March 20, 2006
IS IT JUST ME, OR DOES HE SOUND OPPOSED TO THE GOAL? (via Pepys):
If Bush ruled the world (William Pfaff, MARCH 20, 2006, International Herald Tribune)
Intellectual poverty is the most striking quality of the Bush administration's new National Security Strategy statement, issued on Thursday. Its overall incoherence, its clichés and stereotyped phraseology give the impression that Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, and his fellow authors assembled it from the boilerplate of bureaucratic discourse with contempt for the Congress to whom it is primarily addressed.It reveals the administration's foreign policy as a lumpy stew of discredited neoconservative ideas with some neo- Kissingerian geopolitics now mixed in.
The statement's only visible purpose is to address a further threat to Iran, as its predecessor, in 2002, threatened Iraq. The only actual "strategy" that can be deduced from it is that the Bush administration wishes to rule the world. The document is nonsensical in content, insulting to other nations and unachievable in declared intention.
If people read it to find a statement of American foreign policy's objective, they will learn that the United States has "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Good luck.
Luck? We've increased the number of free states from 40 in 1975 to almost 90 now--luck has had nothing to do with it. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 20, 2006 4:21 PM
Pfaff is a charter member of the indecent Left, an is therefore an enemy of liberty for others and absolutely devoted to only his personal autonomy.
The writer of this "analysis" also calls Israel a "terror state" and posits that refusal to pay tribute (called "foreign aid") to the Hamas-led government of the Palestinians must be paired with stopping foreign aid to Israel, since they are both terror states. As he says on his own web site.
Posted by: Michael Gersh at March 20, 2006 5:33 PMAll power comes from God.
The sword has been placed in our hand and we do not wield it in vain.
Posted by: Lou Gots at March 20, 2006 6:24 PMThe only actual "strategy" that can be deduced from it is that the Bush administration wishes to rule the world.
If this is the best that an intellectual can come up with, then the charge that the Bush administration is intellectually impoverished ought to be seen as praise of the highest order.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at March 21, 2006 2:30 AM"Good Luck"
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Nowhere is this more evident than the Left's approach to the war. It has to be done by their means, their processes, at their timetables, else it is unacceptable.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at March 21, 2006 6:49 AMOf course if we did so by their means it would be perfect, nuanced and with an intellctual richness even the defeated would appreciate. Especially the part where we leave with our tail between our legs.
Posted by: Genecis at March 21, 2006 2:28 PM