IR, Bush Style!

Here's what Annan has to say about the Iraq war:

During the past 18 months, Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the United Nations
has expressed many reservations about the war in Iraq.
He has asserted that
it was not in "conformity" with the U.N. Charter. He has "raised questions about
the legitimacy" of the action by the United States and Britain to go to war
without specific authority from the Security Council.
But Annan's radio
interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. Wednesday, in which he said for
the first time that he believed the war was "illegal," set off a tempest of
reaction and raised questions in a number of capitals about why he had chosen
that moment to adopt more muscular language about the war.

But, not surprisingly, here's what the U.S. has to say about it:

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Friday that United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan's comment on the Iraq war was "incorrect."

"My reaction is that the secretary general was incorrect," Powell said
in an interview with the Fox News Channel's Hannity and Colmes Show program.

"We believe the war was necessary and it rested on sound principles of
international law. We have made our case and we have, in our words, moved
forward directly with a spirited defense of our position, and of course, it is a
position held by Australia and the United Kingdom and all the other members of
the coalition," Powell said.

Following the end of the Cold War, the world was in a unique position to really work together and achieve a lot of things that can really only be accomplished when there is relative piece and more or less a shared vision and desire to work together to get things done. But at the point that the U.S. goes cowboy all over the globe with no regard to others, that unique position has been abandoned. We are now living in a world where the EU countries could ban together to form a couterbalance to U.S. hedgemony. Again, then, we will find ourselves locked in global standoff. Even worse, it didn't have to be this way.