(Page 18 of 22) - Paradoxes of Power: A Constructivist Analysis of U.S. Foreign Policy Since 9/11 authored by Schonberg, Karl.

latest battle in a war between “freedom and fear,” which had been fought from time
immemorial. And in this war, he argued, “God is not neutral.”

Individuals and groups within this camp, both terrorists leaders and the leaders of states,
were frequently described in terms suggesting that they were something other than fully
human. Having rejected the norms of civilization, they “hid in shadows and caves”—but
also, unseen, in cities around the world. They were depicted as “irrational,” “mad,”
driven by “ideologies of murder” to kill without compunction or restraint. They were
“evil men,” “parasites,” who aggressively sought to destroy freedom in every part of the
world. Their sanity could not be trusted, and bent on global domination, they could not
be negotiated with or deterred.

If this was the enemy, the United States was, in Bush’s view, an altruistic state that had
no material interests of its own to serve, no desire for empire or gain, but which did
acknowledge a moral obligation to defend human freedom when it was threatened. Bush
frequently framed his description of American identity in historical terms—the United
States was the nation that had defeated fascism and communism, and had been a beacon
of democracy for generations. Today’s Americans, he often reminded his audiences, were
the caretakers of that legacy, paid for with sacrifices of their parents and grandparents,
just as al Qaeda and the “axis of evil” were the inheritors of the legacy of totalitarianism
in the 20

century.

If the lines of division in this bipolar world were clear to the Bush administration, it was
acknowledged that others who had a similar responsibility to defend freedom might not
be willing to do so. Thus the Bush administration found itself making the paradoxical
argument that in order to defend international law and norms, it might be necessary to
disregard the role of international institutions like the United Nations in policymaking.
This was not, Bush suggested, because the U.S. was contemptuous of the international
community, but exactly the opposite—the United States honored the obligations of the
U.N. Charter and international law so highly that it was willing to act alone if necessary
to defend them, when other, more narrowly self-interested states chose to hinder the
cause of multilateral action because they sought the path of cost to themselves. In any
case, the administration argued, the United States was a powerful, independent state that
would not accept limits on its own freedom of action simply because others were weak-
willed.

Bush elaborated this conception of the world for the immediate purpose of orienting and
mobilizing public opinion. But it is possible that these assumptions were to some extent
responsible for creating erroneous expectations in the minds of political elites within the
administration as well. That Saddam Hussein was concealing weapons of mass
destruction; that the Iraqi regime had links with al Qaeda; that American forces would be
greeted as liberators by grateful Iraqis—are conclusions that follow logically and
coherently from the set of beliefs and assumptions that the administration elaborated as it
constructed its vision of the world after September 11.

The successful assertion of this vision was necessary in order to create the political
environment that allowed post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy in general, and the war in Iraq in
particular, to be carried out. To say that the United States pursued the policies it did