Now Here's a Scary Thought: If Bush Ruled the World

William Pfaff writing for the International Herald Tribune pens a scathing indictment of the Bush administration's new National Security Strategy statement:

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.

Leaders around the world have to be scratching their heads wondering if Bush will seriously repeat the mess that that he brought on by invading Iraq. Well, folks they're trying to market the idea of the "The Long War" as a way of returning to those Halcyon days of the Cold War where GOP found their mission of being strong on security. Really, do conservatives ever come up with a new idea, or is only the New and Improved old product with a spanking brand new label?

One asks if its authors foresee a 50- year struggle against Iran? Or with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Iraqi desert and Osama bin Laden in his cave in Waziristan? Or against febrile and fanaticized young Muslim men in European ghettos, already repudiated by the immigrant populations from which they come? Surely the great American nation will have better things to do during the next 50 years.

Somehow, like spoiled children, it looks like they're losing interest in their batterd old toy (since it's not so much fun anymore) and are moving on to playing with the Greatest Evil Iranian Mullah Monster Action Figure, Now With Kung Fu Jihadi Grip ™.

Other threats will be underplayed, but kept in sight.

In addition, we are told that the United States today "may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," and that it reserves the right to take "anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack." Whose attack? Iran's? Under what conceivable circumstances would Iran attack the United States, even if it possessed nuclear weapons?

Finally there is North Korea, which the national strategy document seems to assume already has nuclear weapons. Pyongyang is simply enjoined to "afford freedom to its people," and the North Koreans are warned that the United States will protect itself "against adverse effects of their bad conduct." The Iranian government in Tehran will surely note that pre-emption is not mentioned in connection with North Korea.

In a world that sill has nuclear weapons of which we hold a full deck, actually a peck of decks, there is little being done to dismantle existing weapons (like those of the former Soviet Union) with most of this administration's energy being devoted to not yet existing ones. It's as if the imaginary ones are more real and more threatening. Well they are easier to fight against --it's a matter of resolve, and hard work, very hard work, did I say it's hard work?... For this administration it's almost as if Plato's Cave is today's metaphor for a bomb shelter

I just don't trust this Philosopher King, or his philosphy to rule the world because he is the blind man in a world of one-eyed men.