One Last Bush Doctrine<\/strong><\/a>
By Dan Froomkin<\/div>\n Belittled domestically, President Bush is flexing his last working muscle: His control over the nation’s military. And in so doing, he is adding one last addendum to the ever-changing Bush Doctrine, establishing yet another de facto U.S. policy on his way out the door, and leaving his successor with yet another controversial precedent to wrestle with. By approving a U.S. military raid across the Iraqi border into Syria, Bush has changed the rules once again. On Sunday about two dozen special forces soldiers entered the country by helicopter and killed a suspected Iraqi insurgent leader, without the permission or cooperation of the Syrian government… <\/p>\n
Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker write in the New York Times: "In justifying the attack, American officials said the Bush administration was determined to operate under an expansive definition of self-defense that provided a rationale for strikes on militant targets in sovereign nations without those countries’ consent…<\/p>\n
Administration officials said Monday that the strikes in Pakistan and Syria were carried out on the basis of a legal argument that has been refined in recent months to justify strikes by troops and by rockets on militants in countries with which the United States is not at war<\/strong><\/font>. The justification is different from the concept of pre-emption the administration articulated immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, and which was used as the rationale for the invasion of Iraq. While pre-emption was used to justify attacks against governments and their armies, the self-defense argument would justify attacks on insurgents operating on foreign soil that threatened the forces, allies or interests of the United States.<\/p>\n Administration officials pointed Monday to a passage in President Bush’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month as the clearest articulation of this position to date. "As sovereign states, we have an obligation to govern responsibly, and solve problems before they spill across borders," Mr. Bush said. "We have an obligation to prevent our territory from being used as a sanctuary for terrorism and proliferation and human trafficking and organized crime." It is not clear how far-reaching the White House may be in seeking to apply the rationale, but several senior American officials expressed hope that it would be embraced by the next president as well…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Deja Vu? Have we heard this before?
First<\/strong><\/font>, there’s some new piece of aggression – something we’ve never done before. This time, we’re making raids into countries where we are not at war and killing people. Second<\/strong><\/font>, we hear that there’s some new legal rationalization for doing this formerly unthinkable thing. In this case, a legal argument has been "refined." Third<\/strong><\/font>, we are then told that it was announced in advance in some obscure speech that none of us ever knew of or heard [or would not understand even if we’d been in the audience]. How in the hell does "As sovereign states, we have an obligation to govern responsibly, and solve problems before they spill across borders. We have an obligation to prevent our territory from being used as a sanctuary for terrorism and proliferation and human trafficking and organized crime."<\/strong><\/font> turn out to mean "We are sending Commandos and drones with bombs into other countries to kill people."<\/font> <\/strong>?<\/div>\nFor example, a major change in foreign policy [now called The Bush Doctrine<\/strong><\/u><\/font>] calling for pre-emptive, unilateral attacks on potential enemies was introduced in a 2002 graduation speech at West Point. Who knew? I sure didn’t. But the most disturbing part of this story is "a legal argument that has been refined in recent months to justify strikes by troops and by rockets on militants in countries with which the United States is not at war<\/strong><\/font>." It’s actually an amazing thing to say. Bush is saying that he or his legal team has created a legal opinion to justify something that is otherwise forbidden. It betrays a profound disrespect for the legal system. Get some opinion from a lawyer to do what you want to do, then it’s okay. We’ve recently been through that with our disregard for the Geneva Conventions and our redefining torture. They got an opinion [in secret] from John Yoo, a lawyer in the DoJ, that said that it was okay to torture people. And that made it okay. They got another one that said that it was okay to eavesdrop on American Citizens with no cause, and no judicial review. And because they got some lawyer to say it [a lawyer they had appointed], it became okay to do it [in secret]. That’s absolutely absurd. It’s both profoundly disrespectful of our legal system and a bizarre assumption of a power never authorized by our Constitution. <\/p>\nIf that weren’t enough, it’s another example of their trying to impose their will on their successors [
several senior American officials expressed hope that it would be embraced by the next president as well<\/strong><\/font>]. That’s familiar too. They were working like crazy to get the Iraqis to sign some document that insured we would stay in Iraq indefinitely, strapping their successor with their war, their policies. Fortunately, the Iraqis would have nothing to do with it. This smells like the work of Dick Cheney and David Addington. It’s their M.O. – the ends justify the means – Machiavelli 101…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One Last Bush Doctrine By Dan Froomkin Belittled domestically, President Bush is flexing his last working muscle: His control over the nation’s military. And in so doing, he is adding one last addendum to the ever-changing Bush Doctrine, establishing yet another de facto U.S. policy on his way out the door, and leaving his successor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}