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A drive for global domination
has put us in greater danger
Moral authority, which is our greatest source of strength, has
been recklessly put at risk by this wilful president
By Al Gore
05/24/07 "The
Guardian" -- -- The pursuit of "dominance" in
foreign policy led the Bush administration to ignore the UN, to
do serious damage to our most important alliances, to violate
international law, and to cultivate the hatred and contempt of
many in the rest of the world. The seductive appeal of
exercising unconstrained unilateral power led this president to
interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that
brought to life the worst nightmare of the founders. Any policy
based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates
enemies for the US and recruits for al-Qaida, but also
undermines the international cooperation that is essential to
defeating terrorists who wish to harm and intimidate America.
Instead of "dominance", we should be seeking pre-eminence in a
world where nations respect us and seek to follow our leadership
and adopt our values.
With the blatant failure by the government to respect the rule
of law, we face a great challenge in restoring America's moral
authority in the world. Our moral authority is our greatest
source of strength. It is our moral authority that has been
recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations of this wilful
president.
The Bush administration's objective of attempting to establish
US domination over any potential adversary was what led to the
hubristic, tragic miscalculation of the Iraq war - a painful
misadventure marked by one disaster after another, based on one
mistaken assumption after another. But the people who paid the
price have been the American men and women in uniform trapped
over there, and the Iraqis themselves. At the level of our
relations with the rest of the world, the administration has
willingly traded respect for the US in favour of fear. That was
the real meaning of "shock and awe". This administration has
coupled its theory of US dominance with a doctrine of
pre-emptive strikes, regardless of whether the threat to be
pre-empted is imminent or not.
The doctrine is presented in open-ended terms, which means that
Iraq is not necessarily the last application. In fact, the very
logic of the concept suggests a string of military engagements
against a succession of sovereign states - Syria, Libya, North
Korea, Iran - but the implication is that wherever the
combination exists of an interest in weapons of mass destruction
together with an ongoing role as host to, or participant in,
terrorist operations, the doctrine will apply. It also means
that the Iraq resolution created the precedent for pre-emptive
action anywhere, whenever this or any future president decides
that it is time. The risks of this doctrine stretch far beyond
the disaster in Iraq. The policy affects the basic relationship
between the US and the rest of the world. Article 51 of the UN
charter recognises the right of any nation to defend itself,
including the right to take pre-emptive action in order to deal
with imminent threats.
By now, the administration may have begun to realise that
national and international cohesion are indeed strategic assets.
But it is a lesson long delayed and clearly not uniformly and
consistently accepted by senior members of the cabinet. From the
outset, the administration has operated in a manner calculated
to please the portion of its base that occupies the far right,
at the expense of solidarity among all Americans and between our
country and our allies. The gross violations of human rights
authorised by Bush at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and dozens of
other locations around the world, have seriously damaged US
moral authority and delegitimised US efforts to continue
promoting human rights.
President Bush offered a brief and halfhearted apology to the
Arab world, but he should make amends to the American people for
abandoning the Geneva conventions, and to the US forces for
sending troops into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of
their commanders. Perhaps most importantly, he owes an
explanation to all those men and women throughout our world who
have held high the ideal of the US as a shining goal to inspire
their own efforts to bring about justice and the rule of law.
Most Americans have tended to give the Bush-Cheney
administration the benefit of the doubt when it comes to its
failure to take action in advance of 9/11 to guard against an
attack. Hindsight casts a harsh light on mistakes that should
have been visible at the time they were made. But now, years
later, with the benefit of investigations that have been made
public, it is no longer clear that the administration deserves
this act of political grace from the American people. It is
useful and important to examine the warnings the administration
ignored - not to point the finger of blame, but to better
determine how our country can avoid such mistakes in the future.
When leaders are not held accountable for serious mistakes, they
and their successors are more likely to repeat those mistakes.
Part of the explanation for the increased difficulty in gaining
cooperation in fighting terrorism is Bush's attitude of contempt
for any person, institution or nation that disagrees with him.
He has exposed Americans abroad and in the US to a greater
danger of attack because of his arrogance and wilfulness, in
particular his insistence upon stirring up a hornet's nest in
Iraq. Compounding the problem, he has regularly insulted the
religion, the culture and the tradition of people in countries
throughout the Muslim world.
The unpleasant truth is that Bush's failed policies in both Iraq
and Afghanistan have made the world a far more dangerous place.
Our friends in the Middle East, including most prominently
Israel, have been placed in greater danger because of the policy
blunders and sheer incompetence with which the civilian Pentagon
officials have conducted this war.
We as Americans should have "known then what we know now"- not
only about the invasion of Iraq but also about the climate
crisis; what would happen if the levees failed to protect New
Orleans during Hurricane Katrina; and about many other fateful
choices that have been made on the basis of flawed, and even
outright false, information. We could and should have known,
because the information was readily available. We should have
known years ago about the potential for a global HIV/Aids
pandemic. But the larger explanation for this crisis in American
decision-making is that reason itself is playing a diminished,
less respected, role in our national conversation.
Al Gore is a former US vice-president; this is an edited
extract from his new book, The Assault on Reason, published this
week by Bloomsbury
© Al Gore
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