Bush has created one international coalition - the Proliferation Security Initiative, which uncovered Libya's covert WMD program. NATO is working with us in Afghanistan. The UN is even being useful in helping to prepare for elections in Iraq.
What we do NOT want to go back to is the US following international opinion and actually failing to take action against our enemies because of "lack of international support."
Error No. 4: Fear of unpopularity in the court of domestic and foreign public opinion. Since the moment they left office, members of the Clinton administration have criticized the Bush administration for insufficient attention to the opinion of foreign governments. Yet too much attention to public opinion can be harmful as well. NSC Advisor Samuel Berger told the commission he did "not believe before Sept. 11th that the American people or the international community would have supported an invasion and occupation of Afghanistan," and that's why the Clinton administration didn't use greater force against the Taliban regime. Yet the Clinton administration had its counterterrorism envoy Mike Sheehan threaten the Taliban with a military assault in 1998, according to the staff report. The threat was clearly empty from the start, judging from Berger's comments last week.
When commissioner Bob Kerrey pointed out to Berger that the administration did rally public opinion to its side when it wanted to -- to intervene in Kosovo with an air war, for example -- Berger again responded by saying that in that instance the administration had 19 NATO countries on its side.
There are other examples of foreign opinion being foremost in cabinet members' minds: A 1999 State Department Counterterrorism Office strategy, which threatened certifying Pakistan as non-cooperative on terrorism, and which pressured other countries as well, was watered down "to the point that nothing was then done with it," according to the staff report. Similarly, Defense Secretary Cohen explained hesitation in striking Afghan targets in terms of worries about how Pakistan would react. And the Secretary of State's concern about tarring the Iranian one-party-state's reputation with any indictment resulting from the Khobar Towers investigation further reveals the Democratic Administration's preference for remaining in good odor internationally.
Consequence: The inclination to follow rather than lead domestic and international public opinion led the Clinton administration to take terrorism-fighting options off the table completely. In the most egregious case, this resulted in Osama bin Laden's continued free rein to train and equip his terrorists for 9/11 and other attacks. More philosophically, the "follower" bias prevented the Clinton administration from using the explicit intel it was gathering to educate the U.S. public about the severity of the Al Qaeda threat. Finally, the damage done from making threats that the administration knew to be idle threats can only be guessed at.
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