Bruzilla said:
Clinton did respond to terror attacks. His mistake was that he always responded in kind to minimize collateral damage. This was his mistake (and Bush Sr. did the same thing BTW.) By only attacking the enemy as hard as he attacks you, you make him look to be your equal in military power. Had Clinton completely squashed Al Quaeda and Bin Ladin, yes... it would have been seen as "overkill", but the message would have been sent, and received, by other terrorists that you mess with the US - you lose big. Instead, Bin Ladin was able to gain support and credibility because he could make the case that the US was intimidated by him - why else was he still alive? And that's a case that's an easy sell in the Middle East even if it's not true.
Hindsight is always 20/20, I must remind you. Recall the lack of WMD discovery in Iraq; just because we didn't find them, doesn't mean that Saddam Hussein's removal was bad and that we should not have acted.
Onto international coalitions and multilateralism...
While a prewar coalition that included Russia, France, and Germany may have been very difficult to obtain, I believe that President Bush failed to sufficiently reach out to them and he acted with contempt for the United Nations. Yes, conservatives see the UN as some terrible, awful circumventing force of the Pentagon and American defense, but I have never seen anything in the past to show this. The UN was created by the United States, its Universal Declarations of Human Rights was almost entirely composed by the United States based on American/democratic principles, and it was the reason that our nation was allowed to execute a "police action" against North Korean communists. Did the UN fail to meet the United States halfway? Yes, but we failed to meet them halfway as well. There is a process for weapons inspections that the UN must follow, but the Bush Administration did not desire to allow that to occur. We refused to provide any sort of oversight or minimal shared power to the UN, and quite frankly, the message that Colin Powell and President Bush provided to the UN was below par. The UN, especially those three nations, meanwhile, should have understood that terrorism is spurned by corrupt, abusive Middle Eastern regimes that isolate themselves from the world community such as Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq. They should have realized that economic sanctions caused 60,000 deaths a year in Iraq, which only added even more to the devastation of the Hussein regime. Sadly, I think that had these points been made, the European nations would have been more receptive to the message of the Bush Administration.
The UN wanted inspections to continue and the reason that the Bush Administration was so adamantly opposed to the idea still escapes me. Inspections, so long as they were done to the demands of the UN and to their protocol, would have either proven Hussein's WMD program and possession (unlikely; we can't even find WMD with him out of power) or it would have caused Hussein to remove inspectors, which would have turned the UN against him strongly. Some neoconservatives will say how this wouldn't matter because Hussein's government has been violating UN resolutions for a decade and the UN still refused to act, but I do not believe that to be the case in this instance. The UN had already passed a strongly worded and critical indictment of the Hussein government and its alleged possession of WMD; the refusal of Hussein to open up fully to inspections would have been the icing on the cake.
This all begs the question, "why is international support so important?" That is definitely a fair question; the average person does not understand the legitimacy of an international organization that has no governing power over our nation. First of all, I will say that I absolutely agree with President Bush and Senator Kerry (both who have stated this position) that the security of the United States should never be vetoed by the UN. That is just common sense. Whenever there is a war that is absolutely necessary for the safety of the American people, the only persons who should be making the decisions are American leaders, not Koffi Anan. This is not the case in terms of Iraq. The war in Iraq, while vital to the long-term security of our nation, was not as necessary as some conservatives painted it to be. Saddam Hussein's government had never directly attacked the United States and he had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. What we were fighting against in Iraq was a "possible" threat to us. We were "preempting" Saddam Hussein, which is something that have never been done before in the history of the UN. We were not fighting the "terrorists" of 9/11, but an abusive, corrupt Middle Eastern regime that helps to spurn "terrorism." While it is a policy that I agree with, it is one that radically deviates from all prior precedent and it is one which the world had not previously been subjected. A unilateral preemptive strike against Iraq by the United States could be construed by some nations, especially India and Pakistan, as the green light for their own preemptive strikes, which is something that we as Americans and citizens of the world should refuse to support.
Where multilateralism would be the most effective, however, is in the rebuilding of Iraq. The United States, which carries one of the most negative connotations in the Middle East, has a lack of legitimacy in Iraq. The transitional government that was established does not have the popular backing of the people because it is merely viewed as the puppet of "American imperialism." This could be a major reason that 95% of Iraqis see Americans as "occupiers" and not "liberators." Shah al-Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq who helped to broker the peace with al-Sadr and who commands significant public support, refuses to meet with American leaders in the nation, but will only meet with UN envoys. Dividing the authority to grant contracts among nations (rather than the US doing it all alone) will help to create more goodwill among nations. You see, multilateralism is the best way to go in this rebuilding; it will help the Iraqi government to be more effective and will provide the entire Iraqi operation with more legitimacy.
I understand the argument concerning "fair weather" allies when it comes to the prewar scenario that included French contracts with Saddam Hussein, but that argument does not explain why these nations, that have already lost their business partner, would refuse to join the effort either through the UN or NATO. It would seem that had these nations solely been concerned with their own economic well-being, they would be tripping all over themselves to help in the rebuilding so that new business ties can be established. At least that is what I would do if my motivation was pure economics. Heck, using this logic, we could decide that the only reason for our action in Iraq was to secure more oil reserves...I think that you and me agree that that is not the case.
