Before the public’s attention is directed toward the safety of our troops and well-wishing for the quick and successful completion of their mission in Iraq, I’d like to say a few words about the idiots in Washington who got us here in the first place.
First of all, I’m not anti-war. I honestly believe that it is our duty as one of the most powerful economic, diplomatic, and military forces on the planet to end suffering, whether it occurs within our borders or without. Economic and diplomatic means have clearly failed to cause positive change in Iraq. Sanctions have brought only suffering and resentment of the US to most of the Iraqi people. Saddam Hussein and his government have abused diplomatic efforts in an effort to hold power and buy more time in which to strengthen their death grip on their nation.
Saddam Hussein is a power-mad dictator, and no amount of asking him nicely is going to make him release his hold on Iraq. It is a necessary obligation of those powers who claim to support a just and equal society to remove him from power. After more than a decade of failed diplomacy, it’s time for the United States, as the standard bearer of democracy in the world, to force the government of Iraq out of power.
But that doesn’t mean we have to be assholes about it.
The Bush administration’s complete lack of tact has undermined any legitimacy a war on Iraq might have had. Bush and his cabinet display a stunning ignorance of international diplomatic etiquette. I appreciate that many of our nation’s policy makers feel they have a no-bullshit approach to diplomacy, shooting straight from the hip and telling it like it is without couching foreign policy in a lot of flowery language. Straight talking is an admirable goal, but successful foreign relations require a minimum level of decorum that is absent from this administration’s communication with foreign governments.
As a nation, we cannot afford a lapse in manners. By necessity, diplomacy entails telling other nations things they don’t want to hear, and those distasteful things must be said carefully. Failure to treat other nations with dignity, as equals in a global community, weakens the United States, and it weakens the cause of democracy worldwide. If we are to expect other nations to treat their own people with respect, we must first treat other nations with respect. Alienating other nations is dangerous in an age when we depend on a global marketplace for our goods, and our enemies can strike at us on our own soil.
The most embarassing thing for Bush and his staff is that they’ve lost a popularity contest to a brutal, petty tyrant. The real failure of diplomacy was not between the United States and Iraq, but between the United States and the entire global community. It takes arrogance and no small amount of real stupidity to make the leader of the free world look like more of a thug than a man who callously murders his own people, and the Bush administration has managed to do just that.
