Why did Bush deliberately attack the wrong country?

From: "Emmanuel Gustin"

It is true that "neo-conservatives" do not occupy all key
positions in this administration, but nevertheless they seem
to control most of its policies. Of course 9/11 created the
ideal opportunity for them to break through,

You need to go back farther than that, to Watergate. The Nixon humiliation
beheaded the Republican foreign policy establishment while the McGovernite
take-over of the Democrats drove hard-line foreign policy Democrats into
retreat. With the Carter presidency cementing a new, dovish Democratic foreign
policy paradigm, (although there were signs toward the end of the Carter
presidency that Carter was beginning to resurrect them), these people began
turning to the drifting Republican Party, allying behind former Democrat Ronald
Reagan, who was not highly regarded by the Republican establishment at all.
Reagan's administration sucked numbers of Democratic Party hard-line foreign
policy apparatchiks into its bureaucratic Republican bulk.
In retrospect, the destruction of the Nixon administration, and with it the
pragmatic foreign policy typical of "real" Republicans (who tend to be
businessmen, organization men, men in gray flannel suits--certainly not
firebrands), detente, which the Truman-Kennedy-Johnson foreign policy people
abhored, was a disaster for the dovish clique of Democrats. Between
appeasement and war is detente. The proponents of detente had been
discredited. That left appeasement, which Americans have limited tolerance for
and which Carter used up very quickly. So you get the firebrands--tear down
this wall, evil empire, axis of evil... If you don't like it, blame the crowd
who destroyed Richard "Ping-pong diplomacy" Nixon.

Their "new American century" is one in which the world's only
remaining superpower has a destiny to rule, much as the Romans
once did, and enforce a "Pax Americana".

Or the British. Or whomever. Great powers shape their world.

Now, if Kerry wins, we will get back the "neoliberals" of the Clinton
presidency, who have a world vision that is, in some ways, very much like that
of Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge. These guys are just as patriotic as the
neocons--after all, President Clinton and his people were fond of referring to
America as "the indespensible nation"--but they have a wider vision of American
power, one based more on economic power than military power. Then Secretary of
Commerce Mickey Kantor bragged in 1996, "trade and international economics have
joined the foreign policy table." The "neoliberal" (or, perhaps,
paleoconservative) expectation that securing a world open to trade and
investment will enable America to do good even as it does well fits squarely in
with the theories of pre-FDR Republicanism.
In President Clinton’s succinct formulation, "trade, investment, and
commerce" will produce "a structure of opportunity and peace." For neoliberals,
international arms limitations, multi-lateral military agreements, cutting
trade deals, reducing tariffs, protecting property rights, and running
interference for American private enterprise—the entire package gilded with
the idiom of globalization and earnest professions of America’s abiding
concern for democracy and human rights—constitute the heart of foreign
policy. In other words, you don't have to go around blowing people up to
ensure and expand America's power.
But what about when people go around blowing you up? There, the neo-liberals
(and paleo-conservatives) don't have a good track record. Enter the
neo-conservative (paleo-liberal?) who speaks of missile gaps (Kennedy), windows
of vulnerability (Reagan), and, in the incarnation of G.W. Bush, says to
militant muslim fanatics: "Your god promised you 72 Virginians if you died?
Well, here we are, ready to rock and roll.


Chris Mark