UNITED STATES FIRST STRIKE POLICY

The issue I have heard absolutely nothing about from either candidate is one which cannot be reversed, at least not anytime soon. And yet, is the most dangerous to our safety of any foreign policy issue we currently pursue. That issue is the first strike policy President George W. Bush advanced prior to his invasion of Iraq. It was not enough to fabricate a reason to invade a sovereign nation and overthrow a government. Something the United Nations was specifically designed to counter. It was not enough to go against the rationale his father, George H.W. Bush put forward for not removing Sadam during Desert Storm. This president, George W. Bush has completely given up the moral ground by declaring that the United States will attack any country first that appears to threaten the United States. Talk about an outrageous foreign policy change! The old policy made it "okay" to hunt down murderous thugs and evildoers when they committed acts of barbarism in the United States. That which made it okay was the fact that we would NEVER do something like that to someone else. Now, that is all changed.

Now, many will claim that we have, on occasion, stepped into a country on pretense. BUT, we have never advanced that theory as a stated foreign policy. The old policy meant that when someone attacks the World Trade towers we are the ones offended and we can be outraged. If someone attacked our trains, or our subways, or some other dam or electric grid or anything we would have been the country with a significant grievance before the United Nations. Now, with this policy in place, we no longer hold the high ground. Anytime some group blows something up in the United States we have no moral authority to appeal to, since the response will be, "you are our enemy and we needed to strike you before you struck us." It does not matter who or from where these folks come from, it is now justified.

My issue is, at least at this time, I hear no significant presidential or vice presidential candidate discussing how to reverse this incredibly stupid blunder by a president that barely understands basic civics let alone complex foreign policy. How is it that we can believe for one minute that we can be safe if everyone else in the world lives in fear that we might, at any moment, drop a couple of tomahawk missiles and have a few Stealth bombers drop bunker busters on their capital. I would like to see Mr. Obama begin to craft a plan to counteract this incredibly overarching policy that will inevitably get the United States into a big pot of trouble.