In less than four months, we've managed in this country to go from the incredible to the bizarre. Four months ago, it was unbelievable to a good many Americans that in the midst of a war on terrorism -- with American troops in Afghanistan having their hands full trying to root out the last of the al-Qaida band there -- the White House should decide to make the invasion of Iraq a sudden national priority.

It was mind-boggling that President Bush could announce his intent to do so, no matter what the rest of the world thought, including nearly every one of our allies along with the entire Arab world, with everyone warning us that such a move could only further destabilize the Middle East and increase the likelihood of terrorist retaliation. And it was beyond imagination that the Bush administration would persist in pushing for an invasion against the advice of some prominent American generals, a cadre of respected former national security advisers and the CIA.

Now, four months later, the unbelievable has become the absurd. While American citizens in this city and across the country were pouring into the streets to protest the idea of war in Iraq, Congress -- mesmerized by Bush's ostensible popularity -- has given him a legislative blank check to "use the armed forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate."

While the Pentagon ratchets up its preparations to go to war in Iraq, the Bush administration also announces a multimillion-dollar campaign to launch a public relations effort designed to improve the image of the United States in the Arab world. And although the White House has reluctantly pledged to consult the United Nations regarding any action it might contemplate taking, immediately after the vote an administration official blithely announced, "Right now we have accomplished what we had to do to take the action we need to take, and we don't need the (U.N.) Security Council."

One hundred and fifty thousand Britons turn out for a march against our proposed war, a national election in Germany becomes a referendum on U.S. war policy (and the United States loses), the Nobel Peace Prize committee goes out of its way to indicate that this year's award to former President Jimmy Carter can be considered "a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken" and the war-mongers in Washington act as though nary a word of dissent to their invasion passions has been uttered. As a British newspaper observes, only the nation's citizens now stand between Bush and war in Iraq.

"Once upon a time" -- and it will sound like a fairy tale to most people -- this country's leaders and citizens cared a great deal about what other nations thought of us. "A decent respect for the opinions of mankind" led an earlier American who later became president to set forth the reasons that drove the decision of the American colonies to declare their independence from England. That marvelous phrase is enshrined in our nation's Declaration of Independence; it is a matter of national embarrassment that it no longer has significance in the conduct of our country's business.

Robert Burns, the beloved Scottish poet, has a bit of wisdom that goes (with my apologies to those of Scottish extraction if I do not get the dialect correct):

"O that God the gift would gie us;

to see ourselves as others see us."

If we ask what it is that has our friends across the Atlantic and elsewhere around the world so upset, it is not that we plan to declare war on another country in violation of every international law ever written; it is that we act so arrogant and cavalier about it. In a period in which we should be witnessing a display of the best of prudent leadership, we are treated to a Texas swagger that boasts of getting our enemies "dead or alive," of an "axis of evil" that, so named, implies we can do whatever we choose to get rid of it, that describes Saddam Hussein as "stiffing the world" about his weapons arsenal and that generally uses language for public discourse more fitting for a barroom brawl scene in a cheap-budget Western movie than for discussions by a head of state.

Everywhere one turns these days everyone is discussing the possibility of war -- and doing so with unconcealed anxiety. It is a pity of incalculable proportions that in a period of such widespread uncertainty -- with the nation buffeted by a shattered economy, awash in revelations of corporate greed, with the stock market in disarray and a pervasive dread about the prospect of having to face more acts of terror on our own soil -- that we should find ourselves in the hands of and at the mercy of national leaders with such a frighteningly perverse set of national aims and objectives.

Hubert G. Locke, Seattle, is a retired professor and former dean of the Daniel J. Evans Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.

©1999-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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