Marc:
Past behaviour is an indication of future behaviour, agreed. But that does not mean that all past behaviour is necessarily pertinent for speculation on any future behaviour. I argued something to that effect. But you did not reply to that relevant part of my post (that would be the part you excluded from the quote).
Finagle: Veeeery much a preliminary. Useless for discussion as of yet.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that this is true, is it really relevant to Bush’s foreign policy if it’s not used as justification? The administration is currently attempting to reason (at least publicly) that WMDs are ipso facto a problem. I’m sure every government has its own internal reasoning for its military campaigns which may or may not be logical, but they don’t necessarily reveal that to the world.
Bush is telling Syria to disarm. I don’t think he would dare publicly say that he ONLY wants Syria to disarm because he thinks they’re a bunch of hotheads who are more likely to use WMDs than Isreal, because then he’d have even more of a PR nightmare than he already does. Instead he just isn’t mentioning Isreal’s WMDs at all, and feigning an even-handed policy towards the issue.
I see hypocrisy in offering a quasi-moral justification to the world that masks the administration’s true internal reasoning. Isn’t the rest of the world going to think we are demanding that Syria disarm simply because we like Isreal better? And again, won’t the U.S. take a big hit on its credibility?