John Gulick wrote:
>
> Michael Pollak objected:
>
> Huh? I think you're getting carried away on anti-liberal drunkenness, John.
> The doctrine of pre-emptive warfare is a break from all previous international
> law, and a dreadful one.
>
> JG replies:
>
> (Actually, it is antihistamines doing the trick, not alcohol.)
>
> As a clearly adumbrated "doctrine," perhaps. As a practical guide to foreign policy,
> no dice, so far as I can tell.
Yes. Michael is really wrong to think that Bush's enunciation of it is in some way paeculiarly dangerous or vicious. It was an ad hoc defense of a particular act of aggression. Sanitary rhetoric (use once and discard) as it were. It does not make future aggression more or less likely. It is yesterday's rhetoric. When Obama (or one of his successors) begins serious slaughter in Afhanistan or elsewhere he will not appeal to that Bush doctrine but invent a new one or go back to some verion of the first of these vicious excuses for slaughter, the Monroe Doctrine or to Kennedy's "defense of liberty" etc etc etc.
Carrol