End of the American Century.

• Author: Howell, Llewellyn D.
• Position: WORLD WATCHER

THE RECENT APPOINTMENT of John Bolton as UN Ambassador only confirmed what already was apparent; the president of the U.S. no longer is the leader of the free world. That role now is being passed on to others. The U.S. has created the most powerful military machine ever known, yet it has used that machine to relegate itself to secondary status among great nations.

Instead of having a strategy to shape the world for the betterment of mankind, the Bush Administration has wandered aimlessly among objectives in foreign policy and employed bullying tactics instead of the bully pulpit. It has substituted an intricate web of falsehoods for thoughtfulness and good planning. Global leadership in the hands of the Bush Administration has spiraled downward, leaving an opening for others to set examples and provide guidance.

The most critical of these failures in leadership is not the Bolton appointment. That merely was a demonstration of the point. The worst remains the invasion of Iraq under--at best--elusionary rationales and possibly fabricated intelligence. While weapons of mass destruction in the hands of dictator Saddam Hussein were touted as the explicit reason for the invasion, the total lack of evidence on this count only resulted in an ex-post-facto shift in the Administration's argument to the establishment of an Iraqi democracy. In doing so, it has ignored completely the many other dictatorships the U.S. has supported (including Saddam Hussein's) and continues to support around the world. With their rampant framing mentality, the Republicans seem to think that simply repeating their fictions somehow will make them true. The rest of the world sees it differently.

While a slim majority of Americans still supports the U.S. war effort, a June, 2005, Rasmussen Reports poll indicates that 49% of Americans say that Pres. Bush is more responsible for starting the war with Iraq than Saddam Hussein. The survey found that 44% take the opposite view. Outside the U.S., far greater majorities put the burden on Bush. A longstanding free-world principle is that democracies do not start wars. The leader of the free world cannot be seen as an invader.

The second is the tactical misdirection taken in the so-called "war on terrorism." We did make a direct strike on the Islamic radical terrorist group that was behind the 9/11 attack when we bombed training camps and sent troops in to dislodge the government of Afghanistan in late 2001. Since then, the...