Our Incoherent Foreign Policies

By Elizabeth Bueti Monagle April 25 2003

A prominent European statesman called the Bush foreign policy incoherent, a strikingly apt characterization of Bush's rationale for invading Iraq. During the months preceding the invasion, concealed Weapons of Mass Destructions (WMDs) were given as the reason for going to the UN and calling for new inspections. The Bush administration successfully pressed for a new UN mandate to get Inspectors back into Iraq to search for WMDs. Though the Inspectors failed to find any they nevertheless were willing to continue to search. Here we see the first incomprehensible shift in the Bush rationale. The US, increasingly impatient that no WMDs were uncovered, categorically insisted that they did indeed exist, despite any supporting evidence. The President called for a second UN authorization to invade. Since Iraq had neither attacked any other sovereign country nor unleashed any WMDs since Desert Storm or in an earlier uprising in the Kurdish part of Iraq, the UN refused. Its reason for refusing was that it is a clear violation of international law to invade another country without provocation or without the express invitation of a sovereign nation requesting assistance in repelling an invader (as was the case in the Korean War and Vietnam). With the exception of Central and Latin America where the US has played fast and loose using the Monroe Doctrine as its rationale for invading a sovereign nation, the US has NEVER INV ADED A NATION WITHOUT PROVOCATION IN THE LARGER WORLD ARENA. This first was justified in the 2002 Bush Doctrine that declared our nation can preemptively deal with any country deemed a threat to us. That is indeed extraordinary because now, using the same doctrine, any nation in the world can attack any other country at will.

Once the invasion of Iraq began, a third shift in the rationale was promoted. We were not just seeking WMDs and unilaterally invading a country in order to find these concealed weapons that had yet to be found, we now asserted the right to overthrow an existing government because it is and had been" evil.” This is a truly amazing level of omnipotence our executive branch has assigned to itself. Not only can we now attack anyone we view as dangerous to our security even if evidence is lacking to support this belief, we can attack any country we deem lIevil." Since there are 53 out of the 193 countries or so countries in the world which are engaged in some internal revolts/uprisings, can Bush be seriously proposing to invade all of them? Some “evil" countries such as North Korea have rulers who have killed more of its citizens than Hussein could ever dream of doing. Why is Bush frantically back pedalling away from invading North Korea yet increasingly threatening pikers like Syria?

Reasonable people should be worried by the almost daily shift in rationales for hostile action, the seemingly irreconcilable inconsistencies in these policies, and the ever-expanding claim to hegemony over large parts of the world.