... and it's pissing the hell out of our liberal friends. Take the WaPo's Dan Froomkin...
This morning's news that President Bush is reasserting his doctrine of preemptive war is a bit of a surprise because, well, I think most people thought the Bush Doctrine was dead. |
Just cause the people at you little WaPo editorial board cocktail parties aren't talking about it doesn't mean its dead. Plus, last time I checked Dubya was still alive and the president, so I'm guessing the Bush Doctrine's alive too. Unless I missed a mind-control uplink memo from KKKarl Rove recently...
How can Bush still argue for attacking another country based on his suspicions about their intentions -- when the first time he tried it, his public case turned out to be so utterly specious? |
Hang on... I gotta go look "specious" up... In the mean time see my Iraq-al Qaeda connection post, my Iraqi documents released post, and Iraqi people spilling the beans on Saddam.
The idea that the American public or the international community would tolerate such behavior once again seems highly unlikely at this point in time. The American people, for one, won't be keen on putting troops in harm's way again on spec anytime soon. |
I think the American people will get on board because they don't want Iran to get nukes, but you very well may be right about the international community except of course for the 20 some odd allies fighting with us in the GWOT. Still Iran may put us in a spot to preemptively take out their reactors, even then you could make a case that since the Iranians have been arming Iraqi insurgents against us, they are de facto at war with us anyway. So is it really preemptive when they technically already at war with us? Man, I hate those "which came first, the chicken or the egg" type questions...
Winning support for the application of a doctrine of preemption requires enormous credibility. It requires public trust in intelligence and motives. And that trust isn't there. |
Actually, I think more important than credibility are world events that scare the piss out of me and the American public in general. I think Iran and Ahmadinejad with nukes scares the piss out of most of the world, not just America.
The rearranging of the intelligence community's deck-chairs has not resulted in any great surge of confidence in the nation's intelligence gathering or, more importantly, any assurance that policymakers will not abuse that intelligence. |
I didn't know our intelligence community spooks spent their free time going all Trading Spaces at Foggy Bottom. And while the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program certainly isn't illegal or being abused, I did hear something about Hillary and the Dems using spying to try to find potential weak minded fools citizens to be brainwashed into the Democratic party sent Democratic mailers.
In fact, the more we know about the run-up to war in Iraq, the more evidence there is that the doctrine of preemption (and the cherry-picking and manipulation of intelligence used to make the case for it) was just a pretext for an invasion that Bush and his top aides had already decided on for other reasons. |
Especially with 48,000 cased of documents seized in Iraq being released to the public. That ought to cover all that pre-war intelligence crap the left loves to sling.
See, for instance, the recent Foreign Affairs article by Paul R. Pillar, the former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year. |
Yeah I saw that one... Didn't think much of it then either. Please tell me you have more than that.
He wrote: "It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized." |
You quote Pillar, and I'll quote... myself.
So what? The US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution. What's that point out? It points out that there was a first resolution. What was done about the first resolution? Nothing. In fact Saddam was in violation of 17 different UN resolutions since the end of hostilities from the first gulf war. After 9/11 and after the extremely successful war to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan, the US and the "Cowboy President" were done with the "all talk, no action" crowd.
So what do we do? Have the UN send in more inspectors, while Saddam plays a dangerous shell game with them, let that go on for months, maybe years, and would be perhaps inconclusive in the end? We were done with that game. Clinton had played it his entire presidency with Saddam... no fly violation here, shot at plane there, single missile strike here... What did that yield? Nothing.
So Bush decided to get the UN support but had the back up plan just in case the UN decided to drag their feet... again. And with more evidence coming forward that Saddam moved his weapons to Syria before the war makes you ask what would we have found if we didn't waste all that time with the UN? Saddam knew we were going to come for him this time. He knew Bush wasn't bluffing action, as Clinton and the UN had bluffed action for eight years. Why else would he ship out weapons? He knew we were going to come after them. I actually find it comforting to know that Bush and Blair were committed to justice regardless of what the UN said. And you think this is the first time intelligence officials were frustrated with policy makers? I'm surprised their heads didn't explode during the Clinton administration...
At a recent talk to the Council on Foreign Relations , Pillar said, "I really believe this: that the main motivation for Operation Iraqi Freedom was to stir up the politics and economics of the Middle East and use regime change in Iraq as a stimulus for regime change and other kinds of changes elsewhere in the region, leading to more open political and economic structures." |
That was a lot of gobbledy-gook just to say "Bush wanted to bring freedom to the Middle East." I'm not sure but is that "specious"? I still haven't gone and looked that up yet...
Others, of course, suggest that Bush's primary motivation was revenge against Saddam for the indignities suffered by his father, or simply a desire to kick someone's butt after the September 11 terrorist attacks. |
Don't forget about Afghanistan... we were able to squeeze a little butt kicking in there before Bush's eeeevil kkkill Saddam plan went into effect... I bet going to Afghanistan first got little Dubya a whoopin' from his pa for not avenging the attempted assassination.
But in either case, few people in Washington now believe that pre-emption of Saddam's alleged WMD threat was anything more than a post-decision rationalization for the invasion. |
So we decided to pre-empt after we already went in? Does that make any sense to anyone else?
And then there's the fact that close watchers of Bush's ever-evolving foreign policy have seen no recent indication that the doctrine of preemption or, in fact, any of the other elements of what has become known as the Bush Doctrine, were still operative. |
OK, I just saw this drivel continues for 4 more pages. I can't do 4 more pages of this shit. I think that might actually make me lose my mind especially if it continues to go in circles, because that last sentence just took us right back to the beginning...
Is that how liberals win arguments? Make you surrender due to extreme boredom? |
