Bush Administration Blasted for Diplomatic Debacle on Iraq

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Bush Administration Blasted for Diplomatic Debacle on Iraq

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The New York Times, one of the most influential US newspapers, on Tuesday blasted the Bush administration for the diplomatic debacle over the Iraq issue, suggesting that the administration's benchmark unilateralism should be blamed for the US isolation.

"America is on its way to war. ... This war crowns a period of terrible diplomatic failure, Washington's worst in at least a generation," the newspaper said in an editorial titled "War in theRuins of Diplomacy."

"The hubris and mistakes that contributed to America's current isolation began long before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," the editorial said.

From the administration's first days, it turned away from internationalism and the concerns of its European allies by abandoning the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdrawing America's signature from the treaty establishing the InternationalCriminal Court.

Russia was bluntly told to accept America's withdrawal from theAntiballistic Missile Treaty and the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the territory of the former Soviet Union.

In the Middle East, Washington shortsightedly stepped back fromthe worsening spiral of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, ignoring the pleas of Arab, Muslim and European countries.

"If other nations resist American leadership today, some of thereason lies in this unhappy history," the article said.

The American-sponsored UN Security Council resolution on Iraq that was withdrawn on Monday had firm support from only four of the council's 15 members and was opposed by major European powers like France, Germany and Russia, it went on.

Even the few leaders who have stuck with the Bush administration, like Tony Blair of Britain and Jose Maria Aznar ofSpain, have done so in the face of broad domestic opposition, which has left them and their parties politically damaged.

Baghdad's game play and France's opposition may play a role in this diplomatic debacle, the editorial said. "But Washington's owndestructive contributions were enormous: its shifting goals and rationales, its increasingly arbitrary timetables, its distaste for diplomatic give and take, its public arm-twisting and its failure to convince most of the world of any imminent danger."

"At a time when America most needs the world to see its actionsin the best possible light, they will probably be seen in the worst. This result was neither foreordained or inevitable," the editorial pointed out.

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