Americans Must Understand the Bush Doctrine

Americans Must Understand the Bush Doctrine

by Eugene B. Kogan
The Waterford Times
March 11, 2005

Oscars are worth watching after all. Millions of Americans who tuned in for the Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 27, saw Chris Rock take shots at President George W. Bush's foreign policy. However inept Rock's comparison of the U.S. invasion of Iraq to The Gap's war against Banana Republic, Hollywood -- unlike the vast majority of Americans -- was holding the Bush Administration accountable by talking openly about this important national issue.

The unfortunate truth is that foreign policy is not a kitchen table discussion topic in most American families. But it should be because more than 1,400 of our fellow citizens have died and more than 10,000 have been wounded in Iraq, while carrying out President Bush's radical foreign policy doctrine.

One hears claims that President Bush articulated his Doctrine in this year's inaugural address. The truth, however, was that on Jan. 20 the president reminded the nation of his existing doctrine. Indeed, at his first post-inaugural press conference, Bush said that the speech "reflected the policies of the past four years ... that we're implementing in Afghanistan and Iraq."

It took President Bush nine months in 2002, not 17 minutes in 2005, to articulate his worldview. In the 2002 State of the Union, Bush branded Iraq, Iran and North Korea, along with "their terrorist allies," as the "axis of evil," emphasizing the tyranny-terrorism nexus which became the first pillar of his doctrine. The president echoed this pillar in this year's State of the Union speech, pledging to "confront regimes that continue to harbor terrorists."

The second pillar was the change of strategic emphasis from pre-emptive strikes to preventive war, which became starkly evident in Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech, in which he warned that "I will not wait on events while dangers gather." The president was yet more clear in his commencement speech at West Point on June 1, 2002: "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. ... In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action."

The third pillar of the Bush Doctrine was an intensely moralistic belief that America had to make the world not just safer, but better. President Bush built on this strategic moralism in this year's inaugural address, proclaiming it "the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." And in this year's State of the Union, Bush asserted that the road of Providence "leads to freedom."

The Iraq War was a direct product of the Bush Doctrine. When he addressed the nation on the threat posed by Iraq on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush called outlaw regimes and terrorists "different faces of the same evil." Addressing the United Nations several weeks earlier, the president called liberty for the Iraqis "a great moral cause, and a great strategic goal." The Iraq War was preventive, waged to preclude the growing Iraqi threat from becoming imminent at a yet-to-be specified future time.

Many of our fellow citizens ave lost lives carrying out the Bush Doctrine in raq, but, astonishingly, the national conversation about the doctrine has been negligible. In his inaugural and State of the Union speeches, the president gave Americans two powerful reminders that he had a doctrine, which he intended to act on.

A national conversation about America's world role is long overdue. Hollywood is already talking about it. Are you?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Eugene B. Kogan is a senior political analyst at Americans for Informed Democracy in New Haven. A 2003 magna cum laude graduate and trustee of Connecticut College, he is the author of "The War Congress: Shouldering the Responsibilities of a U.S. Global Role," forthcoming from the Americans for Democratic Action Education Fund.