The Bush Dictatorship
by David Gordon
by David Gordon
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A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. By Glenn Greenwald. Crown Publishers, 2007. Xiv + 303 pages.
The key passage in Glenn Greenwald's masterly book appears on page 186:
Iran is a rational state actor, which, like most other countries in the world — including American allies — will eagerly cooperate with the United States when their interests coincide with ours…. To know that a country and its leaders act rationally is to take a huge and critical step toward realizing that that country — no matter how internally repressive it might be — cannot and will not be a threat to the U.S.
Greenwald's argument is a simple one: Because of the overwhelming military might of the United States, no other country can attack us without facing utter destruction. Other countries, wishing rationally to advance their own interests, grasp this fact. Accordingly, they will neither attack us nor threaten us. A rational American foreign policy then to a large extent presents no difficulty. Military measures directed against other countries are unnecessary. Given the manifest costs of these measures, we should not undertake them.
October 2, 2007
David Gordon [send him mail] is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and editor of its Mises Review. He is also the author of The Essential Rothbard. See also his Books on Liberty.
Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com
