Bush's Security Plan Now Rests On Nothing But Hope. PNAC & Incompetence

[KittyWampus]

Bush's security plan now rests on nothing but hope

America doesn't have the troops to deal with North Korea and Iran

Peter Galbraith
Monday October 11, 2004
The Guardian

snip

But the Bush doctrine is not just about forward defence. It also involves an American mission to spread freedom and
democracy, particularly in the Islamic world....

Paul Wolfowitz and the Pentagon neo-conservatives, who are the ideological authors of the Bush doctrine, saw Iraq as an opportunity to transform the Middle East. They hoped that, by overthrowing Saddam, the US could establish a democratic Iraq which would have the same ripple effect on the Islamic world... Since the American people would never buy such an ambitious (and implausible) agenda, WMD became the justification for the war, but not its reason. Wolfowitz admitted as much when he toldVanity Fair that the administration had settled on Iraqi WMD as the single rationale for war for "bureaucratic reasons".

The question is whether the Bush doctrine makes for sound national security strategy. Devising this strategy entails
assessing threats and looking for opportunities. Since no country can do everything, the most important task of a
strategist is to set priorities, taking into account available resources, costs and risks....

But Bush never prioritised. North Korea with nuclear weapons and Iran acquiring nuclear technology posed far greater threats in 2003 than an Iraq with some hidden chemical and biological weapons. The Clinton administration threatened war to get Pyongyang to freeze its nuclear programme in 1994. In 2002, the Bush administration noisily terminated the 1994 agreement because of North Korean cheating, and then did nothing when the country withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and began reprocessing previously safeguarded plutonium into nuclear weapons. All this took place before the start of the Iraq war, but the Bush administration never shifted its focus. North Korea is the world's leading exporter of missile technology to rogue states, and there is every reason to fear its nuclear weapons will be for sale.

By not setting priorities, the Bush administration lost control of the costs and the risks of its strategy. The Pentagon neo-conservatives planning postwar Iraq had grand ideas for a long occupation (modelled on postwar Germany and Japan), but only sent a minimal number of troops (for domestic political reasons). Because of limited resources, they simply assumed abenign environment, eliminating from their planning the possibilities of resistance and lawlessness.

snip

By not distinguishing between serious immediate threats and distant potential ones, Bush ducked the hard choice at the core of all sound national security strategy - how to ration scarce military and diplomatic assets. As a result, the US invaded Iraq to eliminate a threat posed by non-existent weapons. As for North Korea and Iran, the US is reduced to hoping that others - China in the case of Pyongyang and the Europeans in the case of Tehran - can solve the problem. Hope is not a strategy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1324259,00.html

[acmavm]

1. Hope is not a strategy. Hope. That pretty much describes the amount of

thought and planning that went into the bush* administrations foray into Iraq. And now we're out 1070 troops and billions of dollars.

Deceit & ineptitude. Pure and simple. And a large chunk of this country can't see it. Simply amazing.

[HuckleB]

2. Ideology without knowledge and wisdom equals repeated failure.

Wolfowitz and company don't know basic middle east history, so they probably don't know basic world history of any kind. How these people ever ended up in such positions of power ought to scare us staight in the US. It's truly time to redefine our so-called democracy so that yes-yes men aren't allowed to garner all the power and lead us down roads of ruin.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

4. Oh they know history all right. They believe they are on a holy

crusade to restore the Temple to Jerusalem and herald the coming the kingdom of God.

They know history very well, they just don't care about the effects on average Americans, much less on any Iraqis.

Yes, they damn well know what they are doing. The shame of it is that the people of this country let them do it.

[HuckleB]

7. They may know the history they want to know.

But they don't know the history they need to know, and they sure don't know what they're doing.

[PartyPooper]

3. Hope and prayer.

Hope is a little town in Arkansas. It gave us our beloved 42nd president.

Prayer is what our despicable and incompetent Leader relies upon to get him from A to B. He publicly and shamelessly relies on it regularly to move the masses (aka his "base").

In the context of this current evil and manipulative administration, "Hope" and "Prayer" have nothing to do with each other.

Peace.

O8)

[sandnsea]

5. Faith-based security

I agree about hope, hope and Bush have nothing to do with each other.

[BlueEyedSon]

6. Great piece re: prioritizing. kick!

[revcraigh]

8. Questions on strategy

No, hope is not a strategy.
On the other hand, isn't it Kerry who thought that drawing other countries into the arena of solving world problems was a good idea? What gives?
Is it really that good of an idea to threaten North Korea with war? After all, mightn't Il take us up on the idea? He's not known for being overly rational. Is that really what we want?
And is Bush's plan for a democratic Iraq really so implausible given the elections in Afghanistan? They've picked up the idea so quickly that they've co-opted the Chicago get-out-the-vote strategy: vote early, vote often.

[AtTheEndOfTheDay]

9. No, no and yes.