Our unilateralism and arrogance have cost us dearly
by Walter Cronkite
With America's image torn internationally and literally ripped apart in the Arab world, we've now got to decide where we go from here. To do that, however, we have to understand what got us here in the first place. Where and why did the tear begin? I believe the first small tear occurred early in the Bush administration, with the abandonment of the Kyoto negotiations on climate change and U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Those events announced the beginning of a new, unilateralist foreign policy -- one long advocated by conservatives who distrusted international cooperation and agreements as limitations on America's pursuit of its own interests. The American colossus, the greatest power on Earth, was throwing its weight around, and it made people in other countries nervous.
Then came 9/11, and the one curious thing was that the events of that horrific day seemed instantly to knit up the tear. In cities around the world, people gathered in throngs to express not just sympathy but a genuine affection for America and Americans. I was in Italy at the time, and perfect strangers, learning that I was an American, came up and shook my hand with tears in their eyes. NATO voted, for the first time in its history, to invoke Article V of its charter calling for collective defense of any member attacked. Ironically, 9/11 was a high point of international regard for this country. When we attacked al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, we insisted on fighting that war by ourselves. But NATO members, including Germany and France, offered both money and troops to help with the reconstruction.
But some other things were happening, as well. President Bush soon would announce America's right and intention to launch "pre-emptive" war against "imminent" threats to the United States. Sept. 11 had "changed the world," and the administration decided that the rules of warfare had to be changed -- unilaterally.
The secretary of defense claimed that the Geneva Convention did not apply to the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. We began writing our own rules for the treatment of terrorist suspects and prisoners of war -- rules that included the now-infamous elements of "stress and duress." We began "rendering" suspects to other countries so they could be tortured. The Uniform Code of Military Justice still forbade the use of torture by American forces. But practices that, at the very least, bordered on torture were authorized. In Iraq, chronic troop shortages meant that soldiers untrained for the role were assigned as prison guards. The new rules created a disaster just waiting to happen.
It seems to me that, in the appalling abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and the international outrage it has caused, we are reaping what we have so carelessly sown. In this and so many other ways, our unilateralism and the arrogance that accompanies it have cost us dearly.
So where do we go from here? Well, we might already have made a small start. In the backwash of this scandal, the new rules have been at least partly rescinded in Iraq, and the Geneva Convention seems to have a new respectability in Washington. But more importantly, we need to go back to a foreign policy that genuinely embraces international cooperation. Right now, we are eating humble pie, welcoming U.N. participation in Iraq after having scornfully denied the United Nations any meaningful role before we bogged down going it alone.
It still is immediately important for this nation that its invasion of Iraq should result in a free and functioning Iraqi democracy. It also is clear now that we cannot accomplish that by ourselves. We have, so to speak, run (or fallen) to the end of our unilateral rope.
Beyond Iraq, we need to restore America's image as a preserver and defender of the peace and prove to the world that the change is more than cosmetic. But here one has to ask, as others have, whether we can convince the world of our sincerity without regime change here at home.
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