To:
From: John McAuliff <jmcauliff@ffrd.org>
Subject: Very useful reference
Cc:

For several months I have been handing out copies of an article by Nicholas Lemann in the New Yorker of April 1, 2002, entitled "The Next World Order".  His basic premise was that the foreign policy of the Bush Administration was already set pre-September 11 and was based on strategic conclusions about the post Cold War world reached by the key policy makers in Bush I who returned to power in Bush II. 

One element of their conclusions that makes "sense" of the Administration's unilateralism is that the US should permit no second power or group of powers to arise.  A second is that it should allow no country to develop weapons that could threaten the US.  Iraq was the key example of a new US right to preventive or preemptive self defense.  Lemann's prediction last April was, "probably in the late summer or early fall, the enormous troop positioning, which will take months, will begin."

I would be happy to send the article to you by e-mail or you can find it at

(http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?020401fa_FACT1)

I was talking to Mary earlier tonight about Saudi Arabia being the potential post Iraq target and began thinking what a political assault on the homeland of Islam's holiest places would do to America's standing in the Muslim world.  Do people in Washington not understand or care what is happening because of their uncritical pro-Sharon tilt and the blustering threats to invade Iraq so that they could contemplate also taking on the Saudis?  Have they adopted Huntington's "clash of civilizations" as the premise of strategy?

And one other question that has been disturbing my vacation....Is the Administration's obsession to undermine and be sheltered from the International Criminal Court just ideological or is it based on recognition that the rest of the world will not accept America's unilateral assertion of the right to preventive or preemptive invasion and that some countries will judge these same US leaders to be guilty of unwarranted military aggression and thus potentially to be war criminals?

Is there any way to stop this?

John