Bush in Austria

I was really sad by the reaction to Bush in Austria last week. Where was it in Europe that a hefty percentage considered the US a greater destablizing force in the world than Iran or North Korea? It appears that the general feeling of the world toward us right now is generally negative everywhere.

Other things have struck me as well. Karzai in Afghanistan has criticized American forces for killing 400 fighters in southern Afghanistan. Also, the prime minister of Iraq is calling for amnesty to Iraqis who have fought against the US.

On the one hand, I don't care about foreign opinion as much if I feel confident we have the moral high ground. I feel we had generally good intentions, but not the moral high ground.

So I have tried to ask myself objectively, "Who has destabilized the world more in the last 4 years (that is, in the time after 9-11)?" Al Qaeda sparked the destabilization of the world at 9-11, to be sure. But I don't think our actions in Iraq have worked at all toward its stabilization, even though that was our intention. I think, in terms of the past four years, we have had a far more destabilizing effect on the Middle East than Iran. The question is where it is going--will the net effect be more stability or more instability. I do not feel confident at all that it will be more stability.

I feel we have effectively cemented a new generation of coming terrorists. If the Russian-Afghan war of the 80's raised bin Laden. Then I fear in twenty years we will be fighting someone we have helped raise in Iraq. I hope we will not follow the same courses of action then that we followed in the 80's and are following again now.

I say in all sincerity. If I had been president instead of Bush, we would be on the best terms with the world now that we have ever been, including the Muslim nations, and we would have been concentrating on stabilizing Afghanistan all this time instead of pursuing tangential adventures in our own blood and budget letting in Iraq. Iraq did not start as a war against terrorism.

When all is said and done. Iraq and Afghanistan will not be more our allies than Turkey or Egypt. And that will not have been worth the loss it took to get there.