The Politics of Preemption

So I happened upon a great political website this week... the "Vote by Issue Quiz". It presents you with on-the-record opinions by candidates on several key political issues, but it does so anonymously and allows you, based purely on the issue at hand, to express agreement, disagreement, or ambivalence. When you've read all the issues and marked your feelings on them, then it "reveals" which candidates you agreed (or disagreed) with. It takes some time to get through, but I found it worthwhile.

If I could add one issue to the quiz, though, it would be to add a question like: "If you were president, and you obtained credible intelligence that Iran was very close to a breakthrough in developing nuclear (or other) weapons of mass destruction, and that they planned to deploy those weapons against U.S. interests, would you preemptively attack that country to prevent those plans?" The quiz already contains a question about whether the candidates agree with President Bush's so-called "Doctrine of Preemption," but this issue is, to me, important enough that I want to know more about where a candidate might draw that line where they believe preemption is justified.

I think the danger with pre-emption is that it could easily become (if it hasn't already) a thinly-veiled excuse for unbridled imperialism: If some nation does not kowtow to U.S. interests, we simply discover some "credible threat" coming from that country, and bomb them into submission. The interesting thing about this is, attacking another country often has the uncanny effect of (1) making people in that country not like you, and (2) stirring up retaliatory aggression. So in some twisted way, in the end, the means seem justified.

None of the leading candidates seemed to have opinions on pre-emption that seemed very "safe." This is the most important issue to me in the upcoming election: we need someone in office who will not lead us into another unfounded war of aggression. If we're really sincere about helping the downtrodden peoples of the world that can't help themselves, there are enough examples of unjust oppression in areas already being ravaged by wars. In my opinion, we don't need to go creating new ones.