As the US, Britian, Australia and other allies assembled their forces for war last year, elite and public attention in the US, Europe and Australia tended to focus on the immediate question of whether to undertake military action against Iraq.
Declaring freedom as the natural birthright of every person, yet this righteous pursuit of human liberty and international order misunderstand the nature of both liberalism and what threatens it, and risks undermining not only the US's own values but also international institutions.
To its credit, the Bush administration has made its foreign policy conception quite clear. In his June 1, 2002, address at West Point, Bush laid out his administration's conceptual framework for dealing with the post September 11 world. The objective of American foreign policy, Bush makes clear, is nothing less than a transformation of world politics, domestic as well as international, using American power - military as well as economic and political - to build liberal societies. "We will defend the peace against threats from terrorists and tyrants . . . And we will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent. Building this just peace is the US's opportunity, and the US's duty."
It is the US's unchallengeable military power that provides the aegis under which peace and freedom can be built. American military supremacy will be so manifest that even the thought of challenging it (and the American-imposed order constructed atop it) will be seen as implausible.
It does not seem unreasonable to describe a policy that proposes to use military supremacy aggressively, unilaterally and universally in order to encourage the governance of free societies. The new world order will be constructed not only under the beneficial umbrella of the US's global military dominance but also on the basis of the US's blueprint and on the basis of its conceptions of universal values and of order:
"The 20th century ended with a single surviving model of human progress, based on non-negotiable demands of human dignity, the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women and private property and free speech and equal justice and religious tolerance . . . The requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa, Middle-East and Latin America and the entire Islamic world," Bush said at West Point.
Ridding the world of tyrants (Iraq, Iran, Syria…)and terrorists (Hizballah, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad..) is not simply a matter of surgical air strikes and guided munitions, of eliminating particular leaders and destroying particular facilities, of employing superior technology and military science.
Ridding the world of tyrants and terrorists is a matter of transforming lives and societies around the world. Last week US policy makers and their European counterparts met in Europe to discuss ways to help bring about democracy to the Middle-East countries. It is a process inseparable from great, long-term, historical developments in culture and economics. Strike down one tyrant or one terrorist and another will grow in his or her place, unless the environmental niche that allows them to flourish is altered.
Building a new world order is thus truly a millennial task, it starts by reviving one of the few democratic models in the Middle-East - LEBANON - freeing the only nation that lived and experienced freedom and democracy could well be an example that can strike a positive note in the hearts of the region it’s a fact should be not overlooked! By freeing the silent voices in Lebanon brought on by the Syrian occupation you are not only lending a hand, rather you are facilitating an effective way toward democracy, these same voices can reach out and touch the hearts and the minds of million of their Arab neighbours.
A world free from tyranny and terror may - and hopefully will - come, but it will not come soon, nor will it come as long as these tyrants the likes of Bashar Assad (Syria) and the Mullas (Iran) as well as the Saudi Monarchies been appeased by a simple thinking that one day they will change. Governance based on righteous rather than appeasing tyrants, the policy makers (US & European) must make it clear to these dictators to adhere to the rule of law OR ELSE!.
The world should take notice of the Libyan dictator change of heart, not because he is repentant for the pain and the suffering that he caused in a span of three decades, on the contrary thanks should be directed to the US unyielding policy and the forward action in Iraq.
In the violent, imperfect world that exists today, the US needs to act - even to use violence - to protect from harm its own people and others who depend on it.
The opportunity to employ power for self-defence should not, though, be confused with a divine calling to do with military power. Power's ability to change behaviour in which, no tyrant, terrorist or torturer doubts it.
There is no millennium at hand. The fix is to support FREEDOM. Freedom and peace are possible, but they are not achieved once and for all time, and they are not achieved through empty speeches. They are achieved through the daily, often frustrating, and sometimes unrewarding process of negotiation and self-restraint. War and violations of freedom are not tumours that can be surgically removed. They are recurring inflammations, the consequence of weaknesses inherent in human nature, that can at times be prevented through forethought and that can at other times be treated.
A wise policy aims to strengthen the global body politic to reduce its susceptibility - and our own susceptibility - to these inflammations.
But the process of human and social development is neither rapid nor linear, and it resists efforts to rush it or force it in particular directions. We must condone evil and should not confuse the moral relativism that equates repression with freedom or violence with peace; nor should we deny that violence at times must be countered with violence.
At the end the choice should be for all time to support the forces that promote freedom, human dignity and give the rights to the other half of the world population ‘women’.