The supreme irony of nation-building-hater president George Bush establishing and micro-managing a United States military-led government in Iraq – á la General Douglas MacArthur in Japan – with a posse of US military and civilian bureaucrats in key ministries, has not been lost. This from the same man who, when debating with Vice-President Al Gore the day before the 2000 presidential election, remarked, ‘Let me tell you what else I’m worried about: I’m worried about an opponent who uses nation-building and the military in the same sentence.’
At that time, his soon-to-be National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, outlined what would initially become Bush’s security strategy. In Foreign Affairs she wrote, ‘The president must remember that the military is a special instrument. It is lethal, and it is meant to be. It is not a civilian police force. It is not a political referee. And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society.’
