Cheney Says Pre-emption Needed to Thwart Terrorism

U.S. Department of State

Vice President Dick Cheney says the United States, together with its allies, is confronting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan "so that innocent civilians will not have to confront terrorist violence" anywhere in the world.

Addressing the annual convention of the Air Force Association in Washington September 17, Cheney responded to those who question the Bush administration's policy of taking pre-emptive action against terrorists. "Make no mistake," he said, "President Bush is acting to protect the American people against further attacks, even when that means moving aggressively against would-be attackers."

The former Cold War deterrence strategy of putting at risk the assets one's adversary values most is no longer appropriate to the new threat posed by terrorists, the vice president said, because "here is nothing they value highly enough that we can put at risk to keep them from launching an attack against the United States." ---


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Now I can go out and shoot some of my neighbors, cause I know
they are going to rob and burglarize my home next year and I want
to stop them before they do that.

I saw Kristin Taylor of the Washington Chapter of www.freerepublic.com on C-Span. I think he seems like an individual who was mentally coming apart and might do harm to some members of our society. Using Cheney's logic, He should be taken out right now before he hurts someone. A pre-emptive strike is needed against WWw.Freerepublic.com!

then what the hell are we doing invading that country?...doh!!!

This is just so insane on too many levels to be even rationally discussed as something remotely viable.

Who is a terrorist? What criteria will be used to make that assertion? Shall international integrity be immaterial?

Not that this idea violates everything the USA stands for or anything.

Thank God the Patriots are in charge.

:-(

Iraqi citizens defending their country bec of US occupation? Yeah, I think * would say they are "terrorists."

Course in the Gulf War, when they got the Kurds to revolt...they were "freedom fighters."

Euphemisms...makes me sick.

And who exactly are in these "mass graves" <that's a big one with these thugs> Could they be the Kurds from long ago? Methinks so.

So that's what the administration meant by "creating new jobs"!

To this day they still hate his guts in Ireland.

...preempting poverty
...preempting sickness
...preempting ignorance
...preempting corporate cronyism

...Just thought I'd throw that in!

The obvious: Terrorists are not born, they are created by circumstance. Hatred is at the heart of terrorism, and in order to prevent terrorist attacks one must find and fix the root cause of this hatred. The chimp cabal's "preemptive attack" approach displays all the reasoning and maturity of a six year old.

I really believe US in 2004 is not going to have an election

throughout the world, the USA is somehow mystically insulated from terrorist attacks at home? How juvenile, how seemingly disingenuous: this thesis seems wholly fallacious and void of any reason or logic, but sadly plays well to the choir. Hell, we still haven't gotten Osama or Saddam, so why do we think we can locate and liquidate all terrorists throughout the world whereas many thinking, reasoning people suspect our actions tend mostly to create tons of new terrorists.

There is nothing they value highly enough in order to deal with them :shrug:

Cheney continues to create controversy and pretty much gets away with it. I'd like the Dem candidates to call him on this.

Preemption is when one country attacks another country when that other country is almost certain to attack the attacking country in the immediate future.

What Cheney's advocationg is a policy of "preventative" war -- a war based on the idea that a foe may at some future point attack the United States, no matter how unlikely this idea may be. Right-wingers used to advocate preventative war with the Soviet Union.

That's when the GWB regime announced their new security paradigm to us and the world. Deterrence and Containment (a paradigm that worked very well in post-1991 Iraq) had become an anachronism, replaced by a policy of pre-emptive aggression based on Presidential perception of "sufficient" threat. There was no debate; these ideas were not vetted beforehand in the halls of power nor through glorious Jeffersonian debate. Instead, the National Security Strategy of the United States (NSS) was quietly slipped out there. Sure, some on the left and a very few near the center groused about it afterward, but it became bedrock policy anyway. And the illegal invasion of Iraq is its first implementation.

I take this opportunity to repeat a rant I made on Urban75 last February:

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I understand the arguments that, in the age of WMD proliferation and of ferocious terrorist will (greatly elevated with the attacks of 9-11), we may now need to rethink policy. Significant threats may no longer announce themselves as armies massing along borders, allowing time for security-maintaining (and legal) first strikes based on observed imminent threats. Some reasonable and thoughtful people today believe that the first sign of "imminent threat" might now be a rising mushroom cloud over Manhattan or Washington DC. They think, therefore, we must eliminate, not just real present threats, but the potential for such threats to emerge. Children and mothers in foreign lands might have to die based on a whim and a fear held by our President that someday – perhaps in a month, a year, or ten years – their leaders may develop the means and the will to attack the United States directly or by proxy via terrorists. Saddam Hussein, for example, might be developing nuclear weapons, and he might share them with terrorists, therefore we must amass our armies on his borders and attack to protect ourselves. I wholly reject this thinking.

Iraq has not sent its armies outside its borders since 1990; by our own CIA's reporting, they have had zero involvement with international terrorism since 1993. They have only used WMD twice, in 1983 and 1988 (while allied with U.S. interests). It's now, what? 2003? Deterrence and Containment works, my friends, and has been working very well in the case of Iraq for over a decade. Why abandon these sound principles now?

When in 1990 dear April Glaspie gave Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait (OK, a neutral light), we then hit Iraq with overwhelming force and pushed them back into their own borders. We did so quickly, legally, and morally; we were triggering the muscle of Deterrence and Containment. Iraq paid a terrible price for the foolhardy actions of their leader. Both his regime, and much of the rest of the world, learned that the U.S. has the might and the will to uphold the sanctity of sovereign borders (at least when its in our self-interest). The UN sanctions, UN inspection regimes, and no-fly zones (which are not authorized by the UN) have effectively quelled all further Iraqi aggression. Saddam Hussein has been successfully deterred from all further adventurism. Again, Deterrence and Containment worked and continues to work. Who disputes this?

Some say, "we can't continue to absorb the expense of maintaining the no-fly zones". Why not? Maintaining them is hugely less expensive than the estimated costs of war, rebuilding, and occupation, never mind the future costs that will accrue through erosion of our moral standing throughout the world.

Some say, "the sanctions are barbaric and must be stopped; we need to exact 'regime change' in order to do so". Bunk! We could've stopped the sanctions before they started. They have almost zero to do with why Saddam Hussein has not resumed his own desires for empire (which are greatly dwarfed by the ambitions of our own Caesar, thirsting for a new millennial Pax Americana). The example of Gulf War I, plus the no-fly zones and inspection regimes are what held him in check.

Some say, "Saddam is brutal, vile, represses his people -- war will free the Iraqi people and allow American-style democracy to emerge". If the lessons of history didn't stand in my way, I might believe this to be our motive and thus democracy the likely outcome. But our actions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, Colombia, Chile (to name a few) lead me to believe the more likely outcome is the installation of a new repressive regime more friendly to American corporate interests.

So: Why abandon the sound principles of Deterrence and Containment now and leap to a new policy of pre-emptive attack? Where is the justification? Where is the evidence? Where is the imminent threat? Where is the moral clarity? I've been waiting for a smidgeon of these things since I first heard Condi Rice announce with feigned fervor and concern, back in March of 2002, that Iraq might be holding as a prisoner a pilot downed during the first hours of the first Gulf War. Trial balloon #1? You betcha! How can anyone trust anything these people have said since?

I recall Admiral Billingslea's testimony before Congress in the summer of 2002 overviewing the risks associated with unfriendly nations harboring terrorist groups (several of which undisputedly reside in Iraq -- though not Al Qaeda) while at the same time acquiring or building WMD. The fear is that one day an unfriendly leader will hand these weapons of violence to a terrorist group willing to use them.

First, its notable that the only weapons of mass destruction used to date have been fuel-full Boeing 747's with boxcutters serving as triggers. The leaders in unfriendly nations have so far refrained from sharing their WMD with terrorist groups for the same reason the U.S. has refused, for example, to share ours with our terrorist client states: There is nothing to gain by it and more to lose. These are our toys, the powerful think, an underpinning of our power. Why dilute matters by sharing these means with others?

What the Billingslea argument demands is vigilant anti-proliferation regimes, not implementation of the insane Bush Doctrine underway now, where Iraq is to serve as an example to the rest of the world of our willingness to use our overwhelming force to unilaterally further our self-interest (the self-interest of an elite few at the top of our socioeconomic ladder). The message: Bend to our will, or else. It’s the message of the schoolyard bully.

So, if at the nation-state level Deterrence and Containment still works, why discontinue it now? And if 9-11 examples the stealthiness of future threat, then I advise that we thoroughly examine how 9-11 came to be. I remain puzzled why the GWB administration didn't on 9/12 authorize a full and complete investigation into how our hundreds of billions of dollars security apparatus failed to prevent 9-11.

When that hijacker's passport magically appeared in the WTC rubble -- or was it when I learned that we already had full active Air Force protocols to follow whenever a domestic jet is hijacked that were, for some unexplained reason, NOT followed on 9-11 -- or was it when we were promised a full "white paper" detailing the evidence of Al Qaeda involvement, evidence that has never been presented to the world -- these things lead me to conclude that this war has just about nothing to do with WMD or terrorism or the desire to bring democracy to Iraq (after all, GWB's dad promised the same thing for Kuwait!), but instead more likely is meant to advance the interests of, well, whom? Halliburton? They have, note, already been awarded huge post-war contracts, and dear Cheney still receives $1mm a year from his old firm. Who else is lined up at the trough? But mostly, the question to ask is who’s megalomaniacal ego will be advanced? Who is it that desires future schoolchildren to sing songs praising their names? What arrogance! And what folly!!

(And who PAYS for war, rebuilding, and occupation? Meanwhile GWB pushes a second trillion dollar tax break for the wealthy while polishing future speeches that surely will inform us that we can no longer afford Medicare and Social Security as we know it, or occupational and environmental regulations, or money for educating our young or feeding our needy. What a F*CKING DAMN TRAVESTY! And it continues...)

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Now, 7 months later, I see not a reason to retract a single word. In fact, I see I was way too polite. Bastards!

doesn't a friendly little impeachment of the entire cabal have a nice ring to it?

Is this loon even educated? What a loser.

Let him get his bald weak heart ass out there to do some of this pre-emption on his own. He'd be setting a fine example.

Example? That's un republican.

Give it up, Spiro, you're BUSTED!

"No financial interest in that company" My ASS!