BUSH’S ERROR

“By invoking regime change as the goal of American policy in early 2002 and repeated public and private statements that the US would eliminate Saddam, the US led with its chin. While I support the goal, the Administration made its belatedly accepted errand of UN backing of the war much more difficult. Most of the world saw, correctly, that the US intended to act regardless of the UN membership’s opinion. This reinforced the already popular view that the Bush Admin was “unilateralist” and fed a sense disingenousness over the invocation of disarmament. If the Administration really did decide in the summer of 2002 to go the UN, that was a mistake. If the Administration knew from the outset that it would go to the UN, its public diplomacy was fatally flawed. In that sense, I think it can be argued that the Administration has clumsily pursued a goal that is in the security interests of the US and the whole world. Wouldn’t it have been better to make publicly the cheesy argument that the UN is a crucial arbiter of international conflict and that the US valued the views and contributions from other nations as it did in 1991? What’s the harm in realpolitik. Yes, it would piss off the ideologues, but this is to damn important to let ideological rigidity get in the way.” – more neoliberal criticism of the president on Iraq on the Letters Page.