ABSTRACT
The United States (US) launched a preventive war against Iraq in March 2003, arguing that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and its government’s hostility to the US posed a grave and gathering threat. President George W. Bush’s administration’s assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction resulted from genuine error rather than deliberate deception, preventive war was the wrong policy. Preventive war is always dangerous although it might make intuitive sense to stamp out all potential future threats and it is sometimes prudent to engage in pre-emption, preventive war makes the US less secure. The Bush administration makes two dangerous leaps in logic. First, it distorts the idea of self-defense by defining the US self in increasingly broad terms, going beyond simply defending US borders and citizens. Second, it collapses distinctions between major and minor threats and imminent and distant threats, exaggerating the dangers that its opponents pose.
