Last Thursday night, in his first prime-time news conference since

October 2001, President George W. Bush made clear to America and the world that

he’s had his fill of diplomacy with regard to the Iraq crisis and that his

administration is ready to strike militarily against Saddam Hussein, with or without U.N.

approval. Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed similar sentiments when he

spoke before the U.N. Security Council on Friday. Both stressed that the time for

patience was over, clearly suggesting that the weapons-inspection process had

failed. Both Bush and Powell implied, in fact, that U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector

Hans Blix was incompetent or a liar or both.

Given the administration’s failure this week to round up the pro-war

Security Council votes it needs for a U.N.-sanctioned war, this “damn the torpedoes”

approach is showing signs of having backfired badly. The vast majority of the

world’s non-American population — many of whom are favorably disposed to this

country — is convinced that the inspectors are performing to the very best of their

abilities and that there is no need for war at this time. Undermining that U.N.

inspection team’s competence and credibility is foolish. If the inspectors haven’t given

up hope yet for a peaceful resolution of the crisis, men and women everywhere

are asking, Why should the United States?

Meanwhile, our government’s incessant saber-rattling casts a pall upon

our nation’s future. We are now perceived nearly everywhere as arrogant bullies:

in Europe, China, South America, yes, even in Turkey, where a $30 billion

bribe proved insufficient to buy off the government of a democracy whose people

clearly want nothing to do with Our War. The Bush administration may yet get its

war victory and even achieve a measure of postwar reconstruction success. But at

what cost? Is implementing regime change in Iraq really worth the price of being

despised around the world, of being perceived as an imperial tyrant in the

Middle East? Is this any kind of step toward victory in the “war” against terrorism?

Apparently, since there seems little indication that the Bush administration

will do the right thing, we must now hope somehow that Saddam Hussein does.

Imagine how sweet it would be if the Iraqi monster decides to call it a day, delivering to

his people a 2003 version of the famous “It’s a far, far better thing that I do than I have

ever done” speech from A Tale of Two

Cities, before hightailing it out of Baghdad.

Such an endgame could get us as a planet out of trouble and into an

everybody-wins scenario:

· Saddam wins by staying alive and leaving as part of his legacy an abdication

that saves thousands of Iraqi lives.

· Bush wins because his tough-Texas-gunman approach is seen as having

produced, in the end, regime change, the desired result all along.

· French foreign minister Dominique de Villepan and company win by

getting credit for having held back the Bush bullies long enough to let nature take

its course.

· British prime minister Tony Blair wins because his insistence on working

within the U.N. framework proved critical in keeping his American allies from

launching a unilateral war as early as last fall.

· Most of all, the U.N. itself wins because it ends up looking like inspections

did indeed do the trick without any of the major powers casting gut-wrenching vetoes.

· More importantly, the United Nations as an institution lives to fight

another day, as we earthlings take a critical early step along a fits-and-starts path

toward international government, a path we will almost certainly need to follow if we

are to survive as a race into the next century.