Club, since you keep worrying about how Kerry has disrespected our allies, here's something from the British perspective:
- There's been a lot of generally sensible guffawing at Kerry's promise to win over the French and Russians in the war on terror. But there's been less attention paid to how Bush has dealt with the U.S.'s most critical ally, Britain. The answer is: terribly. Every time I talk to pro-war British friends, they point out how they feel unconsulted, abused, and generally dissed by this administration. They remember Rumsfeld's spectacularly stupid remark before the war that the Brits were dispensable; and Bush's own radioactive personality in Europe means that any British leader who wants to support him must also consider political suicide. Look at what is happening now. A simple redeployment of a few hundred British troops to relieve American troops in Baghdad while they prepare to tackle Falluja has led to parliamentary uproar. (Let's just leave aside the question of why we have so few troops that the Brits are needed to keep what's left of order in the capital city.) The lesson is clear: Bush has made any future military alliance with even the Brits a near-impossibility. The British people won't allow it. The Tories are now anti-Bush; almost the entire Labour party is anti-Bush; the Liberal Democrats are pathologically anti-Bush. And this is the success story of Bush's diplomacy! Again, the worst thing about this is that it undermines our ability to wage this war in future. When you lose the Brits and half your own country in a vital war, you deserve to be fired as president. I'm sorry, but it's time the pro-war camp began to deal with this.
Andrew Sullivan
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“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
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