A tight summation in the Atlanta journal-Constitution of how we got to be where we are regarding the Iraq invasion, as well as an attempt to walk a mile in our allies' moccasins.
U.S. partly to blame for impasse at U.N.
accessatlanta.com
If there is a path that will lead us out of this terrible morass and onto firmer ground, it is hard at the moment to pick it out. We seem to sink deeper with each passing day.
We have 200,000 troops, either in transit to the Middle East or already in theater, who must be used soon or brought back home, before the calendar advances relentlessly into summer. Public opinion around the globe has turned strongly against the United States, making it difficult even for friendly national leaders to support us. Longtime allies are breaking away and publicly aligning with each other -- and against us.
Even Britain, our staunchest friend, is deeply reluctant to go to war at our side without United Nations support that we are unlikely to achieve, at least in the near term.
So while we cannot wait, we also cannot act. While we have bragged about our willingness to go alone, when we peer over that brink, we have so far not dared to jump.
However, while it is hard to look ahead and find an exit from this mess, it is easier, with the clarity of hindsight, to look back and see how we've gotten here. The recent past holds lessons that are critically important, no matter what may happen in the days to come.
We are here, after all, because we do not yet know how to handle the power that we hold. We have in this instance deployed it clumsily, arrogantly, without clear justification or goal, and we now see the price we pay for that incompetence.
Today, much of the world is more concerned about restraining the United States than restraining the brutal tyrant in Baghdad. In trying to isolate Saddam Hussein, we have instead painted ourselves into a corner.
It shouldn't be that way; it is outrageous that things have come to such a pass. And while we can, if we wish, dismiss our critics as fools and dismiss their concerns as groundless, we ourselves would be fools to do so. Surely at least part of the blame lies here, with ourselves and our leadership. It can't ALL be the fault of others.
Even the founding document of this nation, the Declaration of Independence, acknowledged what its authors called "a decent respect to the Opinions of Mankind." Somewhere along the line, in the headiness of new power, we have lost that wisdom and have dismissed that respect as unimportant.
That's the core of our problem. Our new role as the planet's most powerful nation, challenged by none, makes it more important -- not less important -- to be concerned about how the world perceives us. It doesn't matter how good or well-intentioned we believe ourselves to be -- unconstrained power from any source will always stir fear in others.
That's just a fact of life for us from here on out.
Certainly, there are those in Washington and elsewhere who have dismissed the importance of that fear and resentment. In fact, given a choice between two courses, one that would minimize that natural resentment and another that would provoke it, they have repeatedly chosen to take us down the path of provocation and unilateralism.
This is the dead end of that solitary road.
In this particular case, we knew -- or should have known -- that the suspicions of the rest of the world would be compounded because the nation we had targeted for invasion was Iraq. When the world's largest consumer of oil targets its military might at the world's second-largest reserves of oil, it would be naive not to expect doubt and suspicion about our motives.
But instead of trying to assuage those suspicions, we justified them. All through last summer, administration officials as high-ranking as Vice President Dick Cheney and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer repeatedly proclaimed our goal to be the installation of a new government in Iraq. Only when we finally went to the United Nations did we claim to seek only Iraq's disarmament; but, by then, few would believe us.
And just last September, mere days after beginning our diplomatic push for action against Iraq, the Bush administration released a new National Security Strategy proclaiming the United States' right and intention to engage in pre-emptive war anywhere on the planet against any nation that might pose a threat to our dominance.
Such a proclamation violated international norm and international law, and its timing was pure arrogance. It guaranteed that our action against Iraq would be perceived as the embodiment of our controversial new policy, as indeed it is. We believed that other nations would not dare to balk, that in tribute to our power, they would meekly endorse both our invasion of Iraq and thus our new policy as well.
They have not done so.
Some in this country accuse countries such as France, Germany and Russia of being too cowardly to confront the real threat. The sad truth is, from their point of view, that's exactly what they are doing. |
