Bush's Imprudent Foreign Policy

Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France is considered by many to mark the birth of conservatism. Burke had little in common with the conservatives who dominate the Republican Party today. To Burke, prudence was the most important quality in a political leader. To be prudent is to be careful, cautious, and wise. A prudent leader examines all sides of an issue before taking action. He is pragmatic rather than ideological, and skeptical of abstract utopian visions.

George W. Bush may be a conservative, but he is anything but prudent, particularly in foreign policy. The invasion of Iraq was imprudent on many levels:

Initiating a full-scale war in Iraq when we were already engaged in a major conflict in Afghanistan with the actual perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, and the Taliban regime that harbored them.

Dismissing all doubts concerning the extent of Iraq’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, as well as its links to Al-Qaeda. Significant doubts were raised within the intelligence community on both these points before the war. The administration responded by pressuring intelligence agencies to produce evidence confirming the existence of weapons of mass destruction and an Al-Qaeda link, and the Office of Special Plans was set up within the Defense Department expressly to find supporting evidence on these points where the conventional channels had failed.

Dismissing out of hand potential negative consequences of an invasion of Iraq, including political chaos within the country, escalating anti-American sentiment within the Arab world, and a sharp increase in willing recruits for Al-Qaeda, all of which have since come to pass.

Launching the Iraq war with an inadequate plan and with inadequate troop levels for a post-war occupation, and ignoring the general who questioned the administration’s optimistic scenarios.

Alienating most of our major European allies by mocking them and moving ahead with the war unilaterally after our case against Saddam failed to persuade them.

Assuming we could easily and at minimal cost establish democracy within Iraq, a country with no previous history or experience with democracy. And remember, Bush’s goal was not just to bring democracy to Iraq; it was (and still is, for many in the administration) to bring democracy – by force if necessary – to the entire Middle East.

And, finally, making preemptive war the centerpiece of his national security strategy. Preemptive war makes the United States an aggressive power, contrary to our traditions. It forfeits much of our moral authority throughout the world. It also threatens other nations, encouraging them to seek armaments sufficient to deter us from attacking them. Thus our doctrine of preemptive war encourages the very nuclear proliferation we say we are trying to avoid. There is strong evidence that North Korea resumed their nuclear weapons program for precisely this reason. Iran may now be doing the same thing.

Writing in 1791, Burke marveled that people who would never try to take apart a clock and put it back together somehow feel competent to tear down and remake whole political systems of vastly greater complexity. "Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand. Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption. They who truly mean well must be fearful of acting ill."

The consequences of President Bush’s presumption in Iraq are now apparent. The postwar occupation has claimed seven times more lives than the original conflict. Whole areas of Iraq are under the effective control of the insurgents. Our armed forces are overstretched and we have a "backdoor" draft, in which army reservists are forced to serve extended terms and soldiers are pressured to reenlist by threats of immediate assignment to Iraq if they refuse. A recent CIA report sees civil war in Iraq as a real possibility, and even Republican members of Congress have begun to use words like "incompetent" and "pathetic" to describe the administration.

Perhaps the best argument for a second Bush term is that he has sown a whirlwind in Iraq, and he ought to be the one to reap it. But the prudent course for the nation would be to do everything we can to avoid the reckoning that awaits us in a second Bush term.

October 28, 2004