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Wilsonianism, No. Effective national defense, Si.
In his latest column, Patrick Buchanan makes two distinct points about President Bush’s war policy, one correct, the other incorrect. Correctly, he criticizes Bush for the “wild Wilsonian” utopianism that has led the President, in his recent West Point speech, to describe the U.S. as the “single surviving model of human progress” in the world whose job it is to impose “the requirements of freedom … [on] the entire Islamic world.” Incorrectly, Buchanan dismisses Bush’s call for pre-emptive strikes against enemy regimes before they can develop weapons of mass destruction and pass them on to terrorist groups. Buchanan’s mistake: he assumes that today’s terror-supporting states and the shadowy terror networks alligned with them can be deterred in the same way the old Soviet Union was. Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 10, 2002 11:17 AM | Send Comments
Without the Wild Wilsonians, the shadowy terror networks wouldn’t be so much of an issue. The Middle East is not currently an extension of Western Civilization. So we can’t expect to govern it. Posted by: Jim Carver on June 10, 2002 6:20 PM It is also possible, though, if the Wild Wilsonians did to the Middle East and Central Asia what has happened in South America and East Asia, Afghanistan & elsewhere might not have been failed states at this point in time that give the shadowy folks their hideouts. |