This morning I woke up with the first footage of air raids on Iraqs capital city Baghdad coming to the tv-screen. Even though I want to be careful not to make this blog a political forum, it is dedicated to knowledge management and learning after all, I feel the need to make this post and clarify my position. War, once declared, is no thing to be neutral about.
The last weeks, but also the last two years, I had an increasing uneasy feeling
concerning the foreign policy style of the USA. That unease started with one
little sentence G.W. Bush said whilst declaring war on terrorism: “You’re either
with us, or with the terrorists.” Any leader that thinks in such black and white
terms arouses my unease, especially so if that person is the President of the
one remaining world power.
So, yes, I too was devastated by the news of 9/11. Yes, I do think the USA have every right to react and defend themselves against such heinous acts. Yes, I too think Saddam Hussein is a dictator everybody would be glad to be rid of. No, I feel no antipathy whatsoever towards the USA nor its citizens. No, I don’t begrudge the USA their tremendous economic and military power. In fact I think it is a good thing that there is a super power in this world, if its deeds and morals match that level of power.
When you are in the possesion of tremendous power, you have to be a wise man in wielding it. For all their human flaws and differences of opinion, post war American Presidents have tried to do just that. And I also think that the current American President thinks he’s doing that as well. But the break I have witnessed in American foreign policy in the last years seems to point in the opposite direction. And that is what makes me very worried.
MSNBC explains this shift in foreign policy in eloquent detail.