Comments on: It Ain’t Sexy…

By: dmac

dmac — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 16:33:57 +0000

Wow, talk about coming late to the party – I’ll only add in another excellent book pertaining to this subject: The Savage Wars of Peace – Small Wars and the Price of Power, by Max Boot.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/046500721X/qid=1142612785/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-5241045-2547341?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

This is an excellent primer on the history of the United State’s unilateral and preemptive actions in wars that have mostly been forgotten over time. It would appear that many of the current President’s critics seem to have overlooked our country’s long history in launching such actions under the auspices of national defense.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 05:38:45 +0000

By the way, I’m only teasing about the overlong bit…I enjoy the give and take…but I do have to call it a night!…

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 05:36:35 +0000

Sorry, no bob and weave here – I quoted Ferguson because you insist that Bush dreamed up preventive war – I was showing it wasn’t so. I merely quoted the entire paragraph Ferguson’s statement was in, and that happened to be the last sentence.

I think the context was pretty clear…and again, I’m not saying we kept it a secret – I’m saying that Bush explicitly articulated the strategy, to use your words, in response to 9/11…just as he reiterated it today. The Bush Doctrine was not my coinage, but it could mean many things – and perhaps one of the things it means is that preemptive war was going to be STRESSED with more agressiveness in light of those 3,000 murdered New Yorkers.

After all, a policy can be a greater emphasis on something just as well as it can be a new thing…

In any event, I approve of the concept, whether explicit as with Iraq and the Cuban Missile crisis, or implicit as in first-strike nuclear capabilities, and yes, the Monroe Doctrine, in my view, as well…for if the Monroe Doctrine didn’t contain an implicit threat, it wasn’t much use, was it?…

Maybe I’m stretching it with that last one, but the point of this whole overlong thread is that Bush didn’t take some radical departure after 9/11 – he just went to the trouble to make clear what our strategy and policy would be…

By: peter

peter — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 05:26:01 +0000

I think you are bobbing and weaving here — your argument is that we’ve had a policy of pre-emptive war, but we didn’t act on it and we kept it a secret — doesn’t sound like much of a policy to me — sounds more like the boilerplate “we won’t take any options off the table” — and while it was Ferguson who said Bush was different, you quoted him approvingly — presumably you wouldn’t have included the excerpt if you disagreed with it –

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 05:12:03 +0000

Just FYI, “unstated policy” in quotes returns 10,300 hits on Google…and “unstated policy” + US returns 968. Not exactly a new concept…

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 05:09:18 +0000

Huh? An unstated policy – ever hear of that?

Come on, I’ve been perfectly consistent. I said Bush made explicit (or if you prefer, reiterated) a policy that had been there all along, just maybe not advertised…

A policy is no less a policy if it isn’t screamed from the rooftops…

And I’m not the one that said Bush was different (in practice, not in theory) – that was Niall Ferguson…

By: peter

peter — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 05:03:06 +0000

Mark: I think you are contradicting yourself — first you state (at 10:48) that we’ve been conducting pre-emptive war all along — then you state (at 10:55) that Bush is different because notody before him did conduct a pre-emptive war — and then at 11:53 you state that it was a policy, but one which was never articulated (which is an oxymoron: how can you have a policy if you don’t tell people about it?) –

By: peter

peter — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 04:58:18 +0000

The US is better than Syria, Hussein’s Iraq, Stalinist Russia, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia? Geez, that’s reassuring.

However, the argument that “while the US may torture innocents, it’s not really so bad because the torture is unintentiional” is a flaccid one. When you deprive the detained of due process, the captor is responsible for the error. A lot of the people at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. When you cast a wide net and refuse to allow the captured the right of habeas corpus, it’s your own fault when you abuse the wrong guy. You are punishing people before you have convicted them of anything.

I used to be against the death penalty for the same reason you are (i.e., the possibility of executing innocents). I am still against it in the vast majority of instances. However, when I read a piece in Esquire a year ago about the Aryan Brotherhood, it changed my mind. This is a group of convicts already in jail who do some very bad things (like get their comrades outside of jail to murder prosecutors). They quoted the prosecutor in the case (which happened to go to trial this week) as saying that when you are dealing with people who already are serving life sentences, the only leverage a prosecutor has is capital punishment. I think that the death penalty is moral in those instances.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 04:53:29 +0000

peter, good suggestion on the numbering – I’ll look into it…I think it’s the Bush doctrine because 9/11 forced Bush to articulate, agressively and explicitly, a strategy that was more implicit, but still there, prior…

By: peter

peter — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 04:48:58 +0000

The Bay of Pigs fiasco was similar to pre-emptive war in the sense that there was not a state of war, and we were involved in a military incursion (if you consider three planes flying missions over two days to be a military incursion).

However, there are substantial differences. First, it wasn’t a war. Secondly, US troops weren’t involved — we had proxies. Finally, the scale was so miniscule that I don’t think it is a valid comparison to Iraq, or any other hot war.

Look: if pre-emptive war is so ingrained in American foreign policy, why do they call it the Bush doctrine?