What We've Really Lost in Iraq: Legitimacy

[NNN0LHI]

http://uspolitics.einnews.com/article.php?nid=277248

Do yourself a big favor.

Go to http://www.sais-jhu.edu and click on the speech given the other day by retired General Wesley Clark to an audience at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

In just 20 minutes, Clark presented the most cogent case I've yet heard for what the Iraq misadventure has cost America and Americans, and what's needed to clean up the scene of this crime.

Clark titled his speech: "Legitimacy---First Task for America's Security." Here's his core argument: For all the military power the U.S. has at its disposal, the nation's safety and economic strength ultimately depends on maintaining our status as a nation that pursues objectives held in common by most peoples who share the planet:

--The wise and benign use of power
--Defense of human rights
--Protection of civilian populations
--Cooperation with, not intimidation of other nations
--The primacy of the rule of law

All of that, he argues, has been put into question by our nation's behavior in Iraq. And the result has "robbed every American" of his or her heritage and made us all less safe and secure.

Six consecutive Pew polls of those who live in other countries have recorded a declining belief in the historic aims and purposes of the U.S. And that, he says, not only undermines our ability to rally the rest of the world to fight the forces of terror, but has other consequences as well: It weakens our ability to marshal allies to confront Iran; it makes our arguments less persuasive when pressuring the Russians to be less authoritarian and bullying to their neighbors; it compromises our credentials for challenging human rights abuses in China. And so on.