Bush's Strategy of Preemption

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. . . an article I wrote in 2006:


"Since America put out the fires of September 11, mourned our dead, and went to war," President Bush extolled when he got his first 'emergency' appropriation of $87b to continue his Iraq occupation, "history has taken a different turn. We have carried the fight to the enemy. We are rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization, not on the fringes of its influence, but at the heart of its power."

"We will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom, and to make our own nation more secure." he vowed.

In his rhetoric, President Bush effectively used the terrorist attacks to justify his assault against Iraq. But Osama Bin Laden, the alleged ringleader of the 9-11 attacks, was not in Iraq. The rebel leader, in fact shunned and denounced the leadership of Saddam Hussein as a betrayal of fundamental Islam. As Harper's magazine mentioned in 2002, a number of videotapes made by Al Qaeda were found; one contained a documentary in which bin Laden called Saddam Hussein a 'bad Muslim'."

The arbitrary exercise of our military strength and destructive power will not serve as a deterrent to rouge, radical terrorist organizations who claim no permanent base of operations. Bush's wanton, collateral bombing and killing has undoubtedly alienated any fringe of moderates who might have joined in a unified effort of regime change which respects our own democratic values of justice and due process.

His oppressive posture has pushed the citizens of these sovereign nations to a forced expression of their nationalism in defense of basic prerogatives of liberty and self-determination, which his false authority disregards as threats to his consolidation of power.

The Bush league plans to scatter our forces around the globe in order to preempt terrorist groups from attacking. "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge" President Bush told cadets in June 2002 at a graduation address he gave at the United States Military Academy.


"We have our best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the 17th century to build a world where the great powers compete in peace instead of prepare for war," Bush said after 9-11. "The United States bears a disproportionate responsibility for security." His position was in sharp contrast to candidate Bush, who had complained for months about former president Clinton's 'nation-building'.

There are many reasons why Bush's strategy of preemption is misguided and wrong. It is a license to release the aggressor nation from their responsibility to pursue - to the rejection of their last reasonable admonition - a peaceful resolution to any perceived threat.

And, with a deft flex of military and political muscle the presumption of innocence, even in the face of a clear absence of proof, is a conquered victim of the tainted consensus of a cabal of purchased adversaries; " either with us or against us."

Lincoln once remarked: "A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"

Preemption is a corrosive example for those countries who may feel threatened enough by their neighbors to move to resolve their fears militarily instead of engaging in the long-established enterprise of diplomacy and negotiation.

Indeed, the appointment of Colin Powell as Secretary of State, our nation's top diplomat - the general who's army's killing of Iraqi innocents is rivaled in this century only by the enemy he sought to capture - was a discouraging message for those in the region who had hoped the hunger to divide the region militarily had waned with the end of the first war. And, the replacement of Powell with a primary architect and cheerleader of the Iraq invasion, Condi Rice, makes the State Dept. a mere tool of Bush's imperialism as she shills and extorts seemingly hapless lesser nations to pave the way.

President Bush intends for there to be more conquest - like in Iraq - as the United States exercises its military force around the world; our mandate, our justification, presumably inherent in the mere possession of our instruments of destruction.

Our folly is evident in the rejection of our ambitions by even the closest of our allies, as we reject all entreaties to moderate our manufactured mandate to conquer. Isolation is enveloping our nation like the warming of the atmosphere and the creeping melt of our planet's ancient glaciers.

We are unleashing a new, unnecessary fear between the nations of the world as we dissolve decades of firm understandings about an America power which was to be guileless in its unassailable defenses. The falseness of our diplomacy is revealed in our scramble for 'useable', tactical nuclear missiles, new weapons systems, and our new justifications for their use.

The PNAC 'Rebuilding America' report was used after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks to draft the 2002 document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," which for the first time in the nation's history advocated "preemptive" attacks to prevent the emergence of opponents the administration considered a threat to its political and economic interests.

It states that ". . . we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country." And that, "To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."

This military industry band of executives promoted the view, in and outside of the White House that, " must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. . . We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed."

'Peace through strength '; big kid on the block,' is a posture which is more appropriately used to counter threats by nations; not to threats by rouge individuals with no known base of operations.

Their strategy asserts that "The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."

So their plan is to attack whomever, whenever they feel our security is threatened, no matter if the nature and prevalence of the attack is uncertain. The U.N. should study this document before it wastes its time trying to reign President Bush in.

A common mantra coming out of the White House these days was echoed by Vice President Cheney in a speech at the beginning of the war and many times since: "We are fighting this evil in Iraq so that we do not have to fight it in our own cities," he claimed.


This is a dangerous misconception which only serves the narrow administration view that Saddam Hussein was a potential orchestrator of a worldwide Muslim terror offensive against the U.S. and its allies. A great deal of the information which the White House used to support the link to the 9-11 terrorists was the product of mis-information provided by the very dissident groups which we were funding here in the United States, Chalabi and his minions.

The rest of the 'intelligence', as we have discovered in the aftermath of the invasion, was cobbled together from conflicting sources within the government (Feith's office of 'Special Plans') to reflect the administration's assertions that Saddam posed an immediate threat to the U.S. Now we know that Saddam was either a dupe of his military and others, or a prisoner of his own imagined invincibility, caught up defending non-existent stockpiles of non-existent WMDs.

What is the value in using Iraq as a terror magnet? It has resulted in daily attacks on our soldiers by an Iraqi resistance - possibly aided by some outside terror network; likely no more than remnants of the Republican Guard and fed-up citizens. It perpetuates the war with it's never ending threat of some future strike from some branded and elevated antagonist group. The rhetoric only serves the orchestrators of the occupation by preserving their most important relevance, their supposed ability to protect us against the very forces they are stirring up with their calculated, and often, collateral damage.

What is it about our operation in Iraq that would support the argument that we won't have to fight them (terrorists) on our shores? Most observers predict another devastating attack in the U.S. is inevitable if not imminent. Further, by likening Iraq to the worldwide Muslim terror offensive the president does what Hussein could not; he binds Iraqis to the Muslim extremists. He practically invites them to join the battle there and ally with the forces that threaten our soldiers daily.

This will not create a democratic wedge against Muslim extremism in the region. Democracy cannot be imposed. In failing to understand that, they demonstrate their failure to understand democracy.

Sadly, American soldiers serve as targets in Iraq, and their lives are no less important than ours here in the states. Inviting attacks on Americans overseas is an amazing retreat from the peaceful influence of a great nation of justice; humbled by bloody, devastating wars; and witnessed to the power of liberty, and to the freedom inherent in the constitution we wisely defend with our peaceful acts of mercy, charity, and tolerance.

"Peace," Herman Wouk wrote, "if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act but the coming of a state of mind."

All else that we pursue should be a means to that peace; and a wholesale rejection of violent postures which just invite more violence.

"There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is 'bring them on'," Bush spoke to reporters in the White House Roosevelt Room as he began his war.

Aside from the obvious danger in taunting and provoking violence in a country in which we have staged a bloody invasion, Bush should be forced to answer to whether it is best to arm ourselves, and the world to follow, with the hollow reasoning of keeping up with perceived threats to our 'security '; or is it more reasonable and more practical to reach out to the world diplomatically; to lessen the animosity toward America that our military interventions have engendered?

Our aggression resigns the nation to a perpetual global threat against the United States and our interests. Diplomacy provides hope that the killing among all countries would end, by the force of our collective resolve; not at the point of a weapon.

Yet, imposing our nation's military on the world seems to be the only means Bush can think of to get anyone to pay any attention to him. There will be no dialogue with other nations as long as he insists on planting his imperious foot firmly on their throat as he crusades for greed and power.



by, Ron Fullwood


painting by my wife, Karen

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