Preemption Is Wrong, Except When It's Not

My point, illustrated here.

AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY: washington, april 9, 2004. A hush fell over the city as George W. Bush today became the first president of the United States ever to be removed from office by impeachment. Meeting late into the night, the Senate unanimously voted to convict Bush following a trial on his bill of impeachment from the House.

Moments after being sworn in as the 44th president, Dick Cheney said that disgraced former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would be turned over to the Hague for trial in the International Court of Justice as a war criminal. Cheney said Washington would "firmly resist" international demands that Bush be extradited for prosecution as well.

On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Thousands of U.S. special forces units parachuted into this neutral country, while air strikes targeted the Afghan government and its supporting military. Pentagon units seized abandoned Soviet air bases throughout Afghanistan, while establishing support bases in nearby nations such as Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, FBI agents throughout the United States staged raids in which dozens of men accused of terrorism were taken prisoner.

Reaction was swift and furious. Florida Senator Bob Graham said Bush had "brought shame to the United States with his paranoid delusions about so-called terror networks." British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused the United States of "an inexcusable act of conquest in plain violation of international law." White House chief counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke immediately resigned in protest of "a disgusting exercise in over-kill."

There's more. Pay special attention to the last line.

An unbelievable scenario? I’d say that it’s just about as unbelievable as holding the 9/11 Commission hearings in the midst of a war and in the months before a presidential election.

For some on the Left, there is nothing that the Bush Administration could have done to satisfy them. Regardless of the subject, policy, undertaking, utterance, anything that comes from the present administration will be designated as wrong by some on the Left; and not just wrong, but Evil.

Accept it. I have.

(Thanks to John Hawkins)

Comments

[teal marie]

You're right. Did you see where Sony has bought the rights to Clarkes book to make a movie? Payback for Primary Colors. Without the sex. No wonder Clarke looked so smug during the hearings, he knew he had a movie deal.

[Calliope]

Precisely so. I read this yesterday, I got linked to it from Tomfoolery of the Highest Order.

The left is doing anything it can do to put Bush in the pilot's seat moments before the plane strikes the WTC.

Is it going to work? My guess is no. I've been wrong before though.

[Helen]

The irony of it is that those on the Left are demanding to know why GWB didn't act pre-emptively. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

[John Salmon]

I read that piece elsewhere and I thought, "That's so over the top, it's kind of silly". But on second thought there's one part of it that's undeniably true: The Dems would never have supported Bush if he'd attacked Afghanistan pre-9/11. So what's their complaint? Not enough meetings on the subject?

What I find troubling is that most Democrats not named Joe Lieberman seem to consider George Bush the enemy, not al-Qaida. Whatever happened to the "Loyal Opposition"?

[Avery]

This originally comes from Gregg Easterbrook at The New Republic. I find his to be a sane voice in the midst of a lot of partisan shouting.

[James Sloan]

Helen, my thoughts exactly.

Whatever action Bush takes is defined to be the worst possible course of action, for a whole litany of reasons. Such reasons include alienating our allies, oppressing indigenous peoples, subverting the democratic process of the UN, etc.

My advice is this: Since the leftists/fifth columnists/enemy sympathizers in the Congress, media, and punditworld will call for his scalp no matter what he does, he should do whatever the hell he wants to.

A few bits of wisdom that I've seen floating around.

Republicans propose fighting wars. Democrats propose losing them.

They're not anti-war, they're just on the other side.

(hypothetically speaking) On the news of the deaths of OBL and GWB, Republicans are gladdened by the former and saddened by the latter, while the reverse is true for Democrats.

[Justin Levine]

Masterfully put.

VP Cheney alluded to a similar theme when he pointed out that if we had struck Afghanistan before 9/11, it would not have stopped the attacks on the World Trade Center but that the entire world would have said that the 9/11 attacks were a justified response to the American "agression".

[Nick Larsen]

In responce to Mr. Sloan;
I'm tempeted to counter, in the same vein, "Democrats get us into war, Republicans deal with the consequences."

I am troubled by the partisian tone (tone, that's too great of an understatment, but vocabulary fails me at the moment) the WoT has taken. That is not a critic of any posts here, I've become quite partisain myself over the last year, but I see myself slipping into it as a responce to attacks from the left.

I am scared the options of the decision makers will become limited because of these attacks.

The question I keep asking myself about the Democrats it this, "Where is Harry Truman?"