Political Games - Where the fuck’s the reset button?

Another reason why Americans should vote against our current President on November 2nd is the so-called “Bush Doctrine.” What is this “Bush Doctrine”?

The War on Terrorism will be protracted, lasting perhaps decades. There will be hot wars punctuating the ongoing War on Terrorism. Covert actions by the cia and other arms of the government will once again be legitimised, and these will be kept secret from the world and the US people. This protracted war will be fought with coalitions of other nations if possible, by the US alone if necessary. Probably, these coalitions will shift and change with the changing targets. Curtailment of democratic rights is necessary to protect the United States.

[emphasis mine]. This goes back to my Authoritarian Perspective, and I’m not going to dwell on that more. I want to move on to the application of the “Bush Doctrine.” For under this Doctrine, the War on Iraq was supposedly planned and justified (even though it had long been planned by PNAC, a lobbying group and think-tank begun by neoconservatives including Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and other key members of the Bush Administration back in 1997). Iraq was deemed as “a threat to America and an ally of al-Quada.” What was the basis for this invasion? I can assure you this: It was not “bringing democracy” to Iraq. Considering the fact that we were supposedly in the middle of fighting a war on terrorism, “spreading democracy” is a poor excuse to take on a two-bit dictator. Granted, Saddam was an evil and vicious war criminal, but this was not the basis for our invasion. No; those of us without rose-colored glasses remember that we invaded Iraq to stop them from using their Weapons of Mass Destruction on us (which have never been found) and to disrupt the supposed terrorist bases that were there (which didn’t exist when we invaded, though the current attacks on coalition forces in now used retroactively to justify the invasion).

Why, then, did we really invade Iraq? The obvious answer is oil, but this is far too simple of a reason (though it likely did play a factor, as the no-bid contracts to Halliburton and others suggest). A careful reading of the PNAC documents reveal what the neoconservative movement is really after: power. PNAC does not merely call for an invasion of Iraq; in the September 2000 document titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses [sic],” PNAC called for the invasion of several countries, the establishment of military bases within these countries, and the installment of U.S.-friendly governments. These countries included (but were not limited to) Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and North Korea, among others. Afghanistan was the first to fall, though I do not necessarily fault the administration for that war (though I do fault them for their subsequent post-war execution; the warlords are running the country at the moment). Next we set our sights on Iraq, EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS NO LINK BETWEEN SADDAM AND TERROR. He was a dictator, NOT a terrorist. My friend who sticks his tongue up Bush’s ass for pleasure informed me that saddam “was a terrorist who happened to be a dictator.” I’m still not sure what definition of terrorist he was using., but regardless, that doesn’t make sense. What happened immediately after we successfully conquered Iraq? Before the insurgency, when we had no WMDs? Officials of the U.S. government, all the way up to Cheney, began to claim that Saddam had sent them to Syria (a charge since proven false). Syrai: ring a bell? It should; it too was on the list of nations to-be-invaded. We had already declared Iran and N. Korea “evil,” and without U.N. intervention on behalf of Iran and N. Korea’s declaration that they already had a nuclear weapon (oops), they would have been next. The only reason that Syrai didn’t get the shock-and-awe treatment was the quagmire that quickly took hold in Iraq.

Let’s say Bush wins in November, and the Republicans maintain their hold in Congress. What happens next?

Without any re-election restraints, Bush and Co. will “take off the gloves.” First things first, as many others have documented, there will be a reinstatement of the draft. Thus, 18-to-26 year olds of both genders, and with disregard to college status, will become an unwilling part of the Bush War Machine. The Neocons will finally be able to have the men and resources necessary to finish their plans. While keeping massive troops entrenched in Iraq, more troops will de deployed to occupy one of the 3 remaining countries left on the list, with Syria being the most likely target, Iran running a close 2nd, and N. Korea making a distant 3rd. Death tolls will climb through the charts, terror attacks will increase even more than they did in 2003, and the United States will dig her “freedom-loving” talons into the backs of more third-world countries. With a ballooning military and discrecionary budget, the Republicans will “regretably” cut “welfare spending”; roads, education, unemployment, Medicare, Social Security, state grants, etc. Foreign aid will be greatly reduced, and already-poor countries will spiral farther into poverty. Continuing tax cuts at home will widen the gap between rich and poor.

And somehow, it’ll all be Clinton’s fault.

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