After Iraq, Shrinking Horizons

By Morton Abramowitz
Thursday, July 31, 2003; Page A19

Getting rid of Saddam Hussein's regime was a great blessing, but the war and its aftermath have had important unintended consequences for the Bush administration. Preemption policy toward "rogue states" has been eroded. The United Nations' importance on security issues has been elevated. And in creating enormous new obligations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the president has probably eliminated further serious use of an indispensable tool -- nation-building -- although, to be sure, it was a tool he never much cared for.

It's hard to believe, after Iraq, that the American public would support a unilateral military engagement with a "rogue" state such as Iran on the basis of the potential harm that state might do. There is little public (or military) appetite for another extensive, preemptive use of the American military -- something the administration will obviously bear in mind as election year draws near. Any notion that the United States can fight two large-scale preemptive wars at the same time is without basis. This country may have the military capability, but it lacks the political wherewithal, unless the United States is itself attacked. The way the administration has, over the past eight months, put off resolving the far more threatening North Korea nuclear issue reflects both its dislike of Bill Clinton's negotiating approach and its awareness of how politically difficult it is to manage two large crises at the same time. Washington is too often a one-crisis town, particularly when the president's credibility is under attack.

Simply put...we have squandered our national capacity on a two-bit dictator running a two-bit country that presented no threat to the United States or its interests.