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Essay on America's War in Iraq
In speeches that were lambasted by the foreign-policy establishment of the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan dubbed the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and called for a "global campaign for democracy." Liberal critics called his comments extremist and dangerous. George Kennan, architect of America's containment policy toward communism, said that such rhetoric would produce "endless war" and "disqualifies the US from active participation in the world.
But for a group of young staffers in and around the Pentagon - who are now top advisers in the Bush administration - these fighting words were gold. Weary of what they saw as the weakness and indecision of the Carter years, they believed in American destiny and a more "muscular" American role in the world. Nor did they mind going it alone (Frankel, A1). In fact, they welcomed it. Many of these Reagan-era hard-liners found no place in the first Bush administration, or the Clinton years that followed it. But now, under George W. Bush, they have helped craft what may be the boldest rethinking of national security policy since the 1940s - a policy that is now leading US troops into the streets of Baghdad, and possibly beyond (Weisman, A10).
On September 17, 2002 the Bush administration published its “National Security Strategy of the United States of America.” So far, there has been no serious examination of this important document in the establishment media. This is unfortunate, to say the least, because this document advances the political and theoretical justification for a colossal escalation of American militarism. The document asserts as the guiding policy of the United States the right to use military force anywhere in the world, at any time it chooses, against any country it believes to be, or it believes may at some point become, a threat to American interests......
