Renewing the American Experiment

A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy
of the United States of America

The National Security Strategy published by the White House in September 2002, if carried out, would amount to a radical revision of the political character of our nation. Its central and most significant statement is this:

While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists…(p. 6)

By this new doctrine, the president alone may start a war against any nation at any time. The very idea of a government acting alone in preemptive war is inherently undemocratic, for it does not require or permit the president to obtain the consent of the governed. As a policy, this new strategy depends on the acquiescence of a public kept fearful and ignorant, and on the compliance of an intimidated and office-dependent legislature.

The alleged justification for this new strategy is the recent emergence in the United States of international terrorism, defined as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents" (p. 5). This is truly a distinct kind of violence, but to imply by the word "terrorism" that this sort of terror is the work exclusively of "terrorists" is misleading. The "legitimate" warfare of technologically advanced nations likewise is premeditated, politically motivated violence often perpetrated against innocents. The distinction between the intention to perpetrate violence against innocents, as in "terrorism," and the willingness to do so, as in "war," is not a source of comfort.

There is little acknowledgment in The National Security Strategy that terrorism might have a cause that could possibly be remedied. The "embittered few," it seems, are merely "evil." A government, committing its nation to "rid the world of evil," is assuming necessarily that it and its nation are good. But the proposition that anything so multiple and large as a nation can be "good" is an insult to common sense. It precludes any attempt at self-criticism or self-correction and it leads us far indeed from the traditions of religion and democracy.

Frightening as are the threats that confront us, they do not relieve us of the responsibility to be intelligent, principled, and practical. Curtailment of civil rights, defiance of laws, and resort to overwhelming force—the ready products of fear and hasty thought—cannot protect us against the destruction of our own land by ourselves. They cannot protect us against the selfishness, wastefulness, and greed that we have legitimized here as economic virtues, and have taught to the world. They cannot protect us against our government's long-standing disdain for any form of self-sufficiency or thrift, or against the consequent dependence on foreign supplies, such as oil from the Middle East.

The National Security Strategy attempts to compound a foreign policy out of contradictory principles. This document affirms peace as the justification of war and war as the means of peace, perpetuating a hallowed absurdity. But implicit in its assertion of this (and, by implication, any other) nation's right to act alone in its own interest is an acceptance of war as a permanent condition.

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