Bush: "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us"

Mr Bush should heed the humble words he spoke in his election campaign

31 March 2003


American liberals have taken to quoting George Bush in his second debate with Al Gore in the presidential campaign three years ago. "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us," he said, speaking of the America's dealings with other countries in general. "If we're a humble nation but strong, they'll welcome us."

So far, and it is of course still too early to be sure, the resenting seems to be winning out over the welcoming in Iraq. That was not foreordained. Some independent evidence of pre-war Iraqi sentiment towards America suggested it was ambivalent and conditional – that many Iraqis were reluctantly prepared to accept US force to remove Saddam Hussein as the lesser of two evils. American humility was, however, the absolute key to winning these hearts and minds, and arrogance the guarantee of alienating them.

Sadly, the US campaign has so far been of the wrong kind. From the folly of "shock and awe" – the phrase and the reality – to Donald Rumsfeld's threat to Iran (counter-productive with Shia Muslims), little has lived up to Mr Bush's fine words on the hustings.

This is a strategic error of greater magnitude than any underestimation of the number of troops needed in Iraq – and Mr Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, bears a large share of responsibility for both.

Mr Rumsfeld is the most talkative spokesman for the tightly knit group of politically motivated men at the heart of this administration – including Vice-President Dick Cheney and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz – who promoted this war. They argued for it not as the reluctant recourse to force of a humble but strong nation, but as a projection of American power, a punitive and exemplary war to deter America's enemies.

In this, they were working with the grain of the President's prejudices, and possibly with that of his filial psychology, in that they regard this war as his father's unfinished business. (It is worth noting, though, that Mr Bush Snr has been largely absent from the cheerleaders' squad.)

But George W is a flexible politician. He has the wit to employ speechwriters with an ear for how his words might be heard around the world. Hence the "humble nation" in the debate, the "patient justice" pledged after 11 September and the promise earlier this month to work with the new Palestinian Prime Minister. But the President often forgets that his more spontaneous words to domestic audiences are also broadcast around the world, where his talk of hunting America's enemies down does not earn easy applause.

Mr Rumsfeld is not, therefore, the sole architect of America's counter-productive posture of arrogance in this war. But his tenure at the Department of Defence does not help. He was openly contemptuous of the United Nations and has always asserted that the US can go it alone – without the British, at one recent stage.

If Mr Rumsfeld is forced to take the rap for a military strategy that is coming under a tightening siege from nearly every retired general in the US, he is unlikely to pay the price until the war in Iraq is over. But it would still be a price well worth paying, because there would be a greater chance of America adopting a less arrogant tone in future.

Mr Rumsfeld's military misjudgements and his political mistakes are linked: they are both the product of overconfidence. The more he is attacked, the more Mr Bush should think back to his words from his election campaign: "If we're a humble nation but strong, they'll welcome us."
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