White House Unveils “The National Security Strategy”

Yesterday, the White House released “The National Security Strategy” for the second term of Bush the Lesser. If one thought that the Mesopotamian Mess and the general failure of the neo-conservative agenda would result in a more realistic and plausible US foreign policy, one is thoroughly disabused of the idea by this document.

Its first sentence reads, “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” A noble impossibility, and its pursuit will result in the further erosion of America’s standing in the world and America’s national strength. Most military strategists with access to the relevant data agree that, with the current commitments of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no military option in other parts of the world. Without armed might, the White House can only rely on diplomacy – something at which it is uniquely bad.

What is particularly troubling about the document is its willful misdiagnosis of the world’s ills. For example, “Terrorism is not simply a result of Israeli-Palestinian issues. Al-Qaida plotting for the September 11 attacks began in the 1990s, during an active period in the peace process.” The truth is that the Muslim, and especially the Arab, world sees the US as pro-Israel and has done at least since President Nixon airlifted arms to Tel Aviv during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Were the US not involved in the Mid-East, terrorists from the Mid-East would have only nihilism as a motive for attacking America. Al Qaeda is not Bader-Meinhoff or Charles Manson.

However, the messianic neo-con view is not susceptible to rational discussion. Something is so because the neo-cons believe it to be so. In discussing “Afghanistan and Iraq: The Front Lines in the War on Terror,” the document says, “the success of democracy in Iraq will be a launching pad for freedom’s success throughout a region that for decades has been a source of instability and stagnation.” The Domino Theory isn’t a reality in international politics, or Thailand would be communist today. Still, pre-emptive war is part of the future, according to the White House, apparently dedicated to trying until it gets something right.

Be that as it may, policy statements are only as good as their implementation, and the neo-con fallacies coupled with Bushevik incompetence have brewed up a toxic potion. “The times require an ambitious national security strategy, yet one recognizing the limits to what even a nation as powerful as the United States can achieve by itself. Our national security strategy is idealistic about goals, and realistic about means,” the document says. There is nothing wrong with that except its patent falseness. Its goals are impossible, and its means are non-existent. And for three more years, it will be American policy.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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