> --Methinks this misses the main point, the reason why Bush couldn't
> secure an international backing for his adventure was that there *was*
> no legitimate basis for such an invasion, something which the citizenry
> even in the US, not to mention the rest of the world, was quite clear
> on [thus the contradictory, but nonetheless clear enough position of
> only supporting war if the UN had a declaration--i.e. supporting the
> war under a virtually impossible condition). Had Gore attempted to
> make a multilateral coaltion based on the UN, he would have had to go
> through the exact same shenanigans that Bush went through, i.e. lying
> to the world about the 'threat' of Sodom to the world and the US.
> There was only one way to win the world over, by lying as seriously as
> Bush and Blair tried to do. Any other approach would have had to rely
> on, 'we want regime change because Sodom is a bad guy", something the
> international community, as contradictory and weakneed as it was in the
> face of US pressure, nonetheless was strongly opposed to.
I think it's quite possible that Gore could've sold the UN on something along the lines of Walzer's "containment on steroids (i.e. unconditional inspections etc. backed by the threat of war)" policy proposal. If Saddam didn't comply, multilateral war would've ensued. For a number of reasons, such a result would've been preferable to what we ended up with.
The main reason Bush couldn't secure international backing was that his administration was largely and transparently unconcerned with getting it.
-- Luke