The very mention of the word, " doctrine," makes me cringe. Not at Naomi, for how coudst a man without 20/100 vision who hasn't had lasik ?
No. At the very notion itself. Why ? Because a doctrine could not have, and did not stop 9/11 - neither yours nor mine. A doctrine arguably caused the attack, but did not, in turn stop it. Hence, in order to enjoy the privilege of even having a doctrine, we have to attend to those other petty little pesky nasty little things like our country being ambushed, lest we lose our freedom, or the very ability to have a doctrine.
But the problem runs deeper than that - much, as Naomi's excursion attests. I happen to disagree that there was not as she says, a " devious plot," by the Bush Administration, to leverage 9/11 to achieve its largely authoritarian purposes that Bush cleverly couched under the auspice of " compassion. " And that disagreement is part of the motivation for this blog, which will serve as an attempt to deconstruct certain of the key tenets of Naomi's thesis.
How my own aversion, if you will, to the word " doctrine " was discovered somewhat serendipitously. I was trying to recall the title of the book, when it suddenly occurred to me that I could not remember the third word in it, " doctrine. " I then pondered whether or not I suffered from some sort of repressive symptom from which might arise an aversion. I concluded that the aversion was to the word doctrine itself, but that it was not confined to the word, but extended to the concept.
But how could the very idea of doctrine so ensconce me ? Again, it runs somewhat deeper than its mere superficial implications might suggest. America was ambushed on 9/11. It wasn't stopped. Because it wasn't, we've been forced to relinquish many of the freedoms and liberties we value. So the anger is ambivalent in that it's directed at both 9/11 itself, and perpetrators we have yet to capture, and at the effect of 9/11 in the form of the Patriot Act, which Naomi covers at length and in, intricate detail.
But does the fact that it wasn't stopped have to do with yet another doctrine, the Powell Doctrine ? I don't think as I would surmise Naomi to agree that the fact that the attack was not stopped can be blamed on General Powell and yet, that it should have been is not something about which I believe the General has been entirely truthful with the American people or 9/11 Commission. He's in select Washington-Insider-Type company. Men like Don, a.k.a. "Rummy," for those of you out there hwo were unfamiliar with him prior to 9/11. Don's witty, you see, clever with the turn of a phrase; Don once provided Saddam - yes, that Saddam - with Weapons Of Mass Destruction, perhaps even those that with the Iraqi Invasion he would attempt to retrieve. Don may have even authorized torture according to the latest memos. You can even see Don on YouTube talking about how the plane that crashed on 9/11 was, according to Don, "shot down." Always good with the turn of a phrase; " Tell me what I don't know I don't know, " I think Don once said, quoting Emerson. I could tell Don what he does know, which is that most of America is against this war, but it seems that it would not matter and that's what's at the heart of what's deperately wrong with our ever so fragile democracy, one made more fragile by Bush v. Gore, by the Supreme Court's unilateral, hegemonic, slap in the face of every American: " WE ARE THE SUPREMES, AND YOU, YOU ART JUST PETTY LITTLE LIBERALS, NEVER APPOINTED TO THIS COURT BY 41 THE GREAT WHO WAS VICTORIOUS IN DESERT STORM.
And so it seems to go with doctrines that those who have them can't seem to succeed at achieving anything practical, even when there is a disaster. I don't believe that the Powell Doctrine prevented General Powell from being able to stop the attack. But neither did having one enable the General to succeed.
