Bush League Diplomacy: The Empire Strikes Out

Source: Washington Post, March 16, 2003 As PR Watch reported last year, the Bush administration has always intended to attack Iraq no matter what the results of UN inspections. The US's expensive post-911 propaganda and PR campaign to win foreign friends and change minds about US policy has predictably failed given Bush's bullying insistence on going to war. The Washington Post notes that "Six months after President Bush first appeared before the United Nations and urged a confrontation with Iraq, the United States appears to have lost diplomatic ground, not gained it, leaving it in a precarious international position as it prepares to launch a war. A resolution authorizing military action has been blocked at the United Nations not only by permanent members with veto power such as France and Russia but also by close U.S. neighbors such as Chile and Mexico. Some of the president's closest allies, British Prime Minister Tony Blair foremost among them, are in desperate political straits over their support of Bush's Iraq policy ... ."