Yes, I know. Bush said that before September 11, and the world changed after September 11 [insert continuation of neoconservative talking points here].

But it turns out that the quote above from President Bush came after 9/11.

Justin Logan finds a stunner from the Wall Street Journal’s Claudi Rosett, written just a couple of weeks after September 11. With apologies to Justin, I’m going to steal his entire blockquote:

In two brief lines at a press conference Tuesday, Mr. Bush summed up this policy: “We’re not into nation building. We’re focused on justice.”

That’s a crucial distinction. Nation building entails America trying to construct an entire way of life for others. And though building a free and democratic world would be a wondrous thing, experience suggests that for any nation it is a vastly complex project that must come mainly from within. America can serve as an example and an ally. But we cannot reliably reengineer other societies, and we risk enormous resentment when we try.

Justice, on the other hand, is about enforcing a code that forbids barbaric attacks on others. Mr. Bush clearly aims to raise greatly and consistently the cost of terrorist assaults on the U.S. and its allies. And in such talk we have the stirrings, at last, of a sound U.S. foreign policy for the new world order.

That’s a big departure from most of the past decade, shaped by Bill Clinton’s presumption that he was gifted with the powers and privileges of some higher deity. In the priorities of his administration, his own vast concern for himself simply dwarfed the need to chart a clear course for our country. Instead, the U.S. developed a foreign policy so looped around grandiose Clinton projects and photo-ops that it neglected large chunks of reality, including some of America’s most immediate and vital interests.

[...]

The liberal mindset Mr. Clinton exemplified turns on the idea that those in power can somehow reengineer the nature of mankind. That if you talk enough about peace, you’ll get it; if you tell people to love each other, they will; and if you just ladle enough cash and hyperbole into troubled countries, you may have time to pose for the press and then get out of town before they start burning the American flag.

The conservative approach is to assume that you can’t just wish away evil, or micromanage individual free will. But you can lay down a set of rules for all, offering rewards to those who observe them, and imposing heavy costs on those who break them–or help others to break them.

Can’t help but wonder what happened to such common sense. It dissipated pretty quickly. Both in the White House and at the Wall Street Journal.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 10:10 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.