It's about time

I'm not sure if I'm surprised more that it finally happened, or that the number would be so small. In any regard, the Washington Post reports that approximately two dozen former diplomats and military leaders have spoken out against Bush's foreign policy.

Members of the group -- a mix of Republicans and Democrats -- have served in capitals from Moscow to Tel Aviv and Lima to Kinshasa. The list includes a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former head of U.S. Central Command, a former CIA director and a decorated array of former ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state and defense.

"We all have this extremely strong feeling that this administration has failed in its responsibilities to the nation," H. Allen Holmes, former assistant secretary of defense for special operations, said yesterday. "We have never been so isolated in the world, and feared. It's incredible that the United States should be in that position."

I'm not sure I can wait that long...

The one-page statement, which will be released formally Wednesday at a Washington news conference, criticizes the Bush administration for ineffectiveness in its approach to the world. It mentions Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- on which the White House has strongly backed hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- and cites evidence of increasing anti-American attitudes among Muslim young people.

The statement also mentions a range of other issues, including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and U.S. approaches to HIV-AIDS, the environment and the distribution of wealth.

"We've lost a lot of our international partnerships. We've lost a lot of lives. We've lost a lot of money for something that wasn't justified," said Ronald Spiers, former ambassador to Pakistan and Turkey, referring to the Iraq war. "This concept of transplanting democracy is a 'fool's rush in where angels fear to tread' idea."

Spiers added, "The damage we've done to key and valuable alliances is going to take a long time to fix."

How partisan, right?

"I really am essentially a Republican. I voted for George Bush's father, and I voted for George Bush," [Bill] Harrop [former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Kenya] said. "But what we got was not the George Bush we voted for.

"There is a feeling that the administration from the very outset took a righteous black-and-white view toward diplomacy," said Harrop, who referred to administration "dissembling" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and a "complete failure to prepare for the aftermath" of war.

"It's called the war against terrorism," Harrop asserted, "but in fact it has created terrorism in Iraq. It has made Iraq itself a very dangerous place."