Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
In today's New York Times David E. Sanger writes about President Bush's decision to seek Congressional approval before attacking Iraq and says:
Implicitly, Mr. Bush has agreed to engage the country in a discussion over a fundamental change in America's national security strategy: his doctrine that perilous times have forced the United States to assert a right to launch pre-emptive strikes against any state that could put weapons of mass destruction into the hands of terrorists.
The attack them because they could possibly attack the U.S. at some point in the future philosophy that Bush outlined in a June 1 speech at West Point isn't really a workable philosophy for foreign policy and those making decisions on this policy have to know this. If taken to its logical outcome the U.S. would have to be in control in China, India, Russia and whole lot of other countries including allies like Great Britain.
The unspoken assumption in almost discussions of pre-emptive strikes against countries that have not been shown to be a threat to the U.S. is that the White House is able to discern which of the countries that in theory could harm the U.S. are actually a threat. This isn't much of question with Iraq, which has long been demonized to the point that otherwise intelligent people are willing to believe anything bad about it despite the lack of evidence, although it could become a point of contention in the debates over future interventions. (And all signs indicate there will be future interventions.)
Of course this assumption can't be stated outright and so we are unlikely to see the discussion that Sanger predicts. Instead dialouge over whether or not to attack Iraq will probably focus exclusively on the specifics of Iraq with the exception of continued attempts to link Iraq to September 11.
This is unfortunate because this does represent a turning point and arguably the begining of an attempt by the U.S. to more or less run the world, or at least prevent any country from getting too far out of line. The public should be vigirously debating this point in any democracy and/or republic worthy of the platitudes those terms are usually greeted with but it is unlikely to happen because Bush and company won't be putting it on the agenda. posted by micah holmquist at 9/05/2002 02:13:00 PM
