GEORGIE ANNE GEYER Bush's foreign policy is unrealistic

WASHINGTON -- This week, as the "six-month war" in Iraq enters its fourth year, several events have come together that tell us what led to this war -- and where it is going. It is worthwhile to examine them, if we ever want to get out of the tortuous quicksands of the Near East.
First, the unmourned death of Slobodan Milosevic in his prison cell in The Hague unceremoniously ended the saga of the bloodshed in the Balkans between 1991 and 1995. Milosevic comes across clearly to the world, finally, as merely an ethnic opportunist pitting Serbs against the world in order to hold power in a collapsing Yugoslavia.
But it was the actions of the West in response to this first holocaust in Europe since World War II that led to the Iraq war. We Americans were not any heroes, as at least 250,000 people were killed by Milosevic's marauders, but it was the Western Europeans who came out as the quintessential cowards: As country after country sent in "even-handed" peacekeepers, who pretended that both sides were equally at fault, Europe gave Serbia the go-ahead to ethnically cleanse the Balkans.
Ideological advisers
It was that picture of a Europe supposedly in decline -- obviously in denial about the use of power -- that led in great part to the Bush administration's later invasion in the Middle East. It led its leading ideological advisers, the neocons, to swell with pride that America could "do it" in Iraq, whereas "Old Europe" could do nothing, anywhere. Thus, the triumphant march to Baghdad on March 19, 2003.
Now, fast-forward to Baghdad today. As the war that was to end in six months totters on the brink of civil war three bitter years later, where does the United States stand now with regard to the Bush administration's policy of using force unilaterally, of cutting out allies and of utter disdain for cultural or historical realities?
Well, the president says that a relatively democratic, relatively peaceful Iraq is still possible; but then you hear the generals ...
"We are not killing them faster than they are being created," Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism, soberly told the Woodrow Wilson Center last week, warning that the war could take decades to resolve. Indeed, more and more military and civilian analysts are saying that Iraq already is IN a civil war; in the polls, 77 percent of Americans now agree.
Over these last three years, the core ideological tenets of the administration have tumbled over themselves like Vietnam's infamous "dominos." First, the great six-month period of glory went; then the much-awaited cries of welcome were little heard; the idea of instant democracy got lost in cruel reality; and finally we end up where we are now, trying to give artificial "roots" to an artificial government, while fearful Iraqis return to their old roots for safety in the chaos.
Finally, most moderate Arab countries are left shaking their heads, as the United States, riven with administration-inspired fear of Arabs, turns down a moderate and promising economic partner, Dubai, in the failing ports deal, exactly the kind of country we should encourage.
United Europe
But there is one more failed tenet. It was particularly Vice President Dick Cheney's favorite -- that with such massive use of power, the United States would/could/should stand alone as "the" power of the world, assailed by no one. Instead, you see other centers of power asserting themselves everywhere -- and inevitably: Iran, awakened by the U.S. invasion next door, talking to Venezuela; China becoming the major power in Asia; a united Europe going its own way.
What do we do next? How do we get out? Even I, who was prematurely against the Iraq war by about nine months, if only because I knew the country's bitter history, do not now favor abandoning the country to its poisonous internal anarchy.
In this case, today's viewpoint of the generals is probably correct: Gradually pull out, hope against hope that the Iraqis can secure themselves now that we've destroyed the institutions they had, and in time put this behind us, another semi-Vietnam.
But the problem is that, even while the talk is far more genteel and diplomatic under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the ultimate goals of the administration remain the same.
Universal Press Syndicate