The Bush Doctrine — "By Other Means"

Wretchard uses an interesting metaphor to explain the logic of the Bush Doctrine:

Planners in World War 2 solved the problem of accelerating enemy collapse by destroying the societies on which their war-making potential rested, as an alternative to a protracted battle of attrition. They were totally ruthless in selecting their ends; the problem consisted only of finding the means. In the European Theater of Operations, deep strike strategic bombing was largely ineffective until German cities and petroleum refining capacity was destroyed on a large scale. In the Pacific Theater, the US maritime campaign only began to bite when its submarines began annihilating Japanese merchant shipping, after a futile period of attempting to hunt down the Imperial Combined Fleet. For nearly a year, General Haywood Hansell attempted to reduce Japan by conventional high altitude precision bombing. He was replaced by Curtis Lemay after it became clear that his methods were not yielding results. Lemay embarked on a campaign of attacks on Japanese cities unparalleled in history, killing more people one night in Tokyo than in either of the atomic bombings and repeating the performance night after night.

The chosen method of American deep strike against the 21st century terrorist enemy has been to foster democracy in their home countries. 'Democratization' is fundamentally an attempt to destroy the fabric on which the terrorist war-making potential rests. It is the American weapon of choice in lieu of the Atomic Bomb.