Bush's Most Important Political Victory for the NeoCon Project

[DaveT]

The invasion of Iraq was sold to the Congress and the American people as a response to the development of weapons of mass destruction by a potentially hostile state. Since there were no WMDs in Iraq and since it is relatively easy to prove that the Bush Government hoked up the alleged evidence in support of the proposition, the overwhelming majority of the criticism of the Iraq War focuses on the mendacity of the propaganda that Bush and Company deployed to justify this war of choice.

This formulation of Bush's misconduct overlooks the most radical aspect of the decision to invade Iraq -- the abandonment of deterence and containment as the basis for American national security. Rather than continue the bi-partisan consensus in place since the end of World War II, Bush asserted that the 21st Century called for an embrace of pre-emptive war. The most vivid political soundbite employed in the political campaign to lead us away from the policies that defeated Communism was the infamous notion that we dare not wait to see if "the smoking gun turns into a mushroom cloud."

That mixed metaphor successfully shifted the focus of discussion from the abstraction of policy to the concrete evaluation of facts. Since the facts were not facts at all, but lies, few observers bother to go back to the policy revolution asserting that we have the power and the right to prevent other countries from having the same kind of weapons that we have -- and that our national security depends upon us starting wars with countries before they can attain nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

Once upon a time, we had a nuclear monopoly. At the time, some voices within the American power structure argued vehemently that we should use our advantage to prevent the Soviet Union from becoming a threat. And then, after the Soviets tested their first atomic bomb, those same voices urged us to use our superiority to put an end to communism and the threat it posed to our way of life. Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton all totally rejected that kind of thinking as absurd. Instead we waited out the Communist Experiment and it died its own death due to its internal contradictions.

Deterence and containment provided the greatest national security triumph in our history.

We could have conquered the world when we were the only nation to have the Bomb. We did not do so for only one reason -- we were not that kind of people. We hanged Germans for committing the crime of starting a war of conquest. We have our faults and we did not live up to our ideals throughout most of the Cold War. But we did not wage preemptive war against Stalin or Mao, and I am proud of that.

Bush and his NeoCon propagandists assert that Islamic Extremists are not reachable through the logic of deterence and containment, that they are somehow more bloodthirsty than Stalin and Mao. Of course they are lying -- they do not believe anything of the kind, and the suggestion is absurd on its face. Between the two of them, they slaughtered tens of millions of people in the service of their respective visions of the future. But while the NeoCon lies about Saddam's WMDs have been exposed for all to see, this far more dangerous lie about the supposedly depraved nature of Islamo-Fascist mentality has been swallowed whole by our body politic.

Even Barack Obama has bought into the premise. This is from his recent speech to AIPAC:

The world must work to stop Iran’s uranium enrichment program and
prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is far too dangerous to
have nuclear weapons in the hands of a radical theocracy. And while we
should take no option, including military action, off the table, sustained
and aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions should be our
primary means to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2007/03/obamas_aipac_speech_text_as_pr.html

I voted for Obama in the California primary and I will proudly cast my ballot for him in the fall. And I appreciate that he couched his threat to take military action to prevent Iran from securing a nuclear weapon within a context of diplomacy and international cooperation. But the bottom line remains that our Democratic Candidate for president has bought into the premise that we have the might and the right to start a war against Iran to prevent it from attaining the same kind of weapon that we have had for over 60 years.

As activists, we need to keep our eye on the ideological disaster of the Bush Years -- and recognize how thoroughly the NeoCons have corrupted our political discourse.

[DaveT]

1. kick for a second try

This is an important topic, in my opinion.