I'm on the distribution for some White House public relations emails. Here's the outline of one I just received, based on President Obama's 9/17/14 address to service men and women at McGill Air Force Base, entitled "Five Things You Need To Know About ISIL":
1. ISIL is threatening America and our allies..
2. The U.S. continues to conduct targeted airstrikes against ISIL.
3. American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission.
4. This is not and will not be America's fight alone.
5. Congress should provide the authorities and resources the U.S. military needs to succeed.
I've highlighted the first of the five items, the one to which I most object.
The White House contends that ISIL is threatening America and our allies. and elaborates on this point:
Our intelligence community has not yet detected specific plots from ISIL against our homeland, but they have repeatedly threatened our core interests, including our personnel, our embassies, our consulates, and our facilities in Iraq, Syria, and in the broader Middle East. "If left unchecked, they could pose a growing threat to the United States," [President Obama] said.
The claim that military action against ISIL is required even though we know of no direct threats from the organization is a classic use of the execrable
preventive war doctrine:
A preventive war or preventative war is a war initiated to prevent another party from attacking, when an attack by that party is imminent or known to be planned. Preventive war aims to forestall a shift in the balance of power[1] by strategically attacking before the balance of power has a chance to shift in the direction of the adversary. Preventive war is distinct from preemptive war, which is first strike when an attack is imminent.[1] Preventive war undertaken without the approval of the United Nations is illegal under the modern framework of international law,[2] though Robert Delahunty and John Yoo from the George W. Bush administration maintained in their discussion of the Bush Doctrine that these standards are unrealistic.[3]
The claim that our "core interests" are involved in threats to "our personnel, our embassies, our consulates, and our facilities in Iraq, Syria, and in the broader Middle East" means that the U.S. feels free to define the entire world as an arena for discretionary military action, since there isn't a country anywhere in or near which we have no embassies, consulates, or facilities. This is a claim which we would vigorously opposed if any other nation made it.
It's incredible to me that there seems to be no one among our political leaders who is capable of even confronting, let alone preventing the establishment of this kind of doctrine as the 'organizing principle' of our great nation.