Opinion: Take a deep breath

A Times Editorial

Take a deep breath

The Bush administration and our European allies need to repair their rift and refocus on their real enemies: rogue states and terrorist groups.

The Bush administration is in danger of botching the job of building broad international support for military action to eliminate Iraq's illegal weapons programs. The problem is evident in the qualms being expressed by many of our staunchest democratic allies in NATO and the United Nations. It also was evident last weekend, as millions of people in major American and European cities turned out to voice their opposition to the administration's Iraq policy.

Blame for the raw tensions in the trans-Atlantic alliance rests in European capitals as well as Washington. No White House official has made statements as offensive as those of French President Jacques Chirac this week when he asserted that leaders of new democracies in Eastern Europe should "keep quiet" rather than express their support for U.S. policy in Iraq. On issues as important as war and peace, every voice -- whether in Washington, Paris or Prague -- has a right to be heard.

However, the United States, as the world's pre-eminent military and economic power, has a special obligation to provide mature leadership in times of crisis. As President Bush noted this week, U.S. national security should not be held hostage to international opinion. But our nation will not be safer if our government makes millions of new enemies in the course of removing one dangerous tyrant from power.

Fortunately, with Iraq under the constraints of tightening international inspections, Washington still has time to make a more credible, less arrogant case for its Iraq policy. This week, the White House seems to be responding constructively. By taking the time and effort to push for a new Security Council resolution authorizing military force to disarm Iraq, Washington can begin to rebuild the international consensus that has frayed since Secretary of State Colin Powell's effective U.N. presentation earlier this month. While U.S. diplomats work to guide the Security Council toward a new agreement, the governments of NATO and the European Union already have taken steps to heal divisions within those vital alliances.

More broadly, the Bush administration needs to rethink the tactics that have backfired against it in recent weeks. It's not easy to lose a public relations battle against a character as repugnant as Saddam Hussein, but this administration sometimes seems to be trying.

By warning early in the Iraqi crisis that the United Nations was on the verge of irrelevance, President Bush alienated a world body whose political, military and economic help proved crucial during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's contemptuous putdowns of "old Europe" offended the nations that most closely share our values and stood alongside us throughout the Cold War.

It's time for leaders of all the world's great democracies to take a deep breath and remember who their real friends and enemies are. The world's attention needs to be placed back on Iraq's continuing violations of U.N. resolutions, not on Washington's sometimes clumsy efforts to enforce international law.

The greatest threat facing the modern world comes from rogue governments and the terrorist groups they harbor. Even the United States cannot defeat global terrorism alone. At the same time, governments such as France and Germany cannot pretend to be noncombatants in a war that will eventually cast a shadow over the entire civilized world.