David Hendrickson's latest article in World Policy Journal is a fantastic run-down of six prominent critiques of the Bush Doctrine (America Unbound, Rogue Nation, Fear's Empire, The Bubble of American Supremacy, America the Virtuous, and Blowback). Like most people, I haven't the time, patience, or desire to slog through even a fraction of the anti-Bush material being printed. Fortunately, there are those who do. Some rather succinct bits from Hendrickson's journey into this vast universe of words:

"[Bush] relied on the unilateral exercise of American power rather than on international law and institutions to get his way. He championed a proactive doctrine of preemption and de-emphasized the reactive strategies of deterrence and containment. He promoted forceful interdiction, preemptive strikes, and missile defenses as means to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and he downplayed America’s traditional support for treaty-based non-proliferation regimes. He preferred regime change to direct negotiations with countries and leaders that he loathed. He depended on ad hoc coalitions of the willing to gain support abroad and ignored permanent alliances. He retreated from America’s decades-long policy of backing European integration and instead exploited Europe’s internal divisions"

"The imperial project of the so-called neoconservatives…is not conservatism at all but radicalism, egotism, and adventurism articulated in the stirring rhetoric of traditional patriotism."

Writing in 1797, Alexander Hamilton charged that France under the influence of the Jacobins had “betrayed a spirit of universal domination; an opinion that she had a right to be the legislatrix of nations; that they are all bound to submit to her mandates, to take from her their moral, political, and religious creeds; that her plastic and regenerating hand is to mould them into whatever shape she thinks fit; and that her interest is to be the sole measure of the rights of the rest of the world.” Sound familiar? It is a delicious historical irony that neoconservatives who vituperate all things French have contracted the same disease that brought France to delirium some 200 years ago, or it would be if it weren’t so depressing. The elements of concordance are quite striking.

…and finally:

[Chalmers Johnson] shows that the expansion of bases in the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf is closely tied to oil interests (the war on terrorism providing a handy basis on which to dominate the entire area); that the face America presents to the world is increasingly military, the Pentagon having usurped many functions previously belonging to diplomats and spies; that the United States blatantly exploits its hegemonic position to aggrandize the world’s arms trade to itself, an objective it pursues with much greater avidity than economic development; that the “special forces” have become a private army of the president; and that America’s militarized institutions are so secretive that it is virtually impossible to subject them to democratic accountability. Despairingly, Johnson recalls all the old prophecies from America’s founders that the republic would be destroyed by unchecked executive power and an overgrown military establishment, and finds the fit between their prophecy and our condition uncanny.

Curiously, neo and traditional conservatives alike have taken to calling their political opponents the "blame-America-first" crowd. Or accuse them of "hating America". Are they right? When I read stuff like the above, I sometimes wonder. However, there can be little doubt that if we keep moving in the direction that Bush and the neoconservative extremists are taking us, there's not going to be much about America worth liking. While we bicker within our own boarders about whether Kerry or Bush will prevail in November, the collective worldwide distrust (and distain) for our trade policies, militarism, arrogance, and fiscal strong-arm tactics is only growing more acute. If Bush is elected in November, the "blame-America" crowd may very well join the "attack-America" crowd.