We might summarize the Bush Doctrine this way: The United States faces an extraordinary danger. Washington is therefore prepared to take any action anywhere in the world to defend itself from this threat.

The defense of the homeland cannot be reduced to only defeating al Qaeda. The Bush administration has studied the lessons of the Israeli wars on Black September and other Palestinian groups and has drawn this conclusion: the defeat of any single group can disrupt and delay future attacks, but it cannot by itself eliminate them. Even if the United States were to utterly destroy al Qaeda, a new group would likely emerge. Therefore, the United States has three strategic goals:

1. Disrupt and defeat al Qaeda in order to buy time for a more thorough solution.
2. Prevent the emergence of follow-on groups by denying them sanctuaries in states where they can organize, train and plan.
3. Limit the threat posed by al Qaeda and follow-on groups by systematically eliminating weapons of mass destruction being held or developed by regimes that are favorably inclined toward them or in states where there is substantial sympathy for them.

A good summation of what Bush's foreign policy is all about: protect the US from further attacks, by any means necessary. (Except lying to our allies; we've shut down the Office of Strategic Disinformation.) So: what do you think?

(Mike Watkins sent us this link.)

It is also indexed under: Al Qaeda | Bush Doctrine | War on Terror | WMD

Name:

Email Address (required but not displayed or shared):

URL (optional):

Remember personal info?

Comments (you may use HTML tags for style):

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.