Okay, I promised that I would share my views on the preemptive strike theory, so here it goes.
First, let me say that the reason I am writing about this is because of all the backlash President Bush took for attacking Iraq during the WMD scare (regardless of how the search turned out). Second, let's look at the definition of preemptive.
[pree-emp-tiv] - adjective - taken as a measure against something possible, anticipated, or feared; preventive; deterrent.
Here is the problem with preemptive strikes. Most of the time that they are successful, the act they were preventing does not occur. This non-occurrence leaves doubt in people's minds that the act was going to happen anyway, because it never ended up happening.
Here is an example called the worn tire. Your car tire starts to wear, in order to keep it from blowing while you drive down the highway, you have the tire changed. How much longer would the tire have lasted, had you not changed it? You'll never know. You may have gotten 500 more miles out of the tire or it may have blown the next time you drove. You had to make a decision that ensured your safety, so you made a preemptive strike to change the tire. Had you not done so, the tire may have blown and you would have been responsible for letting it ride. Its a pickle to be in, but most of us will get the tire changed.
Now imagine this. You are standing at your car in the parking lot of a mall. Your wife is buckling your child into her car seat in the back seat of the car. You see a man approaching your wife at a pretty fast pace. He begins to reach into his pocket for something. You have but seconds to act. What do you do? Do you launch a preemptive strike? Do you wait to see what he wants? Do you wait to see what he pulls out of his pocket? I'll tell you what you do, you make the preemptive strike to stop him from reaching your wife and whatever he is retrieving from his pocket. You find out it was a knife and you have just saved her life from injury or death. You are a hero. Or, you find out it was a note that says, "I am a mute and need money for food". Now you are a jerk and should have known better. Its a pickle to be in, but most of us would have stopped the man.
Now you are the president of the United States. You have information that a dictator who has ignored U.N. sanctions for the last 8 years and repeatedly used WMD on his own people to commit genocide, is stock piling them for distribution to terrorists who recently high-jacked airplanes and flew them into the World Trade Centers. What do you do? Do you launch a preemptive strike to prevent their use on your country? Do you do nothing and hope he doesn't use them. If you strike and don't find the WMD, you're labeled a failure and a fraud. If by some chance they were able to be hidden (I don't know where they all went) then because the action was prevented from ever occurring, the public quickly loses sight of the fact that the act was extremely plausible at the time of the strike. Its a pickle to be in, and I hope all of our presidents make the preemptive strike.
Preemptive strikes are the hardest choices a leader or individual can make. Until you have to make those kind of decisions, and suffer the consequences of those decisions, I think you ought to have a little more compassion for the man who does have to make them.
As a side note, people like Martin Sheen who parade around on TV telling everyone that the president is making wrong decisions need to also tell people that if the president does it their way, they have no liability in the decision. Its easy for some to tell others they are wrong, especially since they have no consequences for their actions.
But, this is just my opinion...
