Bush's Visionary Seers

By Dan Fahey, AlterNet. Posted October 3, 2002.

A few years back the movie "Wag the Dog" captured the attention of Americans and followers of American politics. The premise was that an American president started a war to divert attention away from domestic problems. When in 1998 President Clinton ordered U.S. planes to bomb Iraq while Congress intensified its inquiry of his love life, the "wag the dog" concept seemed to become a reality.

This summer, in the midst of the Bush administration's "War on Terrorism," Hollywood released another movie mimicking reality. In "Minority Report," police forces arrest people for crimes they have not yet committed. A small group of visionary seers inform the police of an impending crime, and the police launch a preemptive strike against the alleged criminal. There's just one problem: sometimes the visionary seers are wrong.

The Bush administration recently announced a new military strategy remarkably similar to the theme of "Minority Report." The Bush Doctrine, outlined in the new "National Security Strategy for the United States," states that the administration "will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively" against national security threats. The driving force behind a decision to attack will be a prophesy of impending doom from a small group of visionary seers, ostensibly led by Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney. There's just one problem: Sometimes these visionary seers might be wrong.

Apparently, the visionary seers in the administration think they should be able to direct the awesome fury of the American military against states and organizations that might threaten American citizens or, perhaps more importantly, American "interests." These seers claim to know a terrorist or a ruthless dictator when they see one, perhaps because they collectively have so much experience providing funding, weapons, and even anthrax and other biological agents to their type.

From the Contras to the Indonesian military to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Agency, Rumsfeld, Cheney and recent Republican and Democratic administrations alike have openly supported plenty of bad guys and terrorists. But we are now asked to overlook that fact and focus on a good guy turned bad: Saddam Hussein.

The Bush administration is rushing forward with plans to invade Iraq and impose a "regime change" on the premise that Saddam Hussein has suddenly become a major threat to America, or perhaps more importantly, American "interests." Rumsfeld and Cheney keep claiming Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but now that the door has been opened to United Nations inspections to verify these claims, they say we can't trust the inspections and might need to invade Iraq anyway.

Even if Iraq does have chemical or biological agents tucked away somewhere, the Bush Administration and its shadows in Israel and Britain have not presented compelling evidence that the mere existence of these weapons justifies a potentially costly and destabilizing conflict ending in a regime change. The seers in the Bush Administration ask the American public and the international community to trust their judgment, but they don't want to provide the facts to back up their assertions, and they unjustifiably ridicule those who express reservations or promote diplomatic solutions. Is this any way to run a democracy?

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