Little Reporting on Paranoia in High Places

Journalists often refer to the Bush administration's foreign policy as "unilateral" and "preemptive." Liberal pundits like to complain that a "go-it-alone" approach has isolated the United States from former allies. But the standard American media lexicon has steered clear of a word that would be an apt description of the Bush world view.

Paranoid.

Early symptoms met with tremendous media applause in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Skepticism from reporters and dissent from pundits were sparse while President Bush quickly declared that governments were either on the side of the USA or "the terrorists." Since then, the paranoiac scope of the administration's articulated outlook has broadened while media acceptance has normalized it – to the point that a remarkable new document from the Pentagon is raising few media eyebrows.

Released on March 18 with a definitive title – "The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America" – the document spells out how the Bush administration sees the world. Consider this key statement: "Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism."

A high-ranking Pentagon official, Douglas Feith, offered this explanation to reporters: "There are various actors around the world that are looking to either attack or constrain the United States, and they are going to find creative ways of doing that, that are not the obvious conventional military attacks." And he added: "We need to think broadly about diplomatic lines of attack, legal lines of attack, technological lines of attack, all kinds of asymmetric warfare that various actors can use to try to constrain, shape our behavior."

Translation: They're after us! And "they" are a varied assortment of individuals, groups and nations bent on harming us while impeding our efforts to do good and protect ourselves.

more...

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/solomon.php?articleid=5344

I just thought it was spiteful and mean spirited.

This quote is truly exceptional, and is brought out by everyone who reads the document:



Anyone who crosses them at home or abroad is an "evildoer".

that's for sure. He takes the military idea of asymetric threat, and conflates it with "international fora, and judicial processes"---that is, the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, etc. In doing so, he equates those institutions with Terrorism.

I also like the PNAC's United States Uber Alles crazy-talk. These multilateral institutions are nothing more than tools of the weak used to constrain the US from doing whatever the fuck it wants. "Our strength as a nation will continue to challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak..."

That's some crazy shit. It's rather amazing that somebody actually gets away with formulating those types of statements on the public record. To think that we used to try to keep this kind of thing secret. No wonder the CIA is feeling put-out lately.

spitefulness are the order of the day. And we're told that "God is in the White House." I don't get it.