President ISO Doctrine

Dan Froomkin claims in The Washington Post that George Bush is Desparately Seeking Doctrine. The key to understanding the Bush foreign policy comes in four observations.

One, George Bush, at least at the start of the war, quite rightly believed himself to be the king of the world. Any look at our mutual defense treaties shows that he was not too far from right. Every commander of a unified operation must be an American and must report to the President of the United States. This supremacy explains the Iraq War, the worldwide protests to it and the recent need for a new doctrine - as the other leaders of the world seem to be getting him to acknowledge that he is, not in fact, king - unless he wishes to resume the Cold War with China and Russia. Since Russia is an economic backwater and everyone now knows it, resuming Cold War with it is not likely and because we are an economic backwater compared to China, or at least beholden to them. Eventually, a stronger political union within our alliances is necessary - one which has elected legislators, a single executive and sovereignty. Nothing else can face the challenge of terrorism.

Second, the Iraq War really is a civil war and has been since the first President Bush encouraged Shia forces to attempt to overthrow Saddam. Everyone knows we have taken sides in this dispute, we just won't admit it. If we admit it, we can act appropriately and seek an honest broker to represent Sunni interests and oversee their territory, possibly the Jordanians or the Syrians.

Third, taking the war on terror to Iraq is not only not making us safer, it is the most cold blooded act of the last 2000 years. Essentially, what the administration has done is made an entire civilian population cannon fodder in the War on Terror. By any standard, that is cold.

Four, regardless of what people say, the Israeli - Palestinian conflict colors our policy in the Mid-East. No, I am not saying we went to war in Iraq because of Israel. We went to war in Iraq as part of the war on terror. We are in the war on terror because of our support for Israeli Jews vis-a-vis Israeli Arabs. Since peace with Jordan, any West Bank Palestinian is now an Israeli without the rights that come with that designation unless and until Israel establishes a separate Palestinian-Arab state from the West Bank and (due to demography) northern Israel. If it does not wish to do that, then the Arabs would be best served by seeking their rights as Israelis rather than seeking a separate state.