Our generation is the 9/11 generation, the generation that has been shaped by the horrific events that unfolded six years ago tomorrow. Although we may still go about our daily lives doing the million ordinary things that college students do, 9/11 changed us. Not since Vietnam has a generation been so concerned with foreign policy. To be sure, this concern is expressed in different ways: for some, it means enlisting in the military; for others, it means joining the anti-war movement; and for still others, it means something in between. Yet the fact remains that ours is a generation preoccupied with foreign policy, and rightfully so: elements of our foreign policy were used by the 9/11 terrorists to justify the unjustifiable, and flaws in our foreign policy during the 1990s permitted global terrorism to grow exponentially.
Six years later, it is appropriate for us to ask how our foreign policy has changed and whether or not it is making us more secure. It is safe to say that our foreign policy today is much more ambitious and much more unilateral than the foreign policy of the 1990s. We are fighting wars in two countries, and the invasion of Iraq proceeded against the adamant opposition of the United Nations. Whereas both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton made the UN central to their foreign policies, our current president has been increasingly willing to build alternative coalitions and to go it alone when he deems it necessary.
Are we safer today as a result of these changes in foreign policy? On the contrary'we are less secure. Al-Qaeda has not been destroyed; Osama bin Laden is still at large; terrorism now has a significant foothold in Iraq; many of our former allies in the world have turned against us; and state sponsors of terrorism like Iran and Syria are more powerful today than they were six years ago. What went wrong? Why are we less secure now than we were before 9/11?
In a nutshell, we are less secure today because the Bush administration has failed to pursue a realistic foreign policy based on the American national interest. The invasion of Iraq was based upon flimsy evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program that we now know did not exist; but if the invasion itself was bad, the subsequent occupation was worse, as the Bush administration pursued lofty goals like democratic government for a nation that has never tasted even a drop of liberty. Rather than basing the policies of the occupation on our own national interest, the Bush administration pursued democracy building. Today we see the result: a failed Iraqi state manipulated by regional neighbors, and our troops caught in the middle of an Iraqi civil war. There is no graceful exit for America, and now we must choose between options that can be called bad
worse and worst of all.
Although the ambitious and aggressive foreign policy of the Bush administration has been dreadful, returning to the liberal internationalism of the 1990s is not the solution to our problems. Rather, we must begin to pursue a foreign policy based upon our own national interest. Those who are responsible for setting our foreign policy must ask themselves what is best for America G
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Nathan Nelson
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