Has President Bush Taken
the Lone Ranger
Approach Too Far?
by Raymond Yeh
What should President Bush done after the 9/11 disaster? As the President, his responsibility was to prevent 9/11 from ever happening again. How could he have best accomplished that? Military strategists would suggest a preemptive strike as preventative measure, but who should we strike and where?
In the newly published book by General Tommy Frank, former Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi war, he mentioned that both President Hosni Muborak and Jordan's King Abdullah told him that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He was also told that Saddam Hussein was prepared to use biological weapons.* Based on this information, President Bush decided to invade Iraq even though no such weapons turned up after months of searching by American soldiers, and there was no concrete intelligence tying Hussein to Osama bin Ladin or the 9/11 event. Many of America's allies doubted the accuracy of such intelligence.
But Bush went into Iraq as a Lone Ranger. The question is why. Did he go in there to create lasting world peace, or to win a war that he created so he could blast critics who accuse him of being a "weak president"? Is Bush just a small child in an adult body who is offended by his critics and is using the might of the US to fight back?
Although the war plan was brilliantly executed and the decision for a preemptive strike was militarily sound, Bush did not really do the right thing to prevent another 9/11. Winning the war in Iraq shouldn't be the real goal-achieving lasting peace for Americans and the world should. By not making sufficient efforts to get broader consensus among American allies, he was unable to establish peace in Iraq, and the Arab and Moslem world. It's true that Bush is the leader of the free world, but that doesn't mean he can act unilaterally as a Lone Ranger. His use of the Japanese occupation as an analogy is totally out of context as the Pacific war was started by Japan, and she was defeated.
So now we have a war that we have supposedly won, but is America better off as a result of our Lone Ranger President? The greatest democracy in the world is now being patrolled and policed more than ever. There is now more anti-American sentiment in the world than ever, even though our nation was the center of sympathy just after 9/11. The war has already cost $160 billion, and Bush just announced that the U.S. intends to stay in Iraq for six more years, at what cost? Finally, on July 12, CNN announced that the "CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll finds 55 percent of Americans feel less safe from terror because of the war in Iraq. The fear factor is now 22 percentage points higher than it was six months ago, when the same question was asked."
How has life changed for the ordinary American citizen? We are now forced to take off our shoes at airports and go through more security checkpoints than ever. Families have lost sons and daughters, and will continue to lose more. Are we better off? We think not. This is one expensive strategic lesson for our nation. While Bush did things right by winning the war and capturing Hussein, he didn't do the right thing. He wasn't looking out for American safety and world peace, he was looking to be the biggest bully on the block. Our nation will live with that tarnished image for years to come.
* Austin American Statesman, August 4, 2004
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