Stuck On Offense
During a recent press conference, the man who never makes mistakes stressed what he considers the main lesson of 9-11, "That this country must go on the offense and stay on the offense."
In elementary physics, every action causes an equal and opposite reaction; in the realm of interpersonal and international affairs, the offensive behavior of one invariably causes offensive behavior in others.
The party who acts offensively — through verbal assaults, aggressive demands, coercive expressions of anger, physical attacks upon body and property, or invasions of territory — projects a viral wave of threatening force to which the offended party must react, with as equal an answering force as possible.
The cycle of violence ever begins when one group (or individual) decides to resolve conflicts by going on the offensive, acting aggressively against another. A single offensive action can spur a repeating loop of injury and revenge that will last for generations.
The War President wrote the book on the pitfalls of offensive behavior. With his penchant for branding his enemies as evil and verbally slurring their leaders in public statements, and all his cowboy rhetoric of "with us or against us" and "trackin' 'em down and smokin' 'em out," and his undisguised, sneering contempt for opposing viewpoints, and his flippant disregard of the practices of diplomacy, and his infamously fumbling attempts at sincere expressions of compassion, George W.Bush's first instinct in every conflict is to go on the offensive.
Domestically and internationally, the War President picks fights with reckless abandon, like a schoolyard bully who wakes up every morning wondering who he will intimidate next. Though he came into office on a tainted election, without a clear mandate, and with promises to be a "healer not a divider," he learned early on that the American people prefer the in-charge, do-it-now, swagger of offensive actions (however lame-brained or dishonest) over the slow, tempered uncertainties of defensive response.
So it's happened that six years into Bush's crusade against evil, the world has become vastly more dangerous. Al Qaeda terrorists, mindful that America has its omnipotent guard up, have gone after a series of softer targets, beginning with the once bucolic Bali. Afghanistan and Iraq, their civilian infrastructures totally destroyed, each teeter on the edge of total anarchy. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has steadily degenerated, showing no signs for hope but every reason to despair. The North Koreans, rightly imagining that the War President would like to do unto them as he did in Iraq, have reacted with increasing belligerence.
America is barely on speaking terms with such longtime friends and allies as Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, has strained its critical new alliance with Russia and crippled the leadership of Tony Blair in Great Britain, has undercut and undermined the United Nations, and has rendered irrelevant the very concepts of international diplomacy and multilateral agreements.
While offensive, aggressive, dominating action may sometimes solve short-term dangers, it only does so at the detriment to long-term safety. Offensive behavior always gives offense — it creates and spreads offensive behavior — and a world filled with offensive people remains forever doomed to violent conflict. Contrary to Bush-think, we cannot not solve this conundrum by becoming yet more offensive, by developing even bigger bombs, or by destroying other nations more efficiently.