I just read the National Security Strategy of the United States, and had a whole long-winded rant in mind, but it's just too damned easy to nail George W. Bush for using defective logic and neo-imperialist doublespeak. It's like shooting fish in a barrel with a Texas cowboy's six-shooter... at point blank range.
Besides, Joseph R. Stromberg at the Ludwig von Mises Institute does a perfectly adequate job of pointing out that Bush's doctrine is 200 proof bullshit.
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I did want to pick apart a couple of outrageously stupid statements from the Bushnev Doctrine. The President writes that: "People everywhere want to be able to speak freely; choose who will govern them; worship as they please; educate their children--male and female; and enjoy the benefits of their labor." Thank you, Mr. President, for presuming to tell over 6 billion people what they want.
Most of the world's population claims to adhere to some kind of religion, mainly Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. As the President claims to be a Christian, he should know from personal experience that religious people don't want to speak freely, or educate their children, or enjoy the benefits of their labor. Such desires are too worldly, and therefore sinful. Besides, most religions advocate ignorance; their pushers know damned well that educated people, who understand that the use of reason is the only rational way to live, will not buy their lies. If most of the world truly wanted to be free, the first ruler they'd overthrow is $DEITY and the priests who claim to speak in the name of $DEITY.
President Bush claims that the "great struggle" between "destructive totalitarian visions" and "freedom and equality" is over. He writes that "the militant visions of class, nation, and race that promised utopia and delivered misery" have been "defeated and discredited". I've been accused of living beneath a rock, but I suspect that Mr. Bush has spent far too many years at the bottom of a succession of bottles of booze. As far as I know, destructive totalitarian visions abound and enjoy greater credibility than the likes of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin ever attained, and they are sold in American universities as "politically correct" doctrines. People are still set against one another, not only by skin color and religion, but by gender and sexual preference. Terrorists divide the human race into believers and infidels, and promise death to the infidels. They preach a utopia in the next world to be reached by suffering and death in this real world.
I find it amusing that Bush goes on and on about weapons of mass destruction or WMDs. The United States probably has a nuclear arsenal sufficient to render the whole planet lifeless, and Bush has his shorts in a twist over the possibility that other nations might get nervous and develop nuclear weapons of their own so that the United States will think twice about using its nukes. The President whines about biochemical weapons, while the American military probably has its own biochemical arsenal -- and may the Geneva Convention be damned.
Bush boasts of the superiority of the United States whenever the opportunity arises. It's tempting to think that the game he plays is little more than an overly-civilised way of arguing over who has the biggest dick. He writes that the United States is going to do this, and it's going to do that, and then it's going to do a whole lot of other things. It's tempting to write, "You and what army, Mr. President," but I already know what army he'll use: the military of the United States: men and women who joined up in order to defend by force the freedoms they learned to value, only to end up doing a southern fried Caesar's dirty work. People will die for no good reason if George W. Bush acts on his words and makes use of "preemptive actions" rather than waiting for our enemies to prove themselves the villains by striking first.
I compare Bush to Julius Caesar in all seriousness. Caesar was the first Emperor of Rome, but before he crowned himself Emperor he was named dictator for a year by the Roman Senate. He then persuaded the Senate to name him dictator for life. And then he put an end to the Roman Republic by crowning himself Emperor of Rome. History appears to be repeating herself; Bush was declared President by the Supreme Court, overriding the election laws of the state of Florida. He has asked Congress for increased powers and laws that unnecessarily restrict citizens whose rights should, in a moral society, be protected above all else. He speaks constantly of patriotism, waving the flag of the United States of America. If anything, George W. Bush is a shabby successor to Julius Caesar, who said:
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.
"And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so.
"How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
Bush lacks the wit to speak such words; he has spent too much time banging the patriot's drum and his mind is as narrow as his blood is bold.