Is the Bush doctrine the right doctrine?

In a few hours we are going to see the second major test of the Bush doctrine as we invade Iraq.  Its first test (a vote in favor of war in Iraq by the UN) failed miserably.  Amazingly, most people don't even know about the Bush doctrine and what it entails.  Here is my attempt to deconstruct it.

In the press, the Bush doctrine is the American policy response to the threat of terrorism.   More accurately, it is the American answer to the Loose Nuke Problem  Here is the strategy's formula:

• Identification and isolation of terrorist states.  These states include:  Iraq, Iran, Syria, and N. Korea.  The assumptions underlying this are:  terrorists can be heads of state, they are not rational actors, and that only a terrorist state that the ability to build weapons of mass destruction. 
• Use pre-emptive military action against terrorist states to enforce a regime change.  The assumption for this is that the US does have the military power to quickly win, at little cost, wars with these terrorist states. 
• The US will engage in nation building.  This is based on the assumption that it is possible to build a nation from the ashes of war.  Examples include the Marshall plan and Afghanistan. 

It's clear that the Bush doctrine is an extremely bold strategy.  It is however horribly flawed.  Here are the flaws that will prove its undoing:

• International support for this strategy is close to zero.  Each successive iteration of the Bush doctrine will meet with ever greater levels of opposition from the global community.  It will also mean the end of open cooperation to control terrorism.  We need international cooperation to unwind terrorist cells and hunt terrorist leaders.  Our ability to get that cooperation is in peril.
• We will lose too much economically.   Another way to state this:  we may win the war but lose the peace.  The secret of the west's victory in the Cold war was economic.  The US's successive doctrines of containment allowed prosperity in the face of threat.  In the end game, our technology and wealth allowed us to gain increasing levels of superiority over the USSR.  In the Bush doctrine, the threat of "hot" wars with minor powers over a long period of time has and will continue to severely damage the US and global economies.  Economic disaster can and will create problems in states the US previously had no reason to fear.
• Our military cannot fight and win clean victories against these foes.  As the Russians found out in Grozny, urban warfare is not even remotely similar to the clean open air victory we fought in the first gulf war.  Further, the other foes we may fight are much more difficult, particularly N. Korea.  The collateral damage in that situation would likely be massive.

The impact of this unravelling of the Bush doctrine will be a disaster for the US.  Here is how I think it is likely play out:

• The first iteration of the Bush doctrine will bog down.  The war will be more difficult to fight than anticipated.  Terrorist counter-attacks after the war is done will send US troops home in body bags.  The costs of the effort it in Iraq will balloon to rapidly eclipse what we spent in Vietnam.  The opposition to every US effort in the region will grow both internally and externally.
• Bush will run out of time and lose the re-election.  As his father before him, Bush will loose the 2004 elections due to economic considerations.  This will spell the end of the Bush doctrine.
• The new administration will find that it is now caught in a ME quagmire with few friends and several aggressive foes.  The new administration will slowly attempt to unwind the situation by pulling out US troops and support for the new Iraq.  There will also be an attempt to return to the multi-lateral track of terrorist containment with little success.  Iran and N. Korea, effectively inoculated against US attack will continue to develop nuclear weapons with impunity.  One day, in the next decade, one of those bombs will end up exploding on US soil.