By Ivan Eland
President George W. Bush and Democratic and Republican luminaries broke ground recently at the future gleaming home of the United States Institute of Peace on the National Mall. After absorbing the speeches and, on the same day, the rather partisan Senate Intelligence Committee's report that concluded the Bush administration lied to the United States regarding its ill-fated invasion and occupation of Iraq, one needs to dig just a bit to see what a bipartisan policy of interventionism the United States really has. The existence of bipartisan support for meddling in the business of other countries stands in stark contrast to the President's remarks, which stated that he feared the U.S. was becoming "isolationist and nervous."
Despite attending the launch of a government-funded organization ostensibly dedicated to peace, former Republican Secretary of State George P. Shultz praised President Bush's policy of preventive war, saying, "In your time, I think this is one important idea that has real legs and staying power." But the international community has long dreaded such wars because threats are often invented or wildly exaggerated to justify questionable "preventive" aggression, as demonstrated by the Senate Intelligence Committee's findings about the inflated threats during the run up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
At the groundbreaking, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made an attempt to make us believe the two parties have opposing foreign policies. Quoting Democratic President John F. Kennedy's 1963 words, "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war," was a veiled jab at the President's Iraq policy. Of course, Pelosi didn't mention that in 1961, Kennedy himself orchestrated the botched CIA attempt to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro. Later, in 1962, he nearly initiated a nuclear world war for no strategic reason after the Soviets installed missiles in Cuba, a move intended to counter future U.S. invasions of the island.
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