The Imperial Logic of Bush's Liberal Agenda

摘要

As the United States and its British ally mobilised for war, there was a natural tendency for elite and public attention in America and Europe to focus on the immediate question of whether to undertake military action against Iraq. Proponents of war underscored the dangers of leaving Saddam Hussein in power. Opponents stressed the morality, military risks and international political costs of undertaking a preventive war, the possibilities of containing Saddam Hussein's influence and deterring his use of weapons of mass destruction without resort to war, and the difficulties of building stable political institutions in the region after a victory. The cases for and against war were thus made largely in terms of the specifics of the Iraqi situation - whether, or under what circumstances, Saddam Hussein would use weapons of mass destruction; whether a democratic alternative to Saddam Hussein existed; whether the Iraqi people would welcome an American invasion; and whether military action in the region would create an anti-American backlash and destabilise the region's conservative and pro-American regimes or, conversely, spur a process of peaceful democratic development across the region.