You have a different view of human history than I do.
I see a history where, for a very long time, no one stood up to the threats from thugs until it was too late to avoid awful consequences. Men with grandiose ideas of world domination would be allowed to build armies, deploy them, cause death to thousands or millions of ordinary people (usually not themselves, though), and then, only then, would others rise up and deal with them.
What was the cost of this approach? I suppose the victims of past wars would argue (if they hadn't been killed) that it was pretty high. And human advancement and the development of individual freedom was stunted for centuries.
The heart of that approach was: There are bad people around, but until they attack us let's leave them alone. This theory reached its apex in the 1930's and through into 1941, when atrocities and an immense military buildup by a country whose recent past had been full of military aggression and whose leader was a certifiable nutball was tolerated by the world community. The League of Nations condemned Germany's rearmament, Neville Chamberlain tried to appease it as Churchill denounced it, and the Americans hid their heads in the sand until after the bombers reached Hawaii. And the Treaty of Versailles did not prohibit anyone from taking action, given that Hitler had essentially discarded the treaty by rearming to begin with.
Was waiting until the attack came the right approach then? Was it the right approach for England? Was it right for France? Poland? And finally: Did the consequences which the world ultimately suffered become worse due to the commitment of world leaders to follow the principle that peace must be maintained until one is directly attacked?
Then, through a combination of luck and skill, America developed nuclear weapons. (Think about whether it was better or worse for the world that America was first in that one.) This ended World War 2, and for a time seemed to deter other world wars from breaking out. Yet the ambivalence about confronting threats, and yes, confronting evil, has persisted. Should Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge been allowed to kill off millions in a small country? We didn't have the means then that we do now to stop it, I suppose, without great casualties to our own citizens. So we didn't stop it. Was it right not to? If today's leader of Cambodia, or Burma (Myanmar), or Fiji or wherever decides to start extinguishing large numbers of the population, should we stand idle because it's not our problem? After all, Pol Pot didn't attack us. What if thousands of a country's own citizens are killed for no reason other than political opposition? And what if, further, a philosophy of hatred toward other countries and groups is accompanied by rigid oppression at home and a program to develop weapons for the projection of power elsewhere? Are those not the very ingredients we have ignored before and suffered horrible consequences as a result?
So in my view we have come, again, to the age old question of what to do about the dictators who oppress their own people's individual freedoms while also developing weapons that would allow them to project power. They haven't attacked us, directly, yet. They may never. There were many who hoped that Hitler wouldn't attack, that the Japanese wouldn't attack, that the Taliban wouldn't attack.
And now the stakes are raised. A crude nuclear device aboard a ship in a busy seaport, a fuel-laden airplane flown into a skyscraper, a fertilizer bomb parked next to a government installation ..... these purveyors of hatred and force can attack surreptitiously and with seemingly few resources. We can't see their attacks coming via satellite or radar. Should we do nothing about that, or everything we can?
To me, it comes back to whether the world is better off confronting these mentally unstable dictators who would project power and care nothing for the freedom and happiness of civilian populations, or ignoring them and hoping that they go away. I think history teaches us that if certain ingredients are present, it is better to confront, and the earlier and more forcefully the better. I know the French feel quite differently about it. One of their own, Napoleon, was one of history's aggressors who was allowed to wreak some havoc before he was squashed like a bug.
It would have been better if warplanes had swooped from the sky and taken out Napoleon before he launched his wars of aggression. But the airplane wasn't invented until 99 1/2 years ago. It would have been better if the League of Nations had enforced its disarmament resolutions against Germany, with force if necessary. But, like the UN after it, it had no teeth and no resolve. It would have been better if the Taliban had suffered more consequences for their behavior than a few cruise missiles lobbed into empty tents on impeachment day. It would have been better if Saddam had been dealt with in 1991, or in 1992 onward when he broke his word (big surprise there) about disarming.
Peace at all costs has been, throughout history, the most costly course of all for mankind. And the tools of destruction available make the cost higher now than it has ever been. So yes, I do think that a doctrine of preemptive strikes is long, long overdue. In as many places as necessary. |
