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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (44970)	9/17/2002 11:35:55 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

I believe this comes from the Wolfowitz/Woolsey/Perle argument that the actual results from inspection will be nugatory, especially when balanced against the gravity of the threat from missing hidden WMD. I'm at a different point, at least for the moment. It looks to me as if the WWP crew, along with the Rumsfeld Cheney crew, came to office with an analysis of foreign policy that said, to put it crudely, the US needed an easy war to win. So long as its principle foreign policy shaping resource was force (a classic neocon position, but certainly not held only by such), the US needed a firm exercise of force, the better to shape the world to its liking. Iraq is the place for that war in this estimation because its military is perceived to be weak, it has very large symbolic status in the ME, the oil argument is not trivial, and it signals Cheney's old buddies in the the Bush I administration that he is finally winnning that argument. Thus, all the flailing around, looking for a justification. I can understand the first part of this analysis, though I disagree with it, that is the part in which foreign policy is based, first of all, on fear. The second part I find difficult to swallow, that is, the part that the US simply finds the best place to demonstrate force. That's the part that leads to the doctrine of preemptive attack.