonder what the intelligent course of action IS regarding Iraq at the present time. Increasing involvement may be a mistake. Decreasing involvement may be a mistake.

Now that we're in it, it's like Joel Chandler Harris' "Tar Baby".


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem."

-- Anon.”

“Good point.

I think we were committed long before the actual invasion. I've argued for 'staying the course' realizing that the same argument led to 53,000 body bags a few decades back. It's a fine pickle alright.


I missed Chomsky. Despite what some around here think of my politics, I find Chomsky's views to be a little too radical.”

“We agree on that, Vio.”

“Yes, Chomsky can be pretty far out.

I like the way his ideas open up new avenues of thought. Even if I don't agree with his solutions, I'm nearly always exposed to new angles I hadn't considered....”

“One side light: How does Govenah Ahhnold deal with having Soros as a top advisor and George Bush as an ally.”

“Ooops brain fart.... I was scramblingpeople up in my mind cancel that comment.”

“Odd that I would fuse Soros and Buffett in my mind - I guess because they are both highly successful capitalists with a strong sense of social responsibility.”

“Odd that I would fuse Soros and Buffett in my mind - I guess because they are both highly successful capitalists with a strong sense of social responsibility.”

“Ya almost got me that time, Ped

LOL”

“... but that 'betwixt the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea' condition does seem to apply --- <G>”

“ The very first sentence of the September 2002 National Security Strategy (the President's annual laying out to Congress of the country's security objectives) reads, "The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom—and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."

The assumptions behind this statement are false on two counts. First, there is no single sustainable model for national success. Second, the American model, which has indeed been successful, is not available to others, because our success depends greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist system, and we are not willing to yield it.


The statement about totalitarianism may be the best thing I've ever heard of Bush saying. I agree with it almost completely. The first assumption discounted by Soros is not impossible. I don't think we'll arrive at democratic governments, in general, through invasion, though, which leads into the second assumption. The US does need to step up and make itself a leader on the global scale by aalowing for other coutries' good as well as our own. Even the unpopular countries.

We can remove totalitarianism by keeping a strong front, and deliberately engaging those countries and their neighbors.”

“ok, problem solved...”

“Yeah, except we have an administration who would rather unilaterally invade than engage.”

“In a speech to a terrorism conference six months before the Sept. 11 attacks, Paul Bremer, now President Bush's point man in Iraq warned: "The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?' They've been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they're not taking advantage of it."

The commission told CBS News that it might be interested to hear more about Bremer's speech.


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/21/terror/main612959.shtml

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