THE BUSH DOCTRINE

In 1955 President Eisenhower journeyed to Vienna to meet the Soviet Premier. His mission was not to negotiate an end to the Cold War but to reassure the Soviets and a world nervous about a nuclear exchange. Eisenhower opened the summit by making the pledge, “The United States will never engage in aggressive war.” First Secretary Bulganin replied “We believe you.” After that exchange tensions between the two super power blocks have risen and fallen but the world and the Soviet Union never had reason to doubt either Eisenhower’s sincerity or that his words represented an enduring policy engrained in the American character. Not, that is until the 21st Century and the announcement of the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war.

A little more than a century ago the United States did engage in a war to seize property , the Caribbean and Pacific colonies of Spain. It was that splendid little war that William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer vied to start and that gave us a war hero who became President. But despite the agitation of the Yellow Press and the overwhelming public support for going to war, President McKinley resisted the call to arms until Spain had first declared war on the United States.

Since President Eisenhower’s declaration we went to war in Vietnam. However misguided that war was it was not a war of aggression. As America saw it we were defending one people from the proxy aggression of another. When we went to war in Kuwait it was in response to an aggressive invasion of one sovereign state by another.
Again in Bosnia and in later Kosovo the cassa belli was in the first instance a Serbian proxy war against another people and in the second a direct Serbian war of genocide against the people. America held to the principle that Ike announced on our behalf and on each instance the support of a broad based coalition of allies, including Russia.

A few days ago I was speaking with a Vietnam veteran whose son has just been deployed to Kuwait with the 4th Armored. “I understand the Iraqi is an evil man and we will probably have to fight him”, he said, “I just wish we weren’t the aggressor.” He agrees with the President’s position on abortion, on tax cuts and on affirmative action. He is fanatic about gun rights and believes in Black Helicopters under UN control, but he cannot justify the war his son has just been sent to fight. President Bush has lost his vote for the next election. He said if Kerry is the nominee he will vote Democrat, otherwise he will just stay home in 2004. He said that preemptive war is against the heart of the America that he loved and he cannot support a violation of those ideals. Then this brave man, who is entitled to wear a silver star, wept.

America’s ideals run deep and they are part and parcel of patriotism. Those ideals and principles that founded this country are not subject to alteration by partisan interests. They do not waiver and are firmly embedded in an American character that has endured into its third century. Those, whether domestic or foreign, forget them do so at their own peril.