Foreign Impacts

Our standing internationally has been widely recognized to be... not what it used to be. One of the prime critiques of Bush during the 2000 campaign was that he was a light-weight when it came to foreign policy. His actions after 9/11/01 have shown that lack, and his actions recently in relation to Iraq have underscored it.

Molly Ivans (Registration required) had this to say on the topic:

On the plus side, Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. On the minus side, we have encouraged anti-American terrorists everywhere, put ourselves at greater risk of terrorist attack, lost enormous amounts of good will around the world, earned the resentment of many of our closest allies and cost ourselves around $200 billion that we really could have used for more constructive projects.

While the number isn't entirely true (part of that is 'normal' defense allocation), she does have a really good point. While our primary objective has been completed, we now get the dirty aftermath. We have no, 'Happily ever after,' in this particular conflict. Our reputation internationally is as bad as it has been for a long time. Back when we were "not the Soviets," we had a bit more leeway in how we handled ourselves internationally, but those times are thankfully gone.

As an example of what's going on, the European Union is soon to elect members of the EU parliament. Anti-war sentiment is running high everywhere except the newly added ex-Eastern Bloc states, and tongues are wagging that Tony Blair may be in a real fight for his job over events in Iraq. The EU events are particularly interesting since those elections, early June, are close enough that the torture problem will still be in the news when people go to the polls. As anyone who has been involved in politics for a while knows, events the week before an election and undermine months of campaigning. Madrid. The sudden death of Paul Wellstone.

In defense of the President, it is hard to be both resolute, and go-get-em, and also diplomatic at the same time. Whacking Afghanistan was justified, and we had international support for it. Toppling Saddam was not nearly as supported world-wide, and we're paying the price for it. Getting the UN to sanction our actions requires us to get through the Security Council, and the veto-wielding powers therein. We couldn't get a new resolution for Iraq, so we ended up reinterpreting the ones we already had and called it good.

Any time you go forth and do what needs doing in the face of sentiment to the contrary, you lose political capital with those that disapprove of your actions. Basic playground rule there, dressed up a bit with pretty words. It's OK for once in a while, but be prepared to mend fences afterwards if you intend to play nice with the other kids and have them play nice back. It doesn't matter that what needed doing, needed doing, what counts is that so and so said you shouldn't and you went ahead and did it anyway.

Again, Molly Ivans pointed to a way to mend some of those fences:

The Center for American Progress has an exit strategy that I think sounds useful. It is recommending that Bush call an emergency international summit immediately, seek to have the United Nations fully oversee the transition, have NATO take the security responsibility and set up an independent trust fund for reconstruction. Further details of the plan can be found at the center's Web site.

Paul Mulshine of the Newark Star-Ledger suggests that Bush do an LBJ announcement: "I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president." That would improve the likelihood of the success of a summit, though the administration is in such deep denial about how badly this war is going that it seems unlikely.

Again, she analyzed it correctly. While that would be a nice gesture, and would help regain some of the credibility we lost getting into, and fumbling around in, Iraq, this administration is not going to do it. This is an administration that is well known to pundits on both sides to be very reluctant to admit to mistakes. Admitting, even indirectly, to have made a mistake in knocking over Saddam is so out of the George W. Bush character as to be guaranteed. It would take multiple members of his cabinet being strongly implicated in wrong doing related to Iraq for him to come close to a statement like that. And we're no where near that yet.

Nope, the Bush administration is going forward hoping that the pure rightness of its actions will win the pouty nations back into our good graces. Problem is, the pure rightness doesn't stand up well to the glare of public scrutiny. Yes, we DID get rid of a horrible dictator. But we also seem to have inflamed, perhaps greatly, the Jihadi problem which will only make our security situation that much worse in the coming decade. The full extent of the torture problem has yet to be revealed and that has the possibility of greatly impacting our standing worldwide.

The people of the United States have a chance to bring our country back into better graces, and that's by not electing Bush to a second term. That would leave Kerry the job of cleaning up, something that will take his entire first term of office. Also, it is a heck of a lot easier to pull of "Mea Culpa" if it isn't your mess in the first place.