"We will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom, and to make our own nation more secure." he vowed.
In his rhetoric, President Bush effectively used the terrorist attacks to justify his assault against Iraq. But Osama Bin Laden, the alleged ringleader of the 9-11 attacks, was not in Iraq. The rebel leader, in fact shunned and denounced the leadership of Saddam Hussein as a betrayal of fundamental Islam. As Harper's magazine mentioned in 2002, a number of videotapes made by Al Qaeda were found; one contained a documentary in which bin Laden called Saddam Hussein a 'bad Muslim'."
The arbitrary exercise of our military strength and destructive power will not serve as a deterrent to rouge, radical terrorist organizations who claim no permanent base of operations. Bush's wanton, collateral bombing and killing has undoubtedly alienated any fringe of moderates who might have joined in a unified effort of regime change which respects our own democratic values of justice and due process.
The Bush league plans to scatter our forces around the globe in order to preempt terrorist groups from attacking. "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge" President Bush told cadets in June 2002 at a graduation address he gave at the United States Military Academy.
"We have our best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the 17th century to build a world where the great powers compete in peace instead of prepare for war," Bush said after 9-11. "The United States bears a disproportionate responsibility for security." His position was in sharp contrast to candidate Bush, who had complained for months about former president Clinton's 'nation-building'.
There are many reasons why Bush's strategy of preemption is misguided and wrong. It is a license to release the aggressor nation from their responsibility to pursue - to the rejection of their last reasonable admonition - a peaceful resolution to any perceived threat.
And, with a deft flex of military and political muscle the presumption of innocence, even in the face of a clear absence of proof, is a conquered victim of the tainted consensus of a cabal of purchased adversaries; " either with us or against us."
Lincoln once remarked: "A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"
Preemption is a corrosive example for those countries who may feel threatened enough by their neighbors to move to resolve their fears militarily instead of engaging in the long-established enterprise of diplomacy and negotiation.
Indeed, the appointment of Colin Powell as Secretary of State, our nation's top diplomat - the general who's army's killing of Iraqi innocents is rivaled in this century only by the enemy he sought to capture - was a discouraging message for those in the region who had hoped the hunger to divide the region militarily had waned with the end of the first war. And, the replacement of Powell with a primary architect and cheerleader of the Iraq invasion, Condi Rice, makes the State Dept. a mere tool of Bush's imperialism as she shills and extorts seemingly hapless lesser nations to pave the way.
President Bush intends for there to be more conquest - like in Iraq - as the United States exercises its military force around the world; our mandate, our justification, presumably inherent in the mere possession of our instruments of destruction.
Our folly is evident in the rejection of our ambitions by even the closest of our allies, as we reject all entreaties to moderate our manufactured mandate to conquer. Isolation is enveloping our nation like the warming of the atmosphere and the creeping melt of our planet's ancient glaciers.
We are unleashing a new, unnecessary fear between the nations of the world as we dissolve decades of firm understandings about an America power which was to be guileless in its unassailable defenses. The falseness of our diplomacy is revealed in our scramble for 'useable', tactical nuclear missiles, new weapons systems, and our new justifications for their use.
The PNAC 'Rebuilding America' report was used after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks to draft the 2002 document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," which for the first time in the nation's history advocated "preemptive" attacks to prevent the emergence of opponents the administration considered a threat to its political and economic interests.
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