William Pfaff : Bush is ignoring the political lesson of Vietnam

[Flagg]

WILLIAM PFAFF: BUSH IS IGNORING THE POLITICAL LESSON OF VIETNAM
William Pfaff


PARIS (International Herald Tribune) - This year will be the year of all the answers. We will learn whether George W. Bush remains president of the United States. His fate will tell us whether the basic shift in American foreign policy he carried out will last beyond November 2004. We will discover whether the electorate supports pre-emptive and preventive war, mounted when a U.S. administration judges this necessary.
We thus will know whether the Bush administration's National Strategy Statement of September 2002 represented a simple lapse in traditional military policy and ethics, or reflects a lasting rupture in how Americans think about the rest of the world.
That, in turn, will automatically tell us whether the alliance-based cooperation and constructive multilateralism of U.S. policy since World War II is truly finished.

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http://www.ttc.org/da40103a.htm

[giantrobot_2000]

1. ...

Eye-opening, to me as an American. I've bookmarked this article. Thank you.

I noticed your avatar. Where are you in the EU?

[Flagg]

4. Montpellier, France...

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. And if multilateralism is dead

then we all soon will be, because someone with nuclear capabilities will decide to start a war, and it will escalate, and that's good-bye to us all.

[aquart]

3. Yup.