The Absurdity of the Bush Anti-Terrorism Foreign Policy

The United States treasury and the people of the country are currently staggering under the weight of a multi trillion dollar fiasco initiated by the Bush Administration with the invasion and destabilization of Iraq. That cost is further elevated by the increase in oil prices now pushing the cost of gasoline to $4 per gallon and threatening to deepen the current economic recession. Yet recent death tolls in Baghdad and in Iraq, the continuing lack of a stable government and continued lack of rebuilt infrastructure clearly demonstrate that the adventure was not only deceitful, but was ill conceived from the beginning. The mismanagement and incompetence that has followed, leading to thousands of lost US soldiers and hundreds of thousands of lost Iraqi people, only reinforces the conviction that the Bush Administration “Anti-Terrorism” foreign policy is both intellectually and morally bankrupt.

Switch focus to the Western Hemisphere where the Bush Administration payment of millions of dollars to Columbia for anti-drug programs and anti-terrorist interventions each year has sought to buy the friendship of countries in South America. The abject failure of the Bush policy and of Bush personally was demonstrated in the recent incident at the Ecuador border with Columbia. In a model of the Bush policy of arrogance, President Uribe of Columbia launched a unilateral and unauthorized attack on Ecuadorian soil to target a camp where leaders of the FARC rebel group were hiding. Instead of bilateral cooperation and traditional international diplomacy practices, Uribe decided to violate Ecuadorian sovereignty. The attack killed a FARC leader and a number of innocent women and children as well. Ecuador’s protest was joined by fellow South American leaders and was upheld by the Organization of American States. Not one leader was willing to support the actions by Uribe, who is viewed as a puppet or crony of Bush. The leaders did acknowledge that there was a problem of guerilla groups crossing borders, but stressed that intergovernmental cooperation is the proper way to deal with such problems, not unilateral violations of national sovereignty. Uribe was humiliated and promised never to do it again. Thus, the stature of Bush and his foreign policy has been exposed in another theater.

Switch focus to US border with Mexico where armed drug cartels have been murdering police officials with impunity in border towns. Groups such as the Loma Bonita Cartel, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel have weapons and munitions that exceed the resources of the local police and the state police. They use money from illegal drug trade to purchase weapons, influence [bribery] and manpower. This power is employed to secure cocaine trafficking routes into the US. The Mexican Government has sent troops to assist local authorities, but the corruption is so rampant that more than 15% of the local and state police are believed to be on the payroll of the cartels. The US has sent $500 million in aid, but that amount compares to the estimated $23 billion annual drug trade. So the local police either assist or look the other way as cartel assassins openly murder any police official that threatens the drug trade. US Border agents have been murdered as well. And the flow of cocaine into the US continues, with the resulting toll of death and destruction flowing from its distribution and use.

If one were a logical thinker, it might seem sensible to employ the “principles” of national security and anti-terrorism to the situation in Mexico to fight an evident danger, rather than sending troops to Iraq to fight a non-existent threat. Yet the Bush Administration has failed to do so. For a price tag of less than is spent in a month in Iraq, the US could form a joint mission with Mexico and sweep back the cartel stronghold in the space of a year. In fact, however, the US military currently lacks the resources to accomplish such a mission even though it is far more relevant to the actual responsibility of the US armed forces than the “Mission” in Iraq. But resources aside, the Bush administration is sounding a drumbeat for War with Iran, which demonstrates the wrongheaded logic of the White House. Even if resources were available, it is doubtful that Bush would employ them in a rational manner.

And we have heard nothing from the Presidential candidates about their thinking on foreign policy issues relating to actual safety and security of the US borders and against the terrorism and destruction relating to the cross border drug trade. We can only hope that Clinton, Obama or McCain can construct some policies that are more coherent and rational.