Prevention

I believe John Edwards is delivering a speech on Iran and "the lessons of Iraq" right now. I only have some excerpts from the speech, so I can't fully evaluate it, but this seems like an important point:

But there is a difference between doing everything in our power to keep America safe and a reckless, belligerent policy that actually makes us less safe. The preventive war doctrine was a stunning departure from the policy that had kept America safe during both world wars and during the Cold War. It is wrong on the merits, wrong on the morals, and wrong for America.

Good for Edwards. I've found it infuriating how little the leading Democrats seem inclined to engage with the key strategic elements of Bush's response to 9/11 and this is the biggest nail that needs hammering down. Bush replaced decades of non-proliferation policy, to say nothing of centuries of good sense and basic morality, to decide that unilateral preventive military action should be at the center of our approach to dealing with the world. This is nonsense. The United States has long got along fine without waging such wars, and our effort to wage one has been a disaster. And yet somehow Bush has managed to recenter the American political debate so that an idea that would have seemed shocking ten years ago -- waging aggressive unilateral warfare against countries that haven't attacked us or anyone else -- is now meekly accepted by all as a vital part of the toolkit.

Again, good for Edwards.

Comments

or, in the language of the modern right: Edwards has preemptively surrendered to our future enemies.

Posted by cleek | November 5, 2007 10:48 AM

It is wrong on the merits, wrong on the morals

Edwards is talking the talk. The dems have to realize what a powerful word 'morals' is. Morals and values - use them everywhere I say! Edwards is impressing me more and more.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | November 5, 2007 11:10 AM

Here are some excerpts.

My favorite line:

Senator Clinton is voting like a hawk in Washington, while talking like a dove in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Posted by Petey | November 5, 2007 11:11 AM

1) Much of the great harm Bush has done to this country was aided and abetted by the Democratic leadership.

Because the Democrats allowed Bush to promote the Big Lie after 911 -- that the attack occurred "because they hate our freedom".

2) In reality, the attack was provoked by the actions of the US government in the Middle East -- actions done contrary to the US national interest but on behalf of those special interests who pump large sums into US elections:
Big Oil, Big Defense, and the Israel Lobby.

3) It has been infuriating to see how many Democratic leaders are happy to collude with Bush/Cheney in selling this country down the river.

4) Instead of punishing the interests who caused 911 , we have allowed those interests to manipulate the "war on terror" to further advance their goals -- to seize the oil fields of Iraq while killing an enemy of Israel.

5) By using DECEIT to promote an unnecessary war that has killed 3700 of our sons, has crippled thousands more for life, and has consumed several $Trillion that could have been used for major national problems: medical care, education, and Social Security shortfalls.

Posted by Don Williams | November 5, 2007 11:14 AM

I'd feel a lot better about Edwards if he articulated what he thinks to be our "Overall Strategic Objectives."

I agree about Bush, though. America the unipolarity is viable only so long as we avoid blowback coalitionism.

If you really want to articulate a counter-Bush, counter-Hillary strategy that is defensible "all the way down" -- i.e. rhetorically, logically, empirically-- start with this fact: 9/11 was a system shock, a Kuhnian paradigmatic crisis -- not just here but globally. Instead of using its momentum, which was substantial, to evolve the international system -- aggressively reform the UN, renormalize international law to account for the past 50 years of data drift, give the system some teeth; i.e. champion "law", "order", "covalence" -- Bush set aside all fig leaves which give modesty to power and, in so doing, evicted our nearest competitors from their cooperative Nash equilibria.

If you want a fancy pants term for this, Bush may have autocatalyzed the centrifuge. No bueno, as they say down south.

Posted by JA | November 5, 2007 11:24 AM

MY is wrong twice:

Our policy of avoiding "unilateral preventive military action" meant that, though it was clear in the late 1990s that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda camps were a serious threat, nothing could be done. Oh, we'd "react" to particular attacks, but we wouldn't take serious steps to invade Afghanistan and eliminate the threat. That policy led directly to the deaths on 9/11. MY says it was the right policy, which, it seems to me, requires a bit more argument, and not just the assertion that the 3000 dead meant we were "getting along fine."

The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is not a pure example of "unilateral preventive military action." The US invaded with a coalition, including our principal foreign ally. And Iraq, unlike, say, Iran today, was in 2003 a nation the US had been at war with, by any conventional understanding, for a decade.

Posted by Thomas | November 5, 2007 12:05 PM

Thomas, the answer to that dilemma is to stop such attacks at our borders, not invade other countries preemptively.

Posted by Bill | November 5, 2007 12:09 PM

What a sad, even pathetic commentary it is that rejecting wars of aggression now defines the leftmost edge of respectable foreign policy -- and that this is actually a point of distinction between Edwards and Clinton.

Posted by Nell | November 5, 2007 1:07 PM

I'm glad Edwards said that, and he is certainly better than Obama or Hillary when it comes to standing up at least a llittle bit for what is right.

But if you're not repeating over and over that:

1) Bush is an anti-American, anti-democratic, torture-practicing war criminal

2) who started a war based on lies about WMD

3) that killed a million Iraqis

4) and is costing us thousands of lives and trillions of dollars

Then you're still in denial and you'll never be able to convey the requisite sense of gravity of the situation we face.

Posted by Junius Brutus | November 5, 2007 2:17 PM

Thomas,

I must disagree. We took unilateral military action against OBL during the Clinton adminstration. We did not succeed in killing him or crippling Al Qaeda.

True, we did not invade Afghanistan in the Clinton years. With the GOP-controlled Congress fighting the administration on almost every issue, it is difficult to imagine how Clinton could have done more. If Congress had taken the threat of terrorism as seriously as the executive branch, things might have turned out differently.

Given the voluminous documentation of the diffidence of the Bush administration to the Al Qaeda threat prior to 9/11, it's a good bet that we would not have invaded Afghanistan had the 9/11 attacks not occurred.

Also, if the Bush executive branch had taken threats of terrorism more seriously, the 9/11 plans might have been disrupted sufficiently to prevent the attacks from succeeding.

And it is a very good bet that a Gore administration would have paid more attention to terrorism than the pre-9/11 Bush administration did.

Posted by h2 | November 5, 2007 2:45 PM

The other problem with going after Al Qaeda in the 90's (or maybe it's the same problem) is that for all we know, they could just be having fantasy terrorist camps, kind of like fantasy baseball camps.

It's not until they actually do something, to US, that the problem seems real or serious, and then we overreact.

This highlights the thing I really like about Edwards: He's not afraid to stir up a shitstorm. He's perfectly willing to say things that make conservatives mad at him. Which is another way of saying he can't easily be intimidated.

Posted by Doctor Jay | November 6, 2007 6:34 PM