Yesterday, I wrote about how all American citizens are at least partially responsible for the conditions in Iraq, and how we are jointly letting that nation down by not giving full support to securing it and investing enough to rebuild its economy.

Today? Something else that all Americans should be troubled by.

Back in 2002, George W Bush’s Administration made a crucial change to the official policy of the United States of America. The “National Security Strategy” (NSS) is a document that is required to be produced every four years; for the most part, it has remained the same for decades. Presidents from both parties have kept its goals and policies relatively stable, understanding that to have it change from Administration to Administration would be an error; the document is supposed to represent a baseline strategy and put forth what the United States stands for.

The NSS stems from the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and is officially a report to Congress by the President. However, documents of this type have been produced for much longer, and the 1986 law mostly dealt with the reorganization and clarification of the roles of the military branches and the Defense Department.

This type of document has been tremendously important throughout the years. For example, NSC-68 was produced in 1950, and basically laid out the strategy the US would follow for the Cold War- one of containment of communism and the Soviet Union via a huge buildup of armed forces. (Personally, I think that while the armed forces buildup was needed- although perhaps not to the extent we did it- economic and social forces eventually had more to do with the fall of the Soviet empire.)

Back in 2002, the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war was put into the NSS. I believe that this was one of the biggest errors that Bush has made during his Administration; his taxation changes, his social policies, and so forth can all be reversed or slowed by Congress and the next President. But this change, to the official policy of the USA, was bigger than that; it led directly to us going to war with Iraq.

Bush’s initial change to the policies was a reasonable and good one; it said basically that the USA would draw no distinction between a terrorist and a government which knowingly harbored the terrorist. This, I think, is fair and just; it is unreasonable for a nation to allow terrorists to exist within its borders- or worse, actively work with them, supply them, and encourage them.

The prototypical example of this would be Afghanistan. The Taliban actively and happily allowed Osama bin Laden and his band of nutjobs to operate, and in fact gave them support. This means that the Afghan government (such as it was) was more or less part of the 9/11 attacks, and it deserved to be demolished and replaced.

But Bush went several steps further. His new policy said, essentially, that the United States (and, by extension, any other nation) had the right to attack any nation that the US merely *thought* might want to cause the US harm in the future.

The risks inherent in this policy are obvious. First of all, it means that the US can go off to war without any checks on its judgement or power; if we decide that some other nation might want to cause us harm, we believe we’re perfectly entitled to bomb it to smithereens. The prototypical example of this is, of course, the Iraq war; the USA decided that Iraq might have WMD, and therefore we were entitled to go to war against Iraq.

I used to write on forums on the web site called “The Ornery American”, which was set up and run by a favorite author of mine named Orson Scott Card. When Bush made this change to the policy, I wrote about how stupid and shortsighted it was.

It’s a grave risk for a number of reasons.

1) This policy assumes that the USA will always be in the role it is now- basically that of unchallenged superpower. The problem with this assumption is that it’s what stops other nations from attacking us based on our policy. However, a Muslim nation can make a reasonable argument that the United States represents a big threat to them, what with our policy of freedom of religion and all; to a Muslim nation, that is simply 100% wrong and goes against everything they believe.

What if some Muslim nation develops a super-duper raygun that gives them as much military might as us? What if they declare that we are a threat, and therefore they’re going to take us out, and they zap us with the raygun? By the Bush doctrine, where a nation can pre-emptively attack based only on that nation’s perception of a threat, they’d be entitled to do so.

Now, before you shake your head and say “Paul, come on, really- a raygun?” think of this: A nuclear bomb, like a fusion (hydrogen) bomb, might as well be an unstoppable raygun. Pakistan has nukes. They’re Muslim. They’re barely in the control of their present leaders. What if they are taken over by Islamic fundamentalists who build a dozen nukes and send them to the biggest 12 American cities via shipping containers (a tiny percentage of which are actually searched by US Customs)? Boom, boom, boom. Think we could dig out of the subsequent damage to our economy?

2) There’s no check against groupthink. In the previous policy, the United States (and other nations) couldn’t go to war unless there was a clear and obvious danger to the USA; and as a general rule, the decision to go to war must be, in effect, ratified by the United Nations. At a very minimum, such a decision would at least be discussed by the UN.

Now, I actually agree with some of the arguments that say we, or any other nation, shouldn’t give up our own decision-making power and sovereignity to the UN. But when it comes to a decision as serious as going to war with another nation, if we’re truly justified, we damn well ought to be able to make that argument to the UN.

The problem with the doctrine is that just a few people can wind up making the decision to go to war. Since the USA has apparently given up on the Constitutional requirement that only Congress can declare war, if a President and his main advisors decide that, say, Mexico is a threat, they can pretty much unilaterally make war upon Mexico.

Any time you have a very important decision like that in the hands of just a few people, you have the potential for groupthink- for that small group of people to not bring up opposing points of view, for them to not consider that they might not be 100% right.

Iraq is, of course, a perfect example of this; just a few people became 100% convinced that Iraq had WMD, so we went off to war. Oops! Tens of thousands of dead and billions of dollars later, turns out that was a big, big mistake.

3) It’s immoral. This is the biggest problem I have with this policy. We teach our children, as a general rule, that they cannot go get into fights on the playground simply because they think some other kid might be a threat to them in the future. Why? It’s just wrong. What do we tell our kids? That they can only strike another kid in self-defense, right?

Well, why is that policy any different for nation-states? Why is it suddenly okay for us to take out Saddam? Granted, he was a big bully who liked to throw his weight around. But if he’s staying in his own nation, not starting anything, and not representing a threat to us, why is it okay for us to say “well he might be a threat in the future” and then take him out?

4) We’re hypocritical about it. Fact is that Pakistan’s nuclear weapon program is probably far more of a threat than anything else in the world, with North Korea’s a close second. Iran is making noise about their program as well. Why hasn’t Bush pushed for attacking them? Okay, Pakistan is currently reasonably friendly with us, so maybe we can trust their government. But North Korea? They’re run by a lunatic, they’re hyper-anti-US, and they are typically starving and desperate. (Hint: No oil in NK.)

No, no matter how you cut it, the Bush policy is an error. Those in favor of it will argue that the possibility of terrorists getting nuclear weapons is simply too strong, and them popping off a nuke in New York City or Washington DC or Seattle simply represents too grave a risk.

They have a point, but the problem is that this policy has already been demonstrated to be in error. The Iraq war has cost tens of thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and untold human suffering. We didn’t need to go to war there; they didn’t have anything to do with 9/11, despite what millions of ignorant Americans think; and they didn’t represent a threat to us, in the near or even middle future.

America and the rest of the free world might well be headed towards a massive World War between the forces of freedom and those of repression; the Islamic world is at a crucial turning point, between their doctrine of forcing everyone to either believe in Islam and the doctrine of freedom of choice of religion. If the Islamist fundamentalists stay in power or gain more power, eventually we might have to have a huge fight with them, and that fight might well go nuclear.

But until it happens, we shouldn’t be changing the official policy of the United States. Even during WWII, before we got attacked, we didn’t go to war against Germany or Japan. That was probably an error, but at the same time it gave us a moral justification that when we WERE drawn into the war, we were entitled to go in with overwhelming power and force.

That, I believe, is how we should continue to operate. It is more moral than starting war based on our own perceptions.