This commentary is by Craig Barnes and is available as a podcast here in the 2nd part of Craig's show with Jonathan Schell (commentary starts approx. at the 54:43 minute mark).
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When George {W.} Bush issued his new National Security Strategy in June of 2002, he announced that if there were countries that the US considered dangerous we would feel free to attack them. This was a reversal of post-war US policy and was called the strategy of preemption. Any country that looked like a nuclear danger ought to watch out. Beginning with Iraq.
We all know what happened after that. Evidence was concocted to portray Saddam Hussein as in possession of nuclear weapons and we invaded. Seven years later 95,000 troops are still there. It would be hard to say how life in America has been made one iota better. We are more in debt. We lost global credibility. We lost over 4,397 lives. We are stuck there. Preemption was, in a nutshell, a multi-billion dollar windfall for the military industrial complex but a disaster for everybody else.
Obama was elected in part because of his promise to do something other than just bomb people. He would also talk to them. John McCain and Hillary Clinton had been more willing than he to bomb the Iranians. Obama got elected and has initiated a new openness to engagement. Now, a year and a half into the new administration, it is clear that neither of these two approaches has restored American power. In fact, it has now become clear that American power is nothing like it used to be, whether we bomb our enemies or talk to them. Power in these days has turned substantially commercial, not military, and commercially America is not keeping up.
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