fang, I have no time to respond to your post at length tonight. And I doubt that even if I did I would convince you of much since there is a lot of difference in our vision. Case in point, your belief that “diplomacy” is some kind of leftist strategy rather than a non-partisan alternative–in fact, the only alternative–to military force.
On Mexico, I don’t have a cite handy for you as this was reported in a Times piece that is now archived and no longer available free of charge. Basically Bush noted how much anti-French sentiment there was in the United States and asked the Mexicans to imagine how that might play out in in the case of Mexicans, since so many Mexican immigrants work and live in the United States. Perhaps someone else can come up with something on google.
Although I don’t have time to answer your post blow by blow, the gist of what I would say is epitomized by two editorials I read prior to reading the Straight Dope tonight. So here are some exceprts and links for you to ponder–and I hope that you do read the links in their entirety.
Here is what the Guardian had to say in response to the Azores summit–i.e. prior to Bush’s speech tonight. (The Guardian btw is one of the UK’s principal broadsheet newspapers and the one usually associated with a more Labour Party (i.e. Blair’s party) agenda.
"Downing Street has made much in recent days of Mr Blair’s willingness to go the “extra mile” for peace. He probably genuinely thinks he is still doing so. But judging by Mr Bush’s bellicose weekend radio address and his petulant tone in the Azores, he is being strung along as usual. If the mini-summit was intended to show that the two men are acting with due regard to democratic opinion, it failed. If it was an effort to persuade people that the US and Britain are not acting precipitately, that failed too.
"It has been plain for weeks that the US military timetable is dictating events. That is the principal reason why Britain has run out of time for its “second resolution”. Yesterday the unjustly vilified French offered yet another compromise. The inspections process is still ongoing; Hans Blix is due to set out Iraq’s next disarmament tasks in a report this week. Iraq itself is still voluntarily destroying missiles that it might well prefer to keep given the threat it faces. It has invited Mr Blix to pay another visit. If Mr Blair and Mr Bush arbitrarily wreck this process now, as seems certain, they will be branded warmongers by most of the world. And they will make their own peoples targets for terrorist retribution.
“…[T]he pretence that the US and Britain are acting legally in circumventing the UN is preposterous. Resolution 1441, upon which their case mainly rests, invoked, embraced and superseded all previous Iraq-related resolutions. It specifically did not authorise the use of military force. If it had, it simply would not have been passed. Mr Blair and Mr Bush also risk breaching the UN charter, as Kofi Annan notes. They have no legal mandate to attack, let alone a mandate for regime change and an indefinite occupation. Rarely has war been launched from such shaky ground. Rarely have a war’s proponents been so blind, so wrong and in such a rush.”
So that is what our principal ally’s principal newspaper has to say.
And here is what the New York Times has to say in response to Bush’s speech–a paper that has editorialized in favor of military force under certain (cooperative) conditions.
An excerpt:
"The hubris and mistakes that contributed to America’s current isolation began long before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. From the administration’s first days, it turned away from internationalism and the concerns of its European allies by abandoning the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdrawing America’s signature from the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. Russia was bluntly told to accept America’s withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the territory of the former Soviet Union. In the Middle East, Washington shortsightedly stepped backed from the worsening spiral of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, ignoring the pleas of Arab, Muslim and European countries. If other nations resist American leadership today, part of the reason lies in this unhappy history.
The Atlantic alliance is now more deeply riven than at any time since its creation more than a half-century ago. A promising new era of cooperation with a democratizing Russia has been put at risk. China, whose constructive incorporation into global affairs is crucial to the peace of this century, has been needlessly estranged. Governments across the Muslim world, whose cooperation is so vital to the war against terrorism, are now warily navigating between popular anger and American power."
Perhaps this gives you some idea of why I see things very differently from you.