1 Boring Old Man

While it’s still not a term on the lips of many Americans, the so-called Bush Doctrine is a major revolutionary foreign policy that dates back a decade and a half – to the the years of George H. W. Bush. In the aftermath of the fall of Communism and the first Gulf War, Paul Wolfowitz introduced a white paper – the Defense Guidance – that proposed a four part foreign policy for the post Cold War period:

1. Unilateralism – acting without approval from the U.N. [World]
2. Preemption – offensive strikes rather than "defense"
3. Strength without Equal
4. Active spreading of Democracy in the world

This document was withdrawn after a wave of outrage when it was leaked. These ideas lay dormant, but were reintroduced in the 1997 letter from the P.N.A.C. letter to Clinton. But they finally saw the light of day in George W. Bush’s speech at the West Point Graduation in 2002. Without really saying it, these four points became Bush’s foreign policy and off we went to Iraq to flex our unilateral, preemptive might – spreading democracy.

Now, it’s four years later. What’s been the outcome of this policy that was supposed to thrust America into the role of the sole Superpower in the world of nations? We are superfluous, sitting on the sidelines embroiled in a useless and pointless war in Iraq while the Middle East falls into open war – and we are helpless to do anything useful there. The world can’t count on us anymore.  The world actually doesn’t want us to help.

It is absolutely remarkable how much damage a small group of incompent idealogues can do in such a short period of time. As today’s NYT editorial points out, they followed their own Real Agenda and ignored the consequences. This grand and magnanimous policy has rendered us impotent, an object of suspicion and scorn. Bush’s policy for our central position in the post Cold War world has taken us out of the running altogether.

With this Administration at the helm, that’s exactly where we ought to be…

em·pir·i·cism   (m-pîr-szm)  n.

1. The view that experience, especially of the senses, is the only source of knowledge.
2. 1. Employment of empirical methods, as in science.
   2. An empirical conclusion.
3. The practice of medicine that disregards scientific theory and relies solely on practical experience.

One of the time honored principles of medicine is empiricism. No matter how tight your theory, what matters is what happens in your patient. In fact, it is an outgrowth of the Hippocratic Oath – "Do no harm." Theories arise from problems and lead to action. So the idea of empiricism is that if the results of a treatment based on a theory are unexpected, adverse, chunk the theory. One of the most deadly forces in medicine is "therapeutic zeal," doing harmful things because you’re trying too hard to help.

It’s pertinent to our current political situation. Our leaders had theories about what was needed. They lied to put the theories into action. The results have been catastrophic. And they’re still at it! They’re so sure that their theories [Unitary Executive, New Paradigm, Bush Doctrine, etc.] are right, even in the face of a clearly disasterous outcome, that they keep on pushing things – their followers [Newt] keep on pushing it even further.

The patient may not survive these theories…