•"Preventive War: A Failed Doctrine," editorial, New York Times, 12 September 2004, p. A12.
•"Russia May Fight Terror Pre-Emptively," by Associated Press, Dallas Morning News, 13 September 2004, [captured from Early Bird]
The New York Times sees fit to declare preventive war a failed doctrine on the basis on there not being any WMD in Iraq and no clear ties between Al-Qaeda and Saddam's regime: "The real lesson is that America dangerously erodes its military and diplomatic defenses when it charges off unwisely after hypothetical enemies."
So now Saddam's status as enemy has shifted to "hypothetical." And they accuse the Bushies of rewriting history!
The point of taking down Saddam was to trigger a significant System Perturbation on the Middle East as a whole. There is no doubt that transnational terrorism stems from that region, and that that terrorism is a direct threat to national security. That threat will not end until the Middle East is integrated with the outside world, or--more specifically--what I call the Core. That would never happen until Saddam was gone. Now he is, and the process begins for real.
Is it easy? No way. Have we created a "super bowl of terrorism," as Paul Wolfowitz has called it? Absolutely. Is it better to fight them over there than over here? You bet. Will the rest of the Core eventually come around to that understanding? Good time to check back with the Italians, French and Russians.
Russia, especially, is warming up to the idea that maybe just sitting on your heels and waiting for them to come to you isn't the answer. Maybe, just maybe, the answer is to take the fight to them. Russia's very able foreign minister Sergei Ivanov now says that a "pre-emptive strike may involve anything except nuclear weapons."
Sounds to me like a new security rule set emerging . . ..
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