Shep Smith to State Dep’t spokesman: You guys have basically adopted Dick Cheney’s theory of preventive war now, huh?

Via Mediaite, indeed they have — and this isn’t the first time that point has been made by a reporter to a State Department mouthpiece. Shep is correct in the precision of his terms, too. Although lazy people like me refer to the Bush/Cheney approach as “preemptive” war, preemption really describes a case where you have reason to believe your enemy’s about to land a punch on you. You’re preempting the blow by hitting him first; the imminence of his attack is key. The Bush/Cheney approach vis-a-vis Saddam was really one of preventive war. It wasn’t a matter of Saddam preparing to hand off nukes to terrorists for use inside the U.S. imminently. It was a matter of believing that Saddam would do that eventually once he had the means, in which case better take him out first. The degrees of imminence that define preemption and prevention, respectively, are hard to pinpoint — see Noah’s thoughtful post yesterday about whether an attack from the Khorasan Group was “imminent” — but no one seems to think that ISIS has something big in the works for the U.S. anytime soon. Hitting them now is a matter of prevention, not preemption, blowing up a jihadi petri dish because it’s a fait accompli that some nasty terrorist bacteria will begin growing there … eventually. That’s Cheneyism. But then, it’s also basic counterterrorism, no? That’s one more reason why the White House is so slippery on the war/counterterrorism distinction. Americans get nervous at the thought of preventive war, with thousands of soldiers marching off to die in the name of defeating an enemy who’s not a threat yet, but droning a group of suspected Al Qaeda operatives who are meeting to talk about God knows what? Shoot, they’ll pull that trigger all day long. Better safe than sorry. Right, Dick Cheney?


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