OxBlog

# Posted 9:03 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

MR. 100%: Jackson Diehl always comes through with a column that unmasks the idiocy of conventional wisdom and shows what real common sense is.

This time, his subject is the shopworn discussion of whether Bush is personally responsible for the marked rise in global anti-Americanism. Josh Marshall, E.J. Dionne and Richard Cohen all say yes.

Howard Kurtz argues, that criticism from such quarters is quite credible, since Marshall, Dionne, and Cohen have consistently argued that Iraq is a threat that must be dealt with. I don't think such criticism is all that suprising, however. For centrist liberals such as M, D and C, there is a tendency to recognize the importance of dealing with threats forcefully, but also a tendency to believe that American arrogance is the cause of any resentment our policies generate abroad.

Ironically, this fear of arrogance is itself quite arrogant, since it assumes that other governments are so beholden to their emotions that their reactions to US decisions depends not on such decisions' actual content, but on whether or not their presentation is "arrogant". As I've said before,

" A unilateral invasion of Iraq is simply unacceptable in Europe. No amount of spin can change that. What the US has to decide is whether invading Iraq is important enough to disregard criticism of it."

Now that I've said my piece, we finally comeback to Jackson Diehl's column, which is the first one I've seen to make a similar point. As he writes:

Some would argue that what increasingly looks like a severe rift in the Western democracies was entirely man-made -- and that clumsy and arrogant acts by the Bush administration started the trouble...

These explanations seem too simple -- deeper historical forces, and not just personalities, are prying old allies apart. For the past decade, France and Russia have tried to make the Middle East a theater for containing the growing global power of the United States. Both strongly opposed the Clinton administration's attempts to respond forcefully to Saddam Hussein; both undermined U.S. containment of Iran. In doing so, they satisfied themselves that the world remained "multipolar," to use Chirac's term -- at the price of letting a couple of rogue states off the hook.

Diehl goes on to argue, however, that this sort of conflict cannot account for the hesitation of Mexico, Chile and Turkey to support the US. In these three cases, bad diplomacy has made all the difference.

While I think that the administration did a reasonable job with Turkey, I am still extremely impressed by Diehl's subtle analysis. The question is, when will the NYT hire him to replace Maureen Dowd?

PS Mickey Kaus makes a similar point to Diehl's in his March 10 post. [Is it me, or does Kaus not have permalinks?]

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