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Foreign Dissent on Bush’s Imperial Ambitions

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The Bush administration was outraged this past summer when German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder starkly declared that he would not support Bush’s war with Iraq. The resulting transatlantic brouhaha provides insights into political developments and delusions in both the United States and Germany. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld huffed that the German campaign had been “unhelpful” and that Schroeder’s comments “had the effect of poisoning the relationship” between the United States and Germany. Richard Perle, chief of the Bush administration’s Defense Policy Board and perhaps the most militant warhawk in Washington, even demanded that Schroeder resign — shortly after he was reelected. In an interview with a leading German newspaper, Perle declared, “Never in my life have I seen relations with a close ally damaged so fast and so deeply as during Chancellor Schroeder’s election campaign. It would be best if he resigned, but he’s not going to do that.” Schroeder was not threatening to impose an embargo on American children (such as the ...

War with Iraq Is Dangerous Folly

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Suppose we do get proof that Saddam Hussein is producing banned weapons and hiding them from UN inspectors. Starting a war with Iraq on that account would be utter folly. It would very likely do far, far more harm than good. Those yearning to let slip the dogs of war, in a paroxysm of self-righteous power, justify doing so in terms of their intended goals: They seek “a regime change,” “to disarm Iraq,” “to make sure the day never comes” when terrorists release chemical weapons on American soil. Do these good intentions justify war against Iraq? No way. The essential question is not whether our intentions justify war, but whether the likely outcomes of war justify it. The likely outcomes go far beyond the rosy postwar scenario the administration presumes, in which ...

An Imperial Presidency, Part 2

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Part 1 | Part 2 Republicans and Democrats have, at times, criticized the imperial presidency. Both are, to a certain extent, correct. Both are also hypocritical. It isn’t only politics that has driven these royal presidents. It is a lust for American power in the world — the desire to be “great” or to lead a crusade for democracy — that inevitably results in tragic wars. These presidential powers, we saw in part one, go back at least a century. Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, is the typical imperial president. One of his friends, William Howard Taft, would write that Roosevelt was “obsessed with the love of war and the glory of it.” Mark Twain complained that Roosevelt was “insane” for war. These militarist forces, with the imperial presidency as its apotheosis, transformed America. Our nation went from one that embraced classical-liberal principles — principles that included limited government, noninterven-tionism, and anti-imperialism — to one with very different ideas. America, with the ...