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Bush's expansionism leaving U.S. exposed

Robert

Robb
Republic columnist
Oct. 9, 2005 12:00 AM

President Bush has a very expansive view of what the United States needs to do to protect the country against terrorist attack, more fully articulated in his speech to the National Endowment for Democracy on Thursday than ever before.

The question is whether it is all truly necessary, or at least prudent, or whether it is overreaching and excessively risky.

There are certain core activities that are unarguably necessary to protect the country against terrorist attack.

We need to button-up the homeland by enforcing our immigration laws and maximizing our ability to detect and disrupt terrorist activity.

We need to gain the cooperation of other countries in detecting and disrupting terrorist activities elsewhere and cutting off the financing of terrorism.

And we need to be willing to take military action, and be universally perceived as being so willing, to prevent another Afghanistan, in which terrorists have a haven to plot and launch attacks against us.

President Bush, however, feels that these core activities are insufficient. Islamic militants have a universal ambition, he correctly observes. They want to establish a radical Islamic theocracy, particularly in the Arab world.

According to Bush, the United States needs to thwart this ambition. In fact, the implication of what he says is that, unless the United States leads the fight against Islamic militants in the Arab world, they will succeed in their ambition.

Moreover, according to Bush, winning the fight against Islamic militants in the Arab world requires not only taking the fight to them, but also transforming the region through democratic governance and free markets.

The assumption that, except for the United States, Islamic militants would succeed in taking over the Arab world seems doubtful, to put it mildly - particularly if Bush is correct in his assertion that the militants represent a tiny fraction of Islamic sentiment.

There are a lot of Arabs, with a lot of resources, who hold an even larger stake in preventing the militants from seizing power than the United States does. There's a larger probability that the Bush expansionist view partially transforms what should be an Arab fight into an American one, and thus makes the United States a larger target for terrorism than need be.

In his speech, Bush stressed an analogy between the fight against Islamic militants and the fight against communism, given that both have a universalistic ambition. But the differences are more important than the similarities.

The Soviet Union was a state superpower with a large national economy and a robust military capability. Militant Islam has neither. Moreover, the strategic approach to communism was primarily containment rather than direct military engagement.

The immediate issue, of course, is Iraq. Bush openly asserted that without the continued U.S. large military presence, Islamic militants would take over the country. He asked: "Would the United States and other free nations be more safe, or less safe, with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people, and its resources?"

The answer, of course, is less safe. But the antecedent question is why would the Shiites, the Kurds and even more moderate Sunnis, with substantially larger numbers and resources than the militants, allow that to happen?

A more pertinent question at this point is one Bush wants to avoid: Is the pervasive U.S. military presence in Iraq sufficient cause in itself to keep the insurgency alive?

Perhaps the most troubling consequence of Bush's overly expansionist view is that it detracts attention and resources from the truly core activities necessary to protect this country against terrorism.

The United States is nowhere near where it should be in buttoning-up the homeland. After Afghanistan, there would have been no doubt of U.S. resolve to take military action to prevent terrorists who threaten us from finding new sanctuary elsewhere in the world. The debilitating Iraq war has weakened that resolve domestically and the perception of it internationally.

The Democrats have been disingenuous and incompetent in their critique of the Bush approach. They offer no alternative strategy, just complaints about the management of the existing one.

The United States should be concentrating on the core activities necessary to protect the country against terrorist attack. It is vital that they be conducted as well as possible.

The lack of a prominent national political figure making that case is a tragedy.