OxBlog

# Posted 11:14 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

YES, AMERICA FIGHTS PREVENTIVE WARS. Michael Kelly makes an important point in today's WashPost: That the U.S. has never hesitated to fight preventive wars in the name of justice and freedom. As Kelly writes:

"..evangelism for the freedom of men impelled America to what can fairly be called "preventive wars," or armed interventions, in the Persian Gulf, in Haiti, in Bosnia and in Kosovo. Actually, only the Persian Gulf War rises even to the justification of preventive war. The others -- all launched by a Democratic administration with the support of liberal Democrats -- enjoyed no justification under the logic of imminent threat. They were primarily about nothing but the freedom of men.

So, "preventive wars" are not new, and neither is the American impulse to better the world by air power. But we have not had a president embrace this impulse so largely and clearly, and as a matter of grand doctrine, since Sen. [Ted] Kennedy's brother called a generation to arms."

And since preventive wars tend to be followed by nation-building, here are a pair of articles, by Mark Danner and Fawaz Gerges, on the fate of postwar Iraq. Both should encourage those skeptics who do not believe we can build a democratic Middle East. But I like Danner's description of why a democratic Middle East would matter so much to US security:

Behind the notion that an American intervention will make of Iraq "the first Arab democracy," as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz put it, lies a project of great ambition. It envisions a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq — secular, middle-class, urbanized, rich with oil — that will replace the autocracy of Saudi Arabia as the key American ally in the Persian Gulf, allowing the withdrawal of United States troops from the kingdom. The presence of a victorious American Army in Iraq would then serve as a powerful boost to moderate elements in neighboring Iran, hastening that critical country's evolution away from the mullahs and toward a more moderate course. Such an evolution in Tehran would lead to a withdrawal of Iranian support for Hezbollah and other radical groups, thereby isolating Syria and reducing pressure on Israel. This undercutting of radicals on Israel's northern borders and within the West Bank and Gaza would spell the definitive end of Yasir Arafat and lead eventually to a favorable solution of the Arab-Israeli problem.

This is a vision of great sweep and imagination: comprehensive, prophetic, evangelical...It means to remake the world, to offer to a political threat a political answer. It represents a great step on the road toward President Bush's ultimate vision of "freedom's triumph over all its age-old foes."

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