The “Because I Say So” Doctrine
“If we have a good sheriff, we don’t need laws.” That’s the Dubya Doctrine in a nutshell.
Let’s stipulate that getting rid of Saddam was a good thing and leave the nature of his regime out of the discussion for a moment so we can examine what US foreign policy looks like in the wake of this war. In laying the groundwork for our attack on Iraq, the United States claimed the controversial right to launch a pre-emptive war against an enemy who was planning to attack us. After 9/11, when we were attacked without warning (or at least, without any warning that anyone paid attention to), this seems like a justified posture to take, even though the idea of pre-emptive war has been discredited as a principle of international law since 1914.
We then also claimed the right to independently identify anyone who constituted a threat against us and be the only credible source of evidence about the nature of the threat. In other words, in the diplomatic campaign against Iraq, we were both the prosecutor and the judge, making up the charges as we went along and ruling on the admissibility of evidence such that only facts which supported our case were deemed worthy of consideration. Finally, growing impatient with the endless jury deliberations, we called a halt to the trial, put on the black mask of the executioner, and took the prisoner out for some good old Texas justice.
As if this weren’t enough, now that Iraq appears to have been innocent of the capital offenses with which they were charged (possessing WMDs in violation of treaties, and colluding with Al-Qaeda), we are changing the charges after the fact to show that they were indeed guilty enough of something to justify the actions we took – never mind that their guilt for these actions was long established and does not constitute sufficient cause to launch an unprovoked war against a sovereign state, no matter how shabby and rotten it might be.
There’s a reason our own criminal justice system doesn’t work like this. Yes, the streets would be safer if the police could do whatever they felt like to whomever they deem to “look guilty.” But that doesn’t look much like justice to most Americans. We have laws and processes in place not only to protect the accused, but also to demonstrate that our system functions according to principles, not the arbitrary whims of individuals. There used to be something called “law and order Republicans” who agreed with this formulation out of genuine conservative principles rather than opportunistic partisanship, but they appear to have become extinct.
The belief in the supremacy of law is the defining characteristic of our country, and what has made America the strongest and most successful democracy in human history. Now we’ve made an international spectacle of our disregard for the principles of law in the single-minded pursuit of our narrowly-defined (and, in my view, poorly-defined) interests.
What's rotten here has nothing to do with the criminal and everything to do with the cop. If our cause against Iraq was just, we should have taken the time to make the case, and should have appeared willing to accept a different outcome if the facts were against us. Some would call that weakness. Others would say that real weakness is giving in to the passions of the moment, without regard to the larger good that is being destroyed by our righteous, arrogant rage.
8:34:21 AM 
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