My son, Jay, was the first one to call me around midnight from his college dorm shortly after I made my foray into this “fools paradise”, a.k.a. blogdom. Jay made this really original suggestion, “Dad, why don’t you write something new? Who wants to read about Bush’s first term, anymore?” I refrained from quoting Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, but thanked him for his suggestion nonetheless. While we still have Bush to “kick around” for four more years, if we did not analyze his past mistakes, he is more than likely to repeat them (as us liberals fear) or make history (as his conservative base expects). In any event, nobody but nobody wants a war with Iran – even if, as President Bush declared at a news conference in Brussels recently, “all options are on the table”.
So I am reading Charles Krauthammer in this morning’s Washington Post and I am surprised to learn that his “Road to Damascus” goes through Beirut, but makes no stop in Tehran! In fact, Mr. Krauthammer’s only hint of Iran appears in this pregnant statement, “the entire region from the Mediterranean Sea to the Iranian border would be on a path to democratization”. It seems to me like there is at least one neocon who seems to have taken the Iranian option off the table? So will democracy stop at the water’s edge; will liberty be unable to cross the Persian Gulf? The answer lies in Iraq and the subsequent makeover of the Bush Doctrine by all manner of conservatives. They have decided that if the real world outcomes do not match the objectives of the Bush Doctrine, they will somehow make the Bush Doctrine match the real world outcomes.
The rai·son d'être for the Bush Doctrine was 9/11. Its core argument was based on President Bush’s notion that the U.S. would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them". It further postulated the right of the U.S. to preemptively wage war against terrorist cells and rogue states that were engaged in the production of, or in the possession of, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which were deemed to be a threat to the U.S. and its allies. While President Bush promised to opt for multilateral solutions, he did not rule out unilateral action, if necessary. In its original incarnation, the Bush Doctrine did not clearly enunciate the need for liberty and democracy in all regions of the world. Such a requirement at the time would have plainly been an embarrassment to a number of our allies such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. So when did the Bush Doctrine incorporate President Kennedy's liberal inaugural vision, as in, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
I would suggest that the creationists turned evolutionary after the collapse of the original justification for the Iraq War – which was Saddam Hussein’s possession of WMD that were deemed to be an imminent threat (remember Condi “mushroom cloud” Rice) to the U.S. and its allies – when no WMD were found. Per Colin Powell’s “Pottery Barn” rule, we pretty much own a broken Iraq that requires serious fixing. After his reelection, President Bush decided to outdo Kennedy at his second inaugural. Thus Iraq became a beacon for freedom and democracy in the region and around the world. In fact, after a successful Iraqi election on January 30th, the Bush Doctrine is no longer as much about our security as it is about freedom and democracy around the globe. Amazingly, the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal have already started touting a 21st century version of President Eisenhower's “domino theory”. In the post Cold War era, I am tempted to remind them that Vietnam remains one of the world’s few communist countries, along with that “Bay of Pigs” paradise, Cuba! Meanwhile, the original “evil empire” struggles with democracy but gets only a wink and a nod from our “soul penetrating” President. And, don’t even get me started on China, which in President Bush’s 2000 election campaign was supposed to be his top priority because he considered it a “strategic competitor” unlike then President Clinton, who he claimed treated China like a “strategic partner”? But then, we do have four more years of foreign policy evolution to live through, so “fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride”.
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