Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
If there is a substantive critique of Bush foreign policy beyond mere Bush-hatred, it is the administration's failure to win broad international support for the war and for other major policies. The emergence of a unipolar order and the nervousness these new circumstances can create even among America's friends has made gaining support a difficult task.
With all the turmoil surrounding the failure to find stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons in Iraq, it is time to return to first principles, and to ask the question: Was it right to go to war?
Contrary to claims that the war on Iraq was the product of a vast conspiracy peddled by a small band of neoconservatives, history shows that, even under the Clinton administration, Iraq was perceived as a strategic threat due to Saddam's proven record of aggression and barbarity, his admitted possession of weapons of mass destruction, and the certain knowledge of his programs to build more.
