Seeking Out Monsters - *'s Scary Foreign Policy

[reprehensor]

Seeking Out Monsters

By Committing Himself to Preventive War, George Bush has Overturned Two Centuries of US Thinking on Global Diplomacy

by Arthur Schlesinger

Forty-five per cent of the American electorate love George Bush; 45% loathe him. Their minds are made up, pro and con, and there is little chance of changing them. Ten per cent, more or less, remain undecided. The undecided will determine the outcome, at least of the popular vote. There may be again, as in 2000, an electoral-college misfire by which the popular-vote winner loses the White House.

War haunts America. Iraq and terrorism forced their way last week into the third presidential debate, ostensibly dedicated to domestic issues. There is no immunity for wartime presidents. In 1952, the unpopularity of the Korean war led President Truman to withdraw from the contest. In 1968, the Vietnam war drove President Johnson from office. The swift victory of President Bush the Elder in the first Iraq war was of small benefit when he was defeated for re-election in 1992. On the other hand, President Nixon running against George McGovern - like Senator Kerry, a decorated war hero turned into a war critic - scored a smashing triumph in 1972.

President Bush the Younger categorically defends his launching of the second Iraq war. He has no doubt about the rightness of his course or the brilliance of his team. President Kennedy dismissed the CIA advisers who led him into the Bay of Pigs. Despite the Pentagon's build-up of Ahmad Chalabi, despite torture and Abu Ghraib, despite the incompetence of postwar planning, despite the collapse of his reasons for looking on Iraq as a clear and present danger to the US, President Bush has dismissed few senior officials.

The recent report by Charles Duelfer, the top American arms inspector for Iraq, effectively destroyed what remains of the contention that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The second reason Mr Bush gave was the alleged partnership between the secular Muslim Saddam Hussein and the Muslim fundamentalist Osama bin Laden. The Bush administration put over this allegation so successfully that 42% of the American people, according to an October poll, still believe that Saddam was personally involved in 9/11. But the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and President Bush himself admitted that they had no hard evidence of the existence of the evil partnership.

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[blm]

1. Bush's Foreign Policy is.... Rapture, Let's Bring it On.

.

[Wright Patman]

2. You know the story

of someone finding out they only have a short time to live and so they max out on their credit cards?

It fits the recent behavior of the U.S. government perfectly.