[ Link: Boston Globe Online / Editorials | Opinions / Neo-cons have hijacked US foreign policy ]
The same neo-cons persuaded Bush that nation-building and collaboration with bodies like the UN were for sissies. But now, Bush has blundered into nation-building in the worst possible circumstances, in which Americans are viewed as inept invaders rather than liberators. And he is begging for aid from the UN and the very nations he scorned.Posted by greg at September 10, 2003 03:24 PM | TrackBackDoes Bush know that he's been had? Increasingly, Iraq looks like Bush's Vietnam -- a long-term occupation of unfriendly territory in which Americans are targets; an adventure based on misperceptions and misrepresentations, where the benefits fail to justify the costs.
US Representative David Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, recently sent the president a letter which is worth quoting. ''First,'' Obey wrote, in eloquent understatement, ''I recommend that you allow the secretary and deputy secretary of defense to return to the private sector.