- WASHINGTON -- We went to
war in Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction. But it turned out
there were no such weapons. In his speech at the Army War College last
week, President Bush ignored the weapons issue, as well as his oft-expressed
desire to depose Saddam Hussein.
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- In the current version, we went to war to defend our
security. Without the weapons of mass destruction, where was the threat
to our security? Have we created a new threat in the effort to stamp out
a nonexistent one?
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- What is wrong with this war is that it violates the principles
that the Pentagon drew up for foreign interventions after the Vietnam War.
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- The most important of these principles was the requirement
for clarity - of objectives and of an exit strategy, as well as of planning,
cost, and allies. All of these were in the context of upholding American
values. Once we start compromising on these values, on our standards of
personal and national conduct, we start becoming more like the enemy and
less like our former selves.
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- Shakespeare put it well in "Hamlet," where
Polonius advises his son:
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- "This above all: to thine own self be true, And
it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any
man."
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- The Iraqi prison scandal is the latest evidence that
we're not being true to ourselves. One of the dangers of this behavior
is that we take on the characteristics of our enemies.
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- "We look like Saddam," an anonymous "senior
US official" in Baghdad recently told The Washington Post.
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- Even less are we being true to ourselves in the broader
war on terror. This does not mean we should abandon it - only that we should
narrow our objectives. In the same speech - indeed, in the same paragraph
- in which the president said he sent troops to Iraq to defend our security,
the president also said he sent them there to make "its people free."
American security and Iraqi freedom are unrelated. Iraqi freedom is probably
unattainable as a part of US policy.
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- The administration would have us believe that the roots
of the prison scandal are in a few low-ranking, inadequately trained, and
supervised personnel. This doesn't deal with who was responsible for such
training and supervision - nor do we yet know how high that responsibility
goes.
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- What we do know is that in the White House there is a
dismissive attitude toward the Geneva Conventions regulating treatment
of prisoners. In a memo for the president, White House Counsel Alberto
Gonzales wrote off some of these provisions as "quaint." That
is part of the abandonment of American values in the name of realism. Abandoned
simultaneously are protections for Americans who may be prisoners.
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- With the collapse of the Soviet Union 15 years ago, the
US became, unchallenged, most powerful nation on Earth. We have continued
to add to that power, more for its own sake than because we had an enemy
to conquer or to defend ourselves against. We can destroy anything, but
we have not learned how to use our power for constructive ends.
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- What we are learning in Iraq is that freedom and democracy
cannot be imposed by force. They have to come naturally.
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- This can be facilitated by what Joseph Nye the Harvard
scholar and former assistant secretary of defense, calls "soft power,"
that is to say influence. The US used to have a great deal of influence
in the world. It was acquired over a long period of time by upholding the
things we believe in.
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- Bush sneers that reliance on the UN means we wouldn't
act if other countries objected. Nonsense. It means that if other countries
object, we will negotiate. It means we would rather have others with us
than against us.
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- By tarnishing the world reputation of the US, the war
on terror has seriously reduced American influence. It will take a long
time to bring it back. One way to do so would be to follow the prescription
of John Quincy Adams who was secretary of State (1817-1825) and president
(1825-1829):
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- "Whenever the standard of freedom and independence
has been or shall be unfurled, there will be America's heart.... But she
does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well wisher
to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator
only of her own."
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- - Pat M. Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.
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- Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor.
All rights reserved. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0603/p09s01-coop.html
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