This military industry band of executives promoted the view, in and outside of the White House that, " must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. . . We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed."
'Peace through strength'; big kid on the block,' is a posture which is more appropriately used to counter threats by nations; not to threats by rouge individuals with no known base of operations.
Their strategy asserts that "The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."
A common mantra coming out of the White House these days was echoed by Vice President Cheney in a speech at the beginning of the war and many times since: "We are fighting this evil in Iraq so that we do not have to fight it in our own cities," he claimed.
This is a dangerous misconception which only serves the narrow administration view that Saddam Hussein was a potential orchestrator of a worldwide Muslim terror offensive against the U.S. and its allies. A great deal of the information which the White House used to support the link to the 9-11 terrorists was the product of mis-information provided by the very dissident groups which we were funding here in the United States, Chalabi and his minions.
The rest of the 'intelligence', as we have discovered in the aftermath of the invasion, was cobbled together from conflicting sources within the government (Feith's office of 'Special Plans') to reflect the administration's assertions that Saddam posed an immediate threat to the U.S. Now we know that Saddam was either a dupe of his military and others, or a prisoner of his own imagined invincibility, caught up defending non-existent stockpiles of non-existent WMDs.
What is the value in using Iraq as a terror magnet? It has resulted in daily attacks on our soldiers by an Iraqi resistance - possibly aided by some outside terror network; likely no more than remnants of the Republican Guard and fed-up citizens. It perpetuates the war with it's never ending threat of some future strike from some branded and elevated antagonist group. The rhetoric only serves the orchestrators of the occupation by preserving their most important relevance, their supposed ability to protect us against the very forces they are stirring up with their calculated, and often, collateral damage.
What is it about our operation in Iraq that would support the argument that we won't have to fight them (terrorists) on our shores? Most observers predict another devastating attack in the U.S. is inevitable if not imminent. Further, by likening Iraq to the worldwide Muslim terror offensive the president does what Hussein could not; he binds Iraqis to the Muslim extremists. He practically invites them to join the battle there and ally with the forces that threaten our soldiers daily.
This will not create a democratic wedge against Muslim extremism in the region. Democracy cannot be imposed. In failing to understand that, they demonstrate their failure to understand democracy.
Sadly, American soldiers serve as targets in Iraq, and their lives are no less important than ours here in the states. Inviting attacks on Americans overseas is an amazing retreat from the peaceful influence of a great nation of justice; humbled by bloody, devastating wars; and witnessed to the power of liberty, and to the freedom inherent in the constitution we wisely defend with our peaceful acts of mercy, charity, and tolerance.
"Peace," Herman Wouk wrote, "if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act but the coming of a state of mind."
All else that we pursue should be a means to that peace; and a wholesale rejection of violent postures which just invite more violence.
"There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is 'bring them on'," Bush spoke to reporters in the White House Roosevelt Room as he began his war.
Aside from the obvious danger in taunting and provoking violence in a country in which we have staged a bloody invasion, Bush should be forced to answer to whether it is best to arm ourselves, and the world to follow, with the hollow reasoning of keeping up with perceived threats to our 'security'; or is it more reasonable and more practical to reach out to the world diplomatically; to lessen the animosity toward America that our military interventions have engendered?
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