The Bush administration’s new doctrine, Kennedy said, ”asserts that global realities now legitimize preventive war and make it a strategic necessity. The document openly contemplates preventive attacks against groups or states, even absent the threat of imminent attack I strongly oppose any such extreme doctrine.”
The second feature of Bush’s radical new approach that Kennedy lambasted was its assumption that the United States is somehow exempt ”from the rules we expect others to obey.” Kennedy reiterated an old cliche of public morality – ”Might does not make right!” – but in the present context, his reference rang with prophetic relevance. The hubris of overwhelming power is corrupting the nation. ”America cannot write its own rules for the modern world. To attempt to do so would be unilateralism run amok.” Bush is undercutting the war on terrorism, destroying alliances, setting dangerous precedents, and eviscerating America’s moral legitimacy.
Again daring to go where few of his colleagues venture, Kennedy defined all of this by its proper name: ”The administration’s doctrine is a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other nation can or should accept.”