In his second inaugural address last Thursday, George Bush wasted little time outlining America’s foreign-policy plans for the next four years: helping to foster and support the spread of democracy throughout the world.

For Bush, the spread of democracy abroad, specifically in areas of the world where totalitarianism and dictatorships rule with an iron fist, inevitably leads to a safer, securer America.

As Bush stated, “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has come to an end without the discovery of a single weapon. Bush is now conveniently using Iraq as the paradigm for his new foreign-policy doctrine.

By physically removing Saddam Hussein from power and restoring Iraq to its rightful owners, its people, democracy and freedom will be given new life to a desperate people and Americans can come home each night and breathe a sigh of relief that a weaponless dictator millions of miles away has been deposed.

The only cost of this experiment? The lives of American soldiers and American taxpayers’ hard-earned money.

Bush claims, “Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens.” A puzzling statement, considering it seems American soldiers are the ones dying daily so that Iraqis can vote in democratic elections Jan. 30. It’s also worth pondering whether the Iraqi people chose and defended “freedom,” or whether the United States and its military imposed democracy upon them.

Ahmed Chalabai, the disgraced leader of the Iraqi National Congress, cooed and whispered sweet nothings into the ears of neocons like Dick Cheney and Richard Perle, repeatedly telling them the Iraqi people would give flowers to American troops in thanks for securing their liberation and bringing them democracy. That has hardly happened, as insurgents continually attack American military outposts and behead Iraqi election officials in the middle of the street.

Iraq and President Bush’s foreign policy plans are becoming more and more reminiscent of America’s foreign forays 40 years ago. Fearful of a Communist domino effect in Southeast Asia, President Lyndon Johnson sought to eradicate communism and establish a democracy in Vietnam using the manpower of the U.S. military. However, this experiment failed as 55,000 American soldiers lost their lives trying to export and enforce democracy on a foreign nation in a distant land.

If we fast-forward 40 years, the Middle East has now taken the place of the South China Sea as America’s pet project for democracy. While radical Islamic fundamentalism is something that needs to be fought, intellectually and physically, trying to uproot the entire Middle East and oversee a domino democratic effect is futile and dangerous for a number of reasons.

First, successful political revolutions have been organic and natural. One only needs to look to our country’s history for proof of this. If a country’s leaders are unjustly oppressive and tyrannical, it is the citizens’ right and prerogative to demand and seek change. Simply exporting a foreign political ideology, implementing it and forcing it upon a people is foolish and dangerous. Is the Bush administration certain a majority of Iraqis welcome democracy with open arms? Or has it just been polling a handful of exiled Iraqis with vendettas against Saddam Hussein who swore Hussein had WMDs in order to get America involved in Iraq?

Secondly, how is Bush going to deal with strategic allies in the war on terror that have squashed and quelled democracy? Russia’s President Vladimir Putin jails his political rivals and eliminates any television or radio programming criticizing his policies. Saudi Arabia, let by the Saud family, is your basic run-of-the-mill totalitarian state, equipped with its own secret police and state censorship program. Will Bush openly and publicly demand these countries begin to institute democratic reforms, or will he allow them to continue restricting freedom and liberty?

Lastly, America’s military is stretched thin throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. If we are to promote and support democratic institutions and culture in lands of tyranny, there is no way we are going to be able to do it primarily through diplomacy. We will have to use force and military might. However, with a voluntary-only military, sending sufficient numbers of troops to remote corners of the world will be impossible and unfeasible. Americans will die in wars that we cannot win.

The Bush Doctrine is quixotic, impractical and unattainable. Physically deposing a country’s leader and forcing its citizens to adopt political ideologies with the threat of force is a ludicrous gamble that America has not and will not win.

Josh Moskowitz ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and journalism.