The Bush Doctrine

Pre-emptive thinking

When Dick Cheney introduced us to the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive action, which is to strike the threat before they strike us, many would have thought that was an unfunny joke.

Well, we learnt the very hard way; the logic follows that you choose an enemy, throw a few reasons about your decision to attack in the basket and then coerce your weaker allies to join in your bludgeoning of the tougher allies and the enemy.

In the process call every voice of reason irrelevant, lump all opposition with your enemy, justify that stance with any means possible and this is by no means unilateral.

As we know, you are doing a tough job, making tough decisions and taking well, liberties.

The Underhand

The read in the news yesterday morning that the coalition had performed the underhand to the representative exiles that constitute the new Iraqi government was as pre-emptive as you could get.

A bit of trivia informs us that nine were educated in the United Kingdom and eight in the United States and by consequence they know Western values and freedom.

It obviously pre-empted every thought and preparation for the original hangover date of the 30th of June 2004 no matter how unprepared they are for this onerous task.

Definitely, this has also pre-empted the almost definitely expected carnage that might have been unleashed by the insurgents on the day of the underhand, maybe smart, we knows with these pre-emptive actions.

However, I still contend that Western values of democracy, freedom and liberties may still not be as adaptable to the Middle East as the theoreticians of the American neo-conservative doctrine might have hoped.

Premature ejaculation

Excuse my use of a rather crude phrase, but it all smacks of a problem you cannot talk about, that bothers you so much and you wonder what to do.

All the worry only tends to complicate the problem until you read an advertisement placed by some charlatan with more degrees than a lake of molten magma in the classifieds of a reputable broadsheet newspaper offering a cure for all your ailments.

Desperation, curiosity and daring-do challenge all your faculties of reason in this inordinate quest for a cure which you never get.

The allegory only baffles you about what other pre-emptive actions might be taken apart from the others like awarding the Iraqi contracts to only America and its allies, then asking the non-allies to forgive Iraqi debt.

Consider the pre-emptive actions of officially sanctioned prisoner abuse then realising that you have forfeited moral high ground to seek an extension to your waiver from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Now you take other pre-emptive by signing bi-lateral agreements with 90 little Bantustans to undermine the scope of the ICC.

In the obscure situation surrounding the sovereignty of the Iraqi government and the coalition who would now defer to Mr John Negroponte, the erstwhile US ambassador to the UN, now US ambassador to Iraq - I suppose it is a just reward from hothouse diplomacy based on faulty intelligence to another hothouse prison to protect you from the insurgents.

That apart from the expected pre-emptive - a misnomer - bargaining power that he holds by withholding funding, or releasing it at whim, the American troops who have done so well to maintain the security of the large Green zone in the middle of Baghdad do not pull out too soon.

Even I am being presumptuously pre-emptive about suggesting that. Another thing, Al Paul Bremer has left the country.