Doug Cooke
Rebuttal on foreign policy.
In response to:
“The Bubble of American
Supremacy”
Speech by George Soros
Delivered at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace
Washington, DC
Monday, January 12, 2004
- WRONG: You’re a party-line democrat through and
through. I know a seminar caller when I hear one
- WRONG: America is the supreme force
in the world, like it or not. Supremacy was attained when we won the
Revolutionary War; it was furthered when we bailed Europe
out of two world wars.
- WRONG: It is only considered unacceptable in France or Germany,
to destroy your enemies before they destroy you. Those countries would prefer to be taken
over by an evil tyrant, than confront him. This has been proven in the
past.
- WRONG. No preemptive action has been taken,
even though we do have that right. The Iraq War was a resumption of
previous hostilities, and a punishment for violations of 17 UN resolutions
that the UN would never enforce.
- WRONG: The values that made America
great were its supreme power and ability to defend itself against anyone,
including terrorists and rogue dictators that support terrorists.
- WRONG: The rest of the world was divided very
evenly about the Iraq War. There
was no overwhelming majority, unless you unfairly include all the people
of Russia,
France,
and Germany. While their governments were opposed to
military action because Saddam was one of their biggest trade partners,
the people were not necessarily opposed.
In fact, most of the nations in Europe
were in favor of the war.
- WRONG:
for Bush and neocons, it is not a struggle for supremacy, which we already
have. It is a struggle to preserve peace and freedom in a terror-stricken
world. It is a policy of complete intolerance of terrorism and sponsors
thereof.
- WRONG: the Bush administration has all but
begged the UN to come in and help form a valid democratic government in Iraq. The
UN finally, grudgingly, agreed this week.
- WRONG: Saddam did have weapons of mass
destructions, which is of course what the 17 UN resolutions were all
about. In fact, he used them
against his own people, the Kurds, the Kuwaitis, and Iran. Since then 17 resolutions by the UN
recognized that he had them, and that he would be required to account for
them and dismantle them. He did
not. This means that he either destroyed them on his own, which he would
not profit from since the UN would give him no credit for that, or he sold
them to terrorists or other countries, or he hid them.
David Kay has just come out and flatly said, Bush and Blair deceived
nobody. The intelligence they had, and many agencies around the world had,
said that Saddam had the WMD. Do we
trust our best sources of intelligence, or do we trust a known rogue
dictator who has been proven to sponsor terrorism.
- WRONG: it is not two different options,
imposing our will on the world or leading a more prosperous and peaceful
world. The Bush plan, and the right
plan, is to lead the world to a more prosperous and peaceful future by
imposing our will that it had better be prosperous and peaceful, or we
will not tolerate it. We have the
power to back up the mission.
- Let me
end by saying your theories will lead to a United States which is
considered by the world to be a weak pushover, a paper tiger so to speak,
that rogue dictators and the terrorists they support, are not afraid
of. This leaves us open to more
terrorist attacks, which would be the case if we had elected Al Gore. Let us instead, rejoice in the fact that
God sent George Bush to protect our country from the evils against us, and
show our gratitude by re-electing him.
This may be our only chance to defeat our enemies. With the hate-Bush movement underway, we
would be very fortunate to have another Republican president. The Democrat ideology simply is not
adequate for foreign policy, or any other policy for that matter.
Doug Cooke
Philosopher