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john937
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THE DIPLOMATIC DISASTER OF THE CENTURY!
By Richard Reeves
PARIS -- The United States is about to go to war saying that diplomacy has
failed. They're right about that. Day after day, month after month, President
Bush (news - web sites) and his men have made things worse for themselves
in one of the most ruinous exercises in diplomacy the country has ever seen.
Not to put too fine a point on it -- and no matter how the war against Iraq
(news - web sites) goes -- it is hard not to conclude that the president is
ignorant, the secretary of defense nuts and the secretary of state
incompetent.
I do not think this war is necessary, but trying to put myself in the other
fellow's shoes, I have to sympathize with what must be despair and
confusion in this frustrated White House. "We are in the thick of diplomacy,"
press secretary Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) said last Monday. He might
have been more accurate to say we are the thick of diplomacy.
The world of the only superpower is shattering around us, at least
diplomatically. We have alienated and divided our own allies, from France
and Turkey right up to the 51st state, Great Britain. We have divided our
most creative diplomatic initiative of the last century, the United Nations
(news - web sites). We have divided the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
our inspired military response to communist expansionism, a military arm
that won a war without fighting. We have, with ignorance and arrogance
aforethought, brought the world (and ourselves) to crisis -- and perhaps to
chaos.
Our president, confusing the United Nations with the Texas Legislature,
seemed to believe that we could bully, bluff and buy the rest of the world into
going along with whatever we wanted, wherever we wanted, whenever we
wanted -- no matter what arguments he used and changed. Sept. 11,
disarmament, regime change, a stabilized Middle East, whatever. Instead,
as Bush now knows, he was getting lousy advice from Secretary of State
Colin Powell (news - web sites), who told him time was on our side. It was
not.
Time and the United Nations gave the rest of the world the chance to
organize against, or take revenge on, American unilateralism. The world's
only superpower was checked diplomatically by a new superpower called the
world, which, given time to think and talk, concluded that Iraq was not the
imminent threat the Americans were saying it was, and that if these
Americans so wanted to be alone, let them.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who first won plaudits
as the grumpy ghost of Christmas past, turned his sarcasm from the press
to our oldest and best allies -- up to and including Great Britain -- calling
them all outdated, irrelevant and unnecessary.
The only world leader who must be more frustrated than Bush right now is
British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites), loyal and principled,
who could be destroyed by the blundering of his American friends. "He may
be wrong in Iraq, badly wrong, but he has never been less than honest,"
editorialized The Guardian, the British paper that usually speaks most well
of Blair's Labor Party. The paper's line now is that the prime minister was a
fool to trust Bush, Rumsfeld and company. The more centrist Independent
on Sunday covered the top of its front page with one long headline:
"Not in Our Name, Mr. Blair. You do not have the evidence. You do not have
U.N. approval. You do not have the country's support. You do not have the
legal right. You do not have the moral right. You must not drag Britain into
Bush's unjust and unnecessary war."
So, after humbling weeks of ignorant assumption and unforced error, the
Bush of Bush's war is in a corner of his own design. Presumably he will try
to fight his way out -- and militarily he should prevail. But there is also the
chance, whatever happens on desert battlefields, that this sorry chapter of
diplomacy and geopolitics may do considerably more damage to the United
States than to Iraq. They say that the president likes to be alone. When this is
over, he may be.
THE DIPLOMATIC DISASTER OF THE CENTURY!
By Richard Reeves
PARIS -- The United States is about to go to war saying that diplomacy has
failed. They're right about that. Day after day, month after month, President
Bush (news - web sites) and his men have made things worse for themselves
in one of the most ruinous exercises in diplomacy the country has ever seen.
Not to put too fine a point on it -- and no matter how the war against Iraq
(news - web sites) goes -- it is hard not to conclude that the president is
ignorant, the secretary of defense nuts and the secretary of state
incompetent.
I do not think this war is necessary, but trying to put myself in the other
fellow's shoes, I have to sympathize with what must be despair and
confusion in this frustrated White House. "We are in the thick of diplomacy,"
press secretary Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) said last Monday. He might
have been more accurate to say we are the thick of diplomacy.
The world of the only superpower is shattering around us, at least
diplomatically. We have alienated and divided our own allies, from France
and Turkey right up to the 51st state, Great Britain. We have divided our
most creative diplomatic initiative of the last century, the United Nations
(news - web sites). We have divided the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
our inspired military response to communist expansionism, a military arm
that won a war without fighting. We have, with ignorance and arrogance
aforethought, brought the world (and ourselves) to crisis -- and perhaps to
chaos.
Our president, confusing the United Nations with the Texas Legislature,
seemed to believe that we could bully, bluff and buy the rest of the world into
going along with whatever we wanted, wherever we wanted, whenever we
wanted -- no matter what arguments he used and changed. Sept. 11,
disarmament, regime change, a stabilized Middle East, whatever. Instead,
as Bush now knows, he was getting lousy advice from Secretary of State
Colin Powell (news - web sites), who told him time was on our side. It was
not.
Time and the United Nations gave the rest of the world the chance to
organize against, or take revenge on, American unilateralism. The world's
only superpower was checked diplomatically by a new superpower called the
world, which, given time to think and talk, concluded that Iraq was not the
imminent threat the Americans were saying it was, and that if these
Americans so wanted to be alone, let them.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who first won plaudits
as the grumpy ghost of Christmas past, turned his sarcasm from the press
to our oldest and best allies -- up to and including Great Britain -- calling
them all outdated, irrelevant and unnecessary.
The only world leader who must be more frustrated than Bush right now is
British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites), loyal and principled,
who could be destroyed by the blundering of his American friends. "He may
be wrong in Iraq, badly wrong, but he has never been less than honest,"
editorialized The Guardian, the British paper that usually speaks most well
of Blair's Labor Party. The paper's line now is that the prime minister was a
fool to trust Bush, Rumsfeld and company. The more centrist Independent
on Sunday covered the top of its front page with one long headline:
"Not in Our Name, Mr. Blair. You do not have the evidence. You do not have
U.N. approval. You do not have the country's support. You do not have the
legal right. You do not have the moral right. You must not drag Britain into
Bush's unjust and unnecessary war."
So, after humbling weeks of ignorant assumption and unforced error, the
Bush of Bush's war is in a corner of his own design. Presumably he will try
to fight his way out -- and militarily he should prevail. But there is also the
chance, whatever happens on desert battlefields, that this sorry chapter of
diplomacy and geopolitics may do considerably more damage to the United
States than to Iraq. They say that the president likes to be alone. When this is
over, he may be.
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