I've never trusted George W. Bush. He doesn't fit my idea of what a president should be. My president should care about serving the needs of all Americans. My president should respect the spirit of the constitution and the ideals on which this nation was founded. Above all, my president must be a person of great character and integrity. (I would also like my president to be able to pronounce nuclear) It is safe to say that George W. Bush is none of these things. All George W. Bush seems to represent is the triumph of aristocratic mediocrity.
The only thing the scared me more than the terrorist attacks was the thought of George W. Bush pushing one too many red buttons in a panic. Thankfully we didn't nuke anyone. I still privately feared that he might stage a nutty, but wasn't about to jinx anything. For those few days after 9/11 he was the President, not a yahoo from Texas who lost the election to Al Gore. If only good things lasted. I think GWB feared the fate that his father met, so much so that he used the events of 9/11, not to unite the country but to keep his base happy for the coming elections.
Then came the tax-cuts, the PATRIOT Act, the with-us-or-against-us approach to policy, and on and on. Was this the same guy who ran to the left of his current agenda and still had 49 million people tell him where to shove it? The 9/11 honeymoon was over and it came time to reap political hay for all his cronies. GWB did a bang up job. If I didn't hate him or distrust him before, I sure did now.
When Bush rolled out his Iraq `Plan' my first impulse was to buy stock in the oil and gas industry. I was unhappy with the idea of our corporations profiting from American and Iraqi blood. My only response to any question about it Iraq was - "no blood for oil." During one of my many anti-Bush tirades, a friend asked me what I would have done differently in the aftermath of 9/11 and if Iraq would have been a part of that response. Until then I had been attacking the motives for the Iraq war, not the war itself. Yes, I am splitting the hair might thin. I have always believed that any good work becomes tainted I it is done for the wrong reason. Iraq was invaded for the wrong reasons, but will any good come of it?
I have always had trouble with the argument - peace for peace's sake. I cannot think of one good thing that was not borne out of struggle, hardship and blood. Peace and freedom always come at a price. In the past we propped up brutal dictators solely because they aligned themselves with our economic interests. For the first time in a long time it seemed like we might end up fostering a democracy. Could I truly be against this?
Motives matter. I would have trusted Al Gore if he had decided to remove Saddam by force. Trust. I didn't, don't and won't trust Bush. All the work to restore democracy in Iraq could crumble if too much oil revenue reaches American boardrooms and too little reaches the Iraqi people and their economy. Everything could crumble if the security situation deteriorates because of we were failed commit enough troops and resources. If this were truly in the cause of freedom and national security, why not ask the nation to sacrifice in this time of need? What in our history suggests that we would not come together and sacrifice for the national good? If we were not ready to sacrifice blood and time, surely we could sacrifice some of our tax-cuts. Motives matter.
While the motives of the Bush administration are suspect, I am not against the idea of military action to create and foster and democracy. It troubles me that 100,000 Iraqis are dead. It troubles me more that no one in the media is interested in that question. It troubles me to advocate a policy that leads to bloodshed when I have never served in the armed forces. It troubles me more that our armed forces are getting squeezed financially because we had to have our tax-cuts. Maybe a different administration would have averted the mass casualties that this administration is creating. Maybe a lot other thing wouldn't have wrong if we had approached this war as humanitarians and not as capitalists. ("approached war as humanitarians" - the irony is not lost on me) I cannot escape the fact that fostering a democracy in the Iraq is good thing for its citizens, its neighbors and us.
It isn't just about Iraq. We should be in Sudan. We should be in Rwanda. We should be anywhere where a group of thugs with guns thinks it can bully a population into doing its bidding. When dictators and terrorists see our flag, they should know that we have bigger guns, even bigger hearts and aren't afraid to use both. Our foreign policy should be dedicated to helping all a people live free from oppression, hunger and disease.
I don't know how or if many people agree with this idea of U.S foreign policy. For three years I have developed my ideas on U.S foreign policy as a reaction to the Bush administration and not from the beliefs and ideals I hold dear. This is where my beliefs have led me and this is where I am at the moment.
I would like to start a discussion of what we on the left believe U.S foreign policy should represent and accomplish. What is your vision of American foreign policy?