Bush's Floundering Doctrine (Consortium News)

[kaitykaity]

http://consortiumnews.com/Print/090303.html

By Nat Parry
September 3, 2003

George W. Bush has declared "no retreat" on Iraq even as that country descends into bloody anarchy and as Iraqi fighters pick off American soldiers by ones and twos almost daily. Instead, Bush is raising the stakes by refusing to rethink his Bush Doctrine of preemptive wars.

"Our only goal, our only option, is total victory in the war on terror, and this nation will press on to victory," Bush told the American Legion convention in St. Louis on Aug. 26, reiterating his strategy of waging war against any country or group that he says supports – or is likely to support – terrorism.

snip>

[whathappened]

1. why are these

people setting and giving him there ear to all this b.s. that comes from his mouth , first thing i do is turn this man out when he comes on the tv , i have no use for what he is and what he is saying , get rid of him and get a real man in office who cares for human life

[Demobrat]

2. "My only goal, my only option, is to blather on mindlessly

about the war on terror, and this nation will have to reelect me."

What an absolute moron. Even now he can't even change the speech. Terra, terra, terra....it won't work anymore George. We're on to you. Everybody's on to you. It's all bullshit and we know it!!! Excuse me while I go puke now.

[Martin Eden]

3. predictive war

I don't know if Nat Parry coined this term, but he defines the invasion of Iraq not as "preemptive" war, or even "preventive" war, but as PREDICTIVE war, which IMO is the most accurate term:

--snip--
Bush also left little doubt that his strategy will go beyond preemptive war (when a country hits first against an enemy that is poised to strike) to predictive war (when the potential threat is speculative or far off in the future). Predictive war not only dramatically lowers the threshold to a conflict but often leads the attacking nation to justify an invasion by inventing or inflating dangers from the country that is to be invaded.

With the continued failure of U.S. forces to find trigger-ready weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and U.S. admissions that some WMD intelligence was exaggerated or bogus, it is becoming evident that the invasion of Iraq was a case of predictive, not preemptive, war.
--end of snip--

Such prognostication is an inexact science to begin with, but when it's practiced by neocon idealogues with a pre-determined agenda and a less than initimate relationship with the truth, PREDICTIVE war is nothing less than a license to initiate war on almost any pretense.

And by proceeding with that war, it becomes impossible to disprove their assertion that the enemy was eventually going to attack, because the enemy has been eliminated. Of course, an entirely new and potentially more dangerous situation has been created, but that's a different can of worms.

[cliss]

4. Wouldn't you just love to be

a fly on the wall at the WH right now? Can't you just visualize the generals pounding on the table, pointing their fingers at each other, each blaming the other.

Stratfor.com wrote that the administration is currently in a state of "disarray" with lots of finger-pointing and accusations being hurled. I love it. There's got to be some justice in this world, after all.

[izzie]

5. Well he back down?

Hard on the people when the leaded will not back down when wrong.