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Copyright © 2002 Express Publishing Inc.
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For the week of April 16 - 22, 2003

Opinion Columns

Is U.S. war machine
on a roll?

Commentary by PAT MURPHY


Even before U.S. troops finish mopping up Iraq, President Bush is talking tough to Syria, leading some to believe he might order troops to march on Damascus.

Every day, Bush II distances himself even farther from the mistakes of Bush I, who pushed Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in 1991, but halted the pursuit to Baghdad, rested on his laurels, and then lost re-election.

Bush the Junior’s political advisers won’t tolerate those mistakes.

Bush will keep the threat of more war alive through Election Day 2004, essentially robbing the already spineless, voiceless Democratic Party of making headlines on homeland issues of unemployment, a recession and deficits.

No guessing is required about this strategy.

Foreign reporters, especially in Britain, discovered the Bush political blueprint months ago, and have been writing about it. Only recently have U.S. reporters leaped onto the story.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was outlined in papers and books produced by a small group of hard-line, neo-conservative intellectuals clustered in and around the Project for a New American Century. This so-called think tank was founded by William Kristol, chief of staff to then-Vice President Dan Quayle and now editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, widely read in the Bush White House. Some other PNAC adherents, such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, are important advisers to Bush.

They outlined what amounts to a new world order—attacking, if necessary, Iraq, Syria and Iran to change regimes and to shock nearby Arab governments into changing their ways and creating a safer neighborhood for Israel. Their intellectual treatises go back as far as 1997 during the Clinton years, when their authors advocated an invasion of Iraq.

The veiled threats delivered to Syria the past few days are part of the master plan extolled by Wolfowitz and by a long list of other obscure names whose ideas have transformed President Bush’s promised "humble" foreign policy and aversion to nation-building into a rumbling military juggernaut with grand visions of rebuilding the Middle East into an American incubator of democracies.

Unlike Bush the Elder, who declined to lead Gulf War forces to Baghdad and overthrow Saddam Hussein because, he said, he didn’t have a United Nations mandate, Bush the Junior has announced he doesn’t need a UN mandate to launch wars.

Is it working? You bet.

Iraq’s tyrant dictator is gone, mischievous North Korea is moderating its menacing talk about stepped up nuclear programs, and U.S. public opinion for now is heavily supporting the president—according to a Gallup poll conducted last week 28 percent even favor waging war against Syria.

All President Bush needs to do is to smokescreen problems at home with constant threats of taking out dictators that he says threaten the American homeland with weapons of mass destruction—without proving they exist—and re-election is a cakewalk like the road to Baghdad.

Those who would criticize or oppose talk of war run the risk of being denounced as unpatriotic, squishy liberals who don’t know a good war when they see one.

 

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The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.