IS PREEMPTIVE WAR A FAILED POLICY?

That would depend on your definition of success.

The Times states that it is.

Al Qaeda has already declared war on the United States, and America needs to fight back relentlessly - in Afghanistan and through international efforts to capture terrorist leaders who function with forged passports and visas, safe houses and sleeper cells. That is why Mr. Cheney is also wrong to disparage law-enforcement cooperation with allies as an important weapon in this war.

Instead, he promises more preventive, offensive wars against hypothetical dangers like Iraq. Besides estranging America from its main European and Asian allies, and leaving Washington looking like an aggressor to much of the Arab and Muslim world, these policies kill American soldiers and civilians in the countries attacked, and they threaten to tie down the Army and Marine divisions America needs to have available for responding to real threats in the dangerous decades ahead.

Is it really possible that they they have not read "Rebuilding America's Defences", "A Clean Break" or any of the other self-serving dribble that is posted on the Project For A New American Century (PNAC) website?

Can it really be possible that "the paper of record" does not understand that the whole point of endless war is for the military industrial entertainment industry to gain even more money and power.

Dick Cheney and his fellow war profiteers like what they are getting and their appetite for money, power and blood is insatiable so they are continuing to demand even more. They do not believe that the doctrine of preemptive war is a failed policy at all.

In Fact, AEI fellow Tom Donnelly has a hit piece on Kerry there (the whole website has gone radically anti-Kerry, but since thei policies are already proven to be miserable failures what else would we expect of them?) that completely ignores the fact that NORTH KOREA DID NOT GET NUCLEAR WEAPONS UNTIL GEORGE BUSH RENEGGED ON THE DEAL THAT BILL CLINTON MADE WITH THEM.

A whole lot of self-important distorted hooey

...First, the Kerry team has apparently learned nothing from the disastrous deal the Clinton administration made with North Korea back in the 1990s. Edwards's proposal for a "grand bargain" with Iran is almost identical to the Clinton administration's 1994 Agreed Framework deal. In that earlier "bargain," North Korea promised to halt work on nuclear weapons in return for American assistance with "peaceful" nuclear programs. We now know that the North Korean government lied all along and used the agreement to proceed with its nuclear weapons programs.

But the Kerry team is undeterred by this record of failure. In fact, Edwards's proposal is of a piece with Kerry's generally soft approach to dangerous regimes like the one in Teheran. Back in March, Kerry told the Council on Foreign Relations that he wanted to carry out a "non-confrontational" policy toward Iran that emphasizes areas of "mutual interest."

Being "non-confrontational" with Iran apparently means not raising troubling matters, such as Iran's ongoing support for terrorism. In outlining his proposed "grand bargain" with the Iranian government, Edwards completely ignored the fact that a number of senior ranking al Qaeda officials now live and operate in Iran under the Iranian government's protection. Richard Clarke has stated that he regards the connection between Iran and al Qaeda as very dangerous. Yet John Edwards does not insist that his "grand bargain" must include a promise by Iran to cut off all ties with al Qaeda and to turn over those al Qaeda operatives on Iranian soil. Undoubtedly, this is all part of Kerry's and Edwards's strategy for waging a "more sensitive" war on global terrorism.

Kerry and Edwards believe the failed policies of the 1990s remain suitable to the post-September 11 era. We doubt a majority of Americans will agree.

I think that India's Economic Policy Review Iraq War Special (will try to find link) put it best when they called it "A military solution to an economic problem."