Wrong In Many Respects

The Philadelphia Inquirer has an editorial today on the Bush Doctrine that is misguided at best:

With his vow at the Republican National Convention to launch a "liberty century," it's clear that President Bush would commit the United States to a course of long-term nation-building in the heart of the Muslim world.
Iraq and Afghanistan are merely the costly, rocky start to this far-reaching plan to bring democracy to what Bush calls "the broader Middle East."
This vision has profound implications. Considering the missteps and setbacks since Baghdad fell, the merits and risks of this doctrine must receive a full airing in the presidential campaign.
Four years ago, such an aggressive global mission seemed the furthest thing from the mind of candidate Bush. He disdained nation-building. But Bush says that Sept. 11 "requires our country to think differently."

Indeed it does. Bush made very clear in his Bush Doctrine speech, as well as nearly every speech since, that this may go on for decades. The start does not seem so "rocky" when compared to the rebuilding of Germany and Japan. Those two nations were literally destroyed and then rebuilt to become major economic powers. We have been in Iraq for only a year and a half and have faced al-Qaeda terrorists and deposed Baathists who are doing everything possible to ensure we fail.

That is true on many fronts, from U.S. intelligence operations to airline security. But Americans must recognize that the sacrifices entailed in Bush's plan would not end with the departure of troops from Iraq.
The President seeks nothing less than a new kind of Cold War against violent Islamist extremists.
In his convention speech, Vice President Cheney made explicit that analogy, and its long-term weight. Cold War strategies, Cheney said approvingly, "were carried out by Democratic and Republican presidents in the decades that followed" World War II.
By "extending the frontiers of freedom" to repressed populations from northern Africa to central Asia, Bush hopes to eliminate the conditions that foster terrorists.

The War on Terror is a new Cold War. This time it is not against a nation state but but against religious faithful who believe in us as infidels and have no qualms about the means they utilize to attacks America or our allies. Granted they have nation state benefactors such as Syria and Iran but these nations support the radical islamic agenda covertly. Just as the Cold War occasionally flaired into a hot war, so will the War on Terror.

It was no accident that speaker after speaker at the GOP convention emphasized this theme. As former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani put it, "The hatred and anger in the Middle East arises from the lack of accountable governments."
Perhaps. But some others don't see it that way - notably Osama bin Laden. It's true that the terrorist mastermind likes neither the Saudi royal house nor how, in his view, it is propped up by American (i.e. infidel) forces stationed in his native land. But he has no desire to replace the House of Saud with a democratic government. Instead, he seeks a society ruled by Islamic law and fundamentalist clerics.

This is exactly right, bin-Laden does wish to impose oppressive sharia law on the Saudi peninsula. It is also easy to pick Saudi Arabia as the one nation that the Bush doctrine may not work in. The Saudi's are the keepers of the two holiest sites in Islam and the Saudi royals have a lot of oil capital with which to ensure they are not ousted. Because of our dependence on their oil, we have to use a different tact with them. but what of Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Iran, and Pakistan? A democratic Iraq will have great force in encouraging the reformers of these nations to lean toward more democratic principles.

There's another wrinkle to spreading democracy that the Bush Doctrine glosses over. Democracies are unpredictable; by definition, they go their own way. They can't be relied upon always to behave as the United States wishes. They might not, for example, go along with it every time an American president gets it in his head to invade somebody.

Just as we saw this time, all nations have their own interests at heart when it comes to playing politics. For the Germans and French it was oil contracts with Saddam's regime, for a future democratic Iraq it will be other issues that we will view differently. We are not acting imperialistic in the least with regard to freeing Iraq from a generation of murder and rape. Quite the contrary, we look to impose a liberal democratic standard that will, like the beginning in America, have its growing pains and will act in it's own interest for its own aims. Those aims may not be our aims. BTW, Bush didn't just get it in his head to invade Iraq. the president went to the UN (twice) and Congress to get approval for the invasion. It was granted in both places. To suggest that George Bush just woke up one morning and decided to invade Iraq for no good reason is disingenuous at best and should not be in an editorial written in a big city newspaper, regardless of its partisanship.

By reasserting this doctrine last week, Bush left no doubt where he stands in the debate over using "hard power" - military might - vs. "soft power" - diplomacy, aid, trade and the power of example. He will emphasize military power to bring about results (e.g. democratic reforms) others would stress "soft power" to achieve.
Iraq is not a promising first test. "Hard power" easily toppled Saddam Hussein. Then, the administration botched the "soft power" tasks of the occupation, culminating in the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal. That mess, nearly forgotten in the superficial tumult of the campaign, has obliterated in the Muslim world most of the goodwill and respect that might once have fueled an American mission to promote democracy.

Wrong! Bush has used both hard and soft power to our benefit. Libya turned over all their WMD by the mix of hard and soft power. Hard power alone will not work as witnessed in Chechnya and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Conversely, soft power alone will not work either, as we saw with Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policies with Hitler or the botched Jimmy Carter agreement with North Korea in 1994. Hard and soft power, used in tandem, are how a nation gets results. Using the Abu Ghraib prison scandal as an example of us blowing the use of soft power makes no sense. The soft power screw up example I would've used was America believing that Chalabi would be a key player in the new government. I guess the Inquirer is just upset that they couldn't use the Abu Ghraib story to bludgeon the president anymore and is making sure we don't forget.

As for the idea that we had alot of goodwill to squander, we did not. That became clear when we saw pictures of Muslims celebrating on September 11th 2001. Hell, read any edition of Arab News prior to 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq and you can see how much dislike existed.

If the prison scandal is the prism through which Muslims perceive our efforts to usher in liberty, Middle Eastern democracies will be few and far between.
Bush's opponent, Democratic Sen. John Kerry, agrees that the war on terror will be "long-term," but is not as intent on building Middle East democracies by whatever means necessary. He talks of "renewed alliances," better intelligence, cutting off terrorist funds and taking military action if required. Kerry has characterized the Bush approach as "bully instead of persuade."
So far, he's been better at nailing what's wrong with Bush's doctrine than in detailing how his approach could succeed.

The prison scandal was abhorrent and did do us harm, however, we have punished, or are in the process of punishing, those responsible. The perpetrators of the prison crimes were a tiny fraction of all deployed service people, the Inquirer does a disservice to each of them by continuing to harp on the story. President Bush did not order Lindey England to put a collar around the neck of an Iraqi detainee, the people who were responsible will be treated as the criminals they are and spend time in prison.

Kerry talks of renewed alliances, better intelligence, and cutting off terrorist funds, wow, those are novel concepts. Let's see, renewed alliances with whom? Australia? Yes we have a stronger alliance with that pacific rim powerhouse than before. Poland? Yes we have a stronger alliance with the eastern European nation than before. Who could Kerry mean? Maybe France. You know France, that nation that is currently stalling the US and Britain from sanctioning a government complicit in genocide in Sudan. The nation that acted entirely unilaterally when they sent troops into the Ivory Coast to prop up a thug dictator. The nation who believes that by appeasing terrorists will ensure they will not be attacked. Yeah, I guess the Inquirer means France.

Better intelligence? Damn, I wish Bush thought of that. That Kerry is smart. You know smart like voting to cut billions from the intelligence services after the first World Trade Center bombing. You know, smart like attending as few intelligence commitee meetings as possible. You know, smart.

And those terrorist funds should be cut off. That hillbilly dolt W. must be real dumb to not think of that. I heard some rumblings about cutting off those funds on like maybe...9/12/01. I might be mistaken though.