Stardate 20020216.2208

(On Screen via long range sensors): Ah, yes. The Guardian again. (A good test for the heart of an American these days, to see if one's blood vessels can stand a boost in blood pressure.)

This destructive conservatism is contested fiercely, especially on the liberal, internationalist seaboards. Many good Americans are as bewildered by their current leaders and ideas as we are. But they are not in control. What the world has to deal with is not just the Bush administration, but the internal forces that put it there and will continue to constrain the US even without it. Iraq, the continuing defence build-up, disdain for international law and total uninterest in the 'soft' aspects of security - aid, trade, health, education and debt - are now givens in US policy.

I don't suppose this guy is aware of the polls which say that the vast majority of Americans (better than three quarters) strongly approve of how things are being handled now by the government?

And the only major bastion of liberal internationalism on this particular seaboard I can think of is a small section of the San Francisco area. (For that matter, I'm not sure that anything south of Chesapeake Bay on the East Coast is "liberal internationalist". In fact, I'm not sure there's very much of it south of Long Island.)

What the world has to deal with is not just the Bush administration, but the internal forces that put it there and will continue to constrain the US even without it. That being the will of the majority of American voters, as it were. Democracies are like that sometimes. (Of course, since he thinks the election was stolen by a decision of the Supreme Court, he doesn't believe that.)

But what caught my eye on this was that statement about "soft" aspects of security. The rest of this is empty rhetoric, but that is a serious point and worth answering.

Some diseases can be treated with medication. Some cannot; sometimes surgery is required. After surgery, you can again start using medication and usually have to. But when you really need surgery, nothing else will do. No amount of medication will stop internal bleeding, for example. No medication in existence can substitute for a kidney transplant. And when a tumor gets sufficiently large, it has to be cut out.

Hutton's "soft" aspects of security are the diplomatic equivalents of medication. Surgery, on the other hand, is war. Surgery always involves shedding blood; it causes pain and sometimes the patient dies. But when it's needed, then without it the patient's chances are far worse. Though nothing is certain, it's a risk that needs to be taken.

The US tried medication for twenty years, but with the attacks in September it became clear that those things were not enough. The current situation is that political surgery is needed. There are regimes out there which need to be deposed and it's clear that they won't give up voluntarily, so we're going to remove them by force. Once that's happened, the situation will be much improved and we can return to the use of aid and debt relief and the other things like it.

But the current situation cannot be solved with those things alone, and we're no longer in the mood to even try. There's a time and place for everything. It's not that the US has permanently given up on the "soft" aspects of security, so much as that we intend to come back to them in a couple of years when we think that they will again be effective, after two or three important tumors have been excised.