This really isn't that difficult. A "preemptive" war is when you preempt an imminent attack by attacking first. Israel preempted a first attack by the massed Arab armies in the Six Day War. As a matter of international law of war, there is absolutely no question about one nation's right to attack first to preempt an imminent attack. If an American submarine had come across the Japanese fleet launching planes on December 7, it would not have to have loitered around until bombs were actually dropped on Pearl Harbor before it sank the carriers.
What the United States asserted in Iraq -- what Charlie Gibson would have meant if he understood the Bush Doctrine -- was a controversial right to launch a preventative war. A preventative attack is meant to defend the attacking nation by preventing a probably enemy from getting any where near to attacking. As Dick Cheney said, we didn't want to wait until an Iraqi attack was imminent. We took that position because 9/11 had taught us that we weren't willing to wait to be attacked, even if the attack did little strategic damage.
One of the lessons of the internet is that the left is every bit as ignorant as the right, but that ignorance is more annoying when it accompanies an assumption of superior knowledge.
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7 comments:
So, why doesn't the Bush Doctrine apply to Iran?
What makes you think it doesn't?
Which Bush Doctrine? And isn't the real test of a doctrine whether it's adopted by other nations, like, for example, Israel.
Because we haven't declared war on Iran, although it declared war on us.
David, I don't know, whaddya got? And I am not getting the concept of a sovereign state having doctrines that do not count until ratified by other sovereign states.
So far as I can tell, the only people who believe in the
Bush Doctrine are Code PINKO and Daily Kos. Can't blame the skeptics, either.
Correct, the Bush doctrine as discussed here doesn't apply to Iran because President Bush spent too much political capital on invading Afghanistan and Iraq. I do find it amusing that Mr. Eagar is faulting Bush's hypocrisy on not being enough of a war monger. Other than that, though, I fail to grasp his point.
The Bush Doctrine is not the Judd Doctrine (we have a moral obligation to invade any nation with a dictatorial regime) and event the Judd Doctrine doesn't apply to Iran, which is apparently a democracy allied with the United States.
I supported the invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq, with a bigger army, to be followed by breaking up the 11 nations of SW Asia into (at least) 19, with a long occupation in store.
As well as measures to defang Islam.
I am a Liberal, I believe in self-determination of the peoples and a principled, not an opportunist, mercantilist international policy. Long live free Great Kurdistan!
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