Quite a WOW! to my reading was Richard Perle's Opinion piece in the UK's The Telegraph [www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/08/09/do0901.xml].
RP is the chairman of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon, so RP's opinion is in need of note. As is his position relative to this world's 'big stick' war machine.
The piece strives to justify war for the sake of it. His term pre-emption amounts to no more nor less than that.
And his parallel twixt Saddam Hussein and Hitler that not going to war means appeasement the sad result of which led to a prolonged european war and was "far worse" than an immediate war by pre-emption, is predictable grey grail.
Yet more to the point of now and why should pre-emption be even so much as considered justifiable comes in this passage..
..The decision to use force is most difficult when democratic societies are challenged to act
pre-emptively. That is why the Continental powers waited until Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 *and America waited until after September 11* to go after Osama bin Laden.[** my emphasis]
Clear inference if ever there was one that an attack such as 9/11 WAS ANTICIPATED.
But why? What had been happening to require surveillence and the implied alertness? Is RP telling us that ObL was charged by Saddam Hussein to pursue the atrocity? Or is he leading us to that conclusion and thus a need for pre-emptive action?
It would seem not from the passage immediately following
Hitler's self-declared ambitions and military build-up, like bin Laden's demented agenda, were under constant scrutiny long before the acts of aggression.
Specific to ObL isn't it, yet again emphasising a "constant scrutiny" of the man and his associates.
But why? Constancy sets a tone that bungling detection and prevention of 9/11 was out of the question, and thus the why and answers are more important than ever. Lest folk conclude that some US agenda was being pursued which invoked surveillence and alertness for other reasons than 'alien' attack. Such as results from constant provocation? Could such scrutiny have been utterly counterproductive--directly provoking the 'acts of aggression' by what it has deemed unstable. unacceptable or intolerable people?
War response for deliberate attack on one's people or assets -- the big stick - is historically and perhaps even acceptable to what RP describes as "feckless peace lobbies" - but without full disclosure and the pros and cons of this warmongering protagonist the call for pre-emption can IMHO only be accorded the perverse carrot response.
PS: JUST IN CASE YOU'RE WONDERING WHAT KIND OF culture Richard Perle comes from here's an insight from the wsj's onlinejounal about a Vietnamese refugee who trained in science, moved to Maryland and helped create the thermobaric bomb.
...Duong promised herself she would fight for the principles of her adopted homeland.And now, if all went as planned, the BLU-118/B would slice into a tunnel in the Afghan mountains, unleash the chemically engineered hell that she and the rest of the country's top explosives experts had wrought, and America's enemies would die.
ENDS -dickenz-