Satire:Bush foreign policy originated from sixth grade homework assignment

[Ian_rd]

Bush foreign policy originated from sixth grade homework assignment (Satire)

(Washington D.C.) – RD News has learned that the Bush administration’s foreign policy was mistakenly crafted by a homework assignment that was misplaced in 1998 from Carter Elementary School in Washington D.C.

The sixth grade homework assignment authored by a student named Andy Wilson, who was twelve years old at the time, was a two-page paper entitled “How I Would Make the World a Better Place.” According to the cover page, the assignment was for a Mrs. Johnson, 3rd Period Social Studies.

According to several interviews, RD News learned of how this two-page assignment went from a young student’s home in suburban Washington D.C. to the White House in order to become what is known by many as the Bush Doctrine of foreign policy.

Andy Wilson’s father is Karl Wilson, at the time an administrative assistant for Douglas Feith in the Project for the New American Century (or PNAC). PNAC is a think tank formed in 1997 to promote an aggressive and militaristic foreign policy, many members of which joined the Bush administration after the president took office in 2001.

On the evening October 12, 1998, Andy Wilson gave his father Karl the homework for him to proofread before its due date the next day. Mr. Wilson was so impressed with his son’s paper that he faxed the homework to Douglas Feith at PNAC and kept the original for himself.

RD News obtained a copy of Andy Wilson’s “How I Would Make the World a Better Place,” which contains striking similarities to the philosophy behind PNAC’s 2000 policy paper called “Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century,” many suggestions of which became central to the Bush Administration’s foreign policy such as withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, occupying the Middle East by force, marginalizing the United Nations, and preemptive war to prevent competitors to U.S. power.

Wilson’s homework assignment is based on an excessively simplistic view of world affairs and contains statements such as “The United States in America is good for everyone in America and the world. Others are bad. Bad people are not good. We should fight the bad people with our great army and planes and make them good. They will like us and be happy because they will be good like us.”

This simple language resembles President Bush’s many invocations of good and evil in war on terrorism and the occupation of Iraq.

Wilson’s paper concludes with the statement “bad people hurt good people like Americans so we should bomb them first before they do bad things. And when all the bad people are gone, only good people will be in the world and like us.”

While this language is simple, it illustrates the essence of what many call the Bush Doctrine to strike possible threats to the United States before they materialize, and could also be the source of some unrealistic expectations of the invasion of Iraq held by many PNAC members such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, and Karl Wilson’s former boss, Douglas Feith.

RD News contacted Andy Wilson, now twenty years old and a student at Columbia University in New York about the implications.

“If this cheesy paper of mine became the centerpiece of the Bush administration, I would like to apologize to the entire planet,” said Wilson.

Whitehouse spokesman Tony Snow said of the two-page homework, “There is no truth whatsoever that a child’s homework assignment became a driving force in the president’s foreign policy. The fact is that President Bush believes that in a post-9/11 world, we must take the fight to the evildoers and Iraq will become a strong and free ally in the fight against evil.

As Karl Wilson mistakenly kept the original, the assignment was never turned in resulting in a failing grade for his son Andy.

[reichstag911]

1. K&R nt