On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:
> The conclusion of a story by Todd Purdum and David Firestone in the Oct
> 5 NYT:
>
> >The Bush administration wants Congress to put its stamp of approval on
> >the Bush doctrine of preemptive strikes," said Mr. Byrd . . .
>
> >But Mr. Warner said the history books were (a) full of American
> >military actions that were taken in the absence of a direct attack on
> >the United States. Beginning with the Colombia-Panama engagement of
> >1901, he said, presidents have dispatched troops more than a dozen
> >times (b) in ways that could be considered preemptive, (c) including
> >more recent interventions in Panama, Somalia and Kosovo.
>
> Warner's right, isn't he?
Nope. I mean he's right about (a) -- we attacked lots and lots of countries unilaterally in in the 20th century. But besides the fact that that 98% of such attacks were baldly imperialistic (and thus not what a Senator would consciously want to base himself on (Oh yeah! It's just like when we installed Somoza! See, perfectly legitimate!)), not a single one of them could (b) be considered preemptive in the sense of preempting a threat. And certainly there's no way you could make that case about (c) the three named cases.
Michael