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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

Is the Bush doctrine really dead? « Previous | |Next »
August 16, 2006

If you recall the Washington neo-conservatives were full of bloodthirsty glory at Israel's successful 'shock and awe ' bombing of Lebanon. They fancied they were seeing the beginning of the complete obliteration of Hezbollah and much of Southern Lebanon, as the start of the "great opportunity" -- "our war" -- in which the US would eventually do the same to Syria and Iran. The American right is arguing whether the war on terror is "World War III" ( Newt Gingrich ) or "World War IV" ( Norman Podhoretz who says WW III is the Cold War).

One of the loudest defenders of the Bush doctrine of pre-emption in the Middle East has been the blogger and columnist Mark Steyn, who's currently visiting Australia. He dismisses suggestions that Israel's war in south Lebanon has been an overreaction, or disproportionate. Indeed, he believes the Israelis should really be attacking, not Hezbollah, but one of the causes of the problem, which he says is Syria. He argues that Iraq has been a success.

Alas things have generally turned out otherwise. to the necon plan for WW IV. The neo-conservative dream for a broader war appears to have collapsed on its shattered foundations. It would also appear that the neocon plan of reshaping the entire Middle East by force is a pipedream. Norman Podhoretz, the editor-at-large of Commentary, asks: Is the Bush doctrine Dead? Podhoretz says no. He argues thus:

Even after 9/11, many pooh-poohed the threat of Islamofascism and, seeing its terrorist weaponry as merely a police matter, denied (and continue to deny) that we were even really at war, much less in a new world war. But Bush understood that Islamofascism was "the heir of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century"---an aggressive totalitarian force that, like Nazism and Communism before it, could only be defeated through a worldwide struggle. It was a struggle that, in its duration and in its mix of military and non-military means, would bear a greater resemblance to World War III than to World War II. But it also carried novel features with which containment had not been designed to cope. Out of these twin understandings, Bush promulgated his own doctrine, and out of that doctrine came the new military strategy of preemption and the new political strategy of democratization.

Podoratz says that as far as the implementation of this new strategy goes, it is still early days---roughly comparable to 1952 in the history of the Truman Doctrine.

As with the Truman Doctrine then, the Bush Doctrine has thus far acted only in the first few scenes of the first act of a five-act play.

It is my contention that the Bush Doctrine is no more dead today than the Truman Doctrine was cowardly in its own early career...I feel safe in predicting that, like the Truman Doctrine in 1952, the Bush Doctrine will prove irreversible by the time its author leaves the White House in 2008. And encouraged by the precedent of Ronald Reagan, I feel almost as confident in predicting that, three or four decades into the future, and after the inevitable missteps and reversals, there will come a President who, like Reagan in relation to Truman in World War III, will bring World War IV to a victorious end by building on the noble doctrine that George W. Bush promulgated when that war first began.

Terrorism is a problem best handled militarily. Islamic fundamentalism will only be defeated through a long war that involves invading and occupying countries which have not attacked the US.

The alternative in improving our intelligence-gathering capabilities, strengthening law enforcement cooperation with other countries, increasing counter-terrorism resources, and solidifying border security.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:48 PM | | Comments (0)
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