Grand Strategy

I need to formulate some thoughts in response to this..

Late in June, I had a cryptic e-mail from a former student, now working in the White House speech-writing shop: "the boss has read your book, and has told all of us to read it."

I wasn't quite sure which boss he meant, but soon there was a call from Condi Rice which cleared things up: "The President has read your book, and has told all of us to read it. Could you come down and brief the National Security Council staff?"

I think all of us liberals and anti-Bush types need to read the whole thing and consider what the man is saying. If we don't, we'd be guilty of what we accuse the right of; blind subservience and unquestioned loyalty.

It could be that our Bush is the anti-Bush, and it could be that we get just as caught up in the worship ideology as the wing nuts do.

My initial thought is that I haven't really questioned Bush's motives. I've never been a fan of "it's all about the oil". Clearly there have been financial motivations, including the re-enrichment of the so-called military industrial complex, that had been struggling in a post-cold war world. Clearly there are financial connections with Halliburton. I tend to find translating possible consequences of a military campaign into primary motivations to be overly simplistic.

In other words, it's not all about the oil, but the oil may be a nice side benefit.

Often times the outward face of the administration is nearly diabolic and incompetent. However, it would be naive to think that there isn't some extremely sophisticated thought going on, and I suppose it is possible that Bush is not quite as big an idiot as he appears.

I still insist that if Bush wanted to have a discussion on pre-emptive strikes, and the morality of regime changes, I would have been all for it. I don't believe the administration wanted to have that dialog, and instead chose the dishonest WMD path. They packaged a possibly reasoned point of view around a pack of lies, and really did hurt their credibility a great deal.

Once the decision was made, and the invasion begun, the prosecution has been mostly inept. The administration bears the responsibility for that as well.

In the end, if you're going to send American's off to a war to die, you had better tell them why. Bush didn't do that.