This post, which covers the Bush administration until the invasion of Iraq, is the second of three that employ the Times’ editorials to trace and analyze the evolution of the newspaper’s stance on Iraq. (The first can be found here.) The final installment, covering the post-invasion period, will probably be posted between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The reason for this lengthy delay is that Times Select—the source of the editorials—limits its members to 100 free downloads per month. I’ve used up my current allotment; my next one starts on December 19.

____________________

The Bush Administration to the Invasion of Iraq

If the New York Times deserves to be vilified, it’s for its editorial stance and reporting after—not before—the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Memory can play tricks, and I’m forced to admit to this surprising conclusion, which follows from my review of every Iraq-related editorial published between Bush’s inauguration and the invasion’s start.

That review reveals no personal or institutional animus towards President Bush; in fact, on a number of occasions, the editors praised his efforts and policies. Only after war was staring them in the face did the editors hurl invectives in Bush’s direction. The Times was convinced that Iraq was a serious, though not imminent, threat and was willing to countenance the use of force. It was biased, but the bias was in favor of multilateralism, not against a Republican president. Furthermore, the Times didn’t reserve its criticisms for Bush. France was a frequent target for the editors’ verbal assaults; there’s not a single instance of praise for the French.

This appraisal does not mean that I’ve changed my mind and come around to the Times’ way of thinking. As before, I continue to believe that Bush’s decision to attack Saddam’s Iraq without Security Council approval was correct. My major criticism of the Times’ posture is that, despite condemning France’s intransigence, the editors implicitly concluded that having the U.S. bow to the French was preferable to acting without the approval of the Security Council. The Times was wrong to place multilateralism above the removal of a threat that it clearly and consistently recognized.

Beginnings

After Bush’s inauguration and before 9/11, the Times had little to say about Iraq. In its three editorials, the paper argued in favor of a revitalization of efforts to halt Saddam’s development of WMD (2/17/01, 7/5/01) and against “entertain[ing] any proposals to use American military forces or weapons in concert with Mr. Hussein’s foes,” and asserted that France, Russia, and China wanted to ease sanctions (5/20/01). In other words, there was nothing new.

In its first post-9/11 editorial on Iraq (11/26/01), the Times warned against waging war against Saddam, arguing that doing so would “almost certainly” shatter the coalition that had been assembled to fight the War on Terror and undermine the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In its first discernable policy shift, the Times now wanted Washington to “intensify its efforts to build up a more serious internal Iraqi opposition.” On six previous occasions (five of them during the Clinton years), the editors had advocated a hands-off policy.

Thereafter, the editors picked up on their major theme from the Clinton era. In a series of editorials (3/10/02, 7/6/02, 7/30/02, 8/28/02, 9/13/02, 9/14/02) published between March and September 2002, they expressed deep concern about Iraq’s WMD. At the end of this period, they depicted Saddam’s weapons as “a serious threat to international order.”

Early Misgivings: The “Rush to War”

On January 31, 2002—soon after the President’s State of the Union address—the Times issued its first warning with words that would be echoed many times during the ensuing months:

The apparent success of the Afghan campaign should not encourage Mr. Bush to overreach . . . Sept. 11 . . . does not give Mr. Bush an unlimited hunting license. As a number of his predecessors learned to their and the nation’s dismay, turning too quickly or too frequently to the use of force can cost a president support at home and damage American interests and alliances abroad.

After five months of editorial silence, the Times commenced its campaign for a debate on American intervention in July. The editors were concerned about the possible consequences of an invasion, expressed strong doubts about Iraq-Al Qaeda connections, argued that the administration had not made a compelling case for war, and accused Bush of “rushing” to war:

. . . there ought to be some discussion in Congress and around the nation about the manner of American intervention in Iraq [7/6/02] . . . a public airing of the pros and cons of intervention is long overdue . . . Removing Mr. Hussein from power could trigger internal rivalries and possible fragmentation inside an Iraq divided between mutually suspicious Arab Sunnis, Arab Shiites and Kurds [7/30/02] . . . It is time for Mr. Bush to level with the nation about his intentions and to talk candidly about why he feels military action against Iraq may soon be necessary . . . Military action against Iraq may be justified, but not in response to the terrorism of Sept. 11 or Al Qaeda. To date there is no reliable evidence that Baghdad had any serious connection to either . . . There may be a compelling case to be made for war with Iraq. The administration has not yet made it [8/3/02] . . . American presidents have been most successful when they adhered to a set of democratic principles: act with the consent of Congress, fight in alliance with other nations and exhaust diplomatic measures before going to war. As President Bush edges closer to a decision on whether to take up arms against Saddam Hussein, he sometimes acts as though these are trivial concerns that he can ignore in a rush to drive Mr. Hussein from power [8/11/02] . . . there have been frequent allusions to secret intelligence information that officials are unwilling to make public . . . the country ought not to be led into war on the basis of information the American people are not allowed to share. [8/21/02]

In a key editorial published on August 28, the Times argued that any justification of an American invasion would have to be based on Iraq’s violation of the cease-fire agreement ending the Gulf War. For the first time, the editors asserted that a new Security Council resolution must precede a renewal of hostilities; they characterized as “legal sophistry” Bush’s contention that the 1991 vote authorizing the Gulf War was sufficient. This stance was a radical departure from that taken in 1993, when an editorial stated that “Baghdad forfeits the protection of the U.N. cease-fire resolution every time it violates the cease-fire terms.”

Any justification for attacking Iraq would have to rest in large part on Baghdad’s flagrant violations of the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the gulf war more than a decade ago. If President Bush wants to renew hostilities with Iraq, he should seek a new resolution telling Baghdad it must comply fully and immediately with the cease-fire’s disarmament and inspection demands or face a reopening of hostilities . . . While Mr. Bush has promised to consult with Congress, he seems to be under the illusion . . . that he can rely on the 1991 vote that authorized the gulf war. That is legal sophistry . . .

The Thaw

On September 4, Bush announced that he would seek Congressional approval for any American action against Iraq and that he would take his case to the U.N. on September 12. The next day, the Times reacted with these words:
Those steps are critical, but only a beginning . . . Support from the U.N. Security Council for any American attack is essential . . . Mr. Bush must be mindful that the terror attacks a year ago did not give him a license to wage war in Iraq.

This was the first time that the Times said that Security Council support was “essential.”

The Times gave its strong approval to Bush’s U.N. speech but averred that he hadn’t made a case for immediate military action:

Mr. Bush’s blunt assessment of the Iraqi threat and the need for a firm, united response by the United Nations were well put . . . As Mr. Bush said, after a decade of Iraqi defiance the U.N. faces a defining moment and a test of its purpose and resolve [9/13/02] . . . The combination of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, especially his effort to produce nuclear weapons, and Iraq’s brazen defiance of the Security Council represent a serious threat to international order. Mr. Bush, however, did not show that immediate action was warranted.

Work now began on what would become Resolution 1441. On October 1, the Times set forth its conditions for military action:

If a new resolution is needed, we favor one with a deadline and a clear warning that military force is likely to follow if Baghdad fails to comply. But only if and when full-scale inspections fail should the Security Council give final consent to the use of force.

With the drafting process underway, the primary target of the editors’ criticism shifted from the U.S. to China, Russia and, especially, France:

China, Russia and France do not yet seem sold on the new resolution [10/1/02] . . . France, Russia and China should recognize the need for a new resolution reasserting the right of arms investigators to go anywhere without advance notice and setting deadlines for full Iraqi cooperation [10/3/02] . . . Washington has resisted a French proposal that if the inspections fail, the Council would have to pass another resolution permitting the use of force . . . Both the French and Russians want to tone down the resolution. Both want to remove a reference to Iraq’s being in ‘’material breach’’ of its U.N. obligations. The Russians want no mention of ‘’serious consequences,’’ while the French would dilute that threat by linking it to the second resolution. [10/27/02]

The Times did not completely silence its criticism of the U.S., however. In a September 28 editorial, it revived the rush-to-war theme by saying that “there are times when President Bush and his national security team seem all too eager to plunge into battle.” In that editorial and another published on October 23, the paper again expressed its skepticism regarding ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Notwithstanding these words, The Times published three editorials praising the President’s diplomacy:

Last month President Bush stood before the United Nations General Assembly and offered to work with the Security Council to disarm Iraq. He has lived up to that promise [10/27/02] . . . Yesterday’s unanimous vote [on Resolution 1441] at the United Nations Security Council sends the strongest possible message to Baghdad . . . This is a well-deserved triumph for President Bush, a tribute to eight weeks of patient but determined and coercive American diplomacy . . . United Nations weapons inspectors are back in Iraq . . . That is encouraging, and directly attributable to President Bush’s efforts . . . [12/6/02]

In the second of these three editorials, the Times defined the conditions that would justify unilateral American action:

If Baghdad violates any of these provisions, Washington should insist that the Security Council enforce its decision. Only if the council fails to approve the serious consequences it now invokes—generally understood to be military measures—should Washington consider acting alone.

Iraq’s Weapons Declaration

With the U.N. back in Iraq and on the verge of Iraq’s release of 12,000 pages documenting its weapons programs, the Times expressed strong reservations regarding the efficacy of the weapons inspection process:

No matter how tough and clever the inspectors are, however, there is no way a group of 100 or so arms experts in a California-size country like Iraq can discover whether substantial caches of illegal weapons have been hidden away beneath the desert, at army bases or in seemingly innocent commercial or residential buildings. For that, they will need cooperation from knowledgeable Iraqis. [12/6/02]

In this, they were in full agreement with the Bush administration.

In another highly significant editorial published just after the Iraqi documents were provided to the U.N., the paper had this to say about standards of evidence:

Those determined to avoid war at all costs may demand more direct and irrefutable evidence than this kind of coercive inspection program is capable of producing in the face of willful Iraqi deception. But the rigorous evidentiary standards of an American courtroom do not apply here. A case for military action is likely to be made by highlighting any major discrepancies between Iraq’s report and American and other findings. Given Baghdad’s track record, which includes serial aggression against neighbors, wholesale duplicity toward the Security Council and missing stocks of nerve gas and biological weapons material, this seems a reasonable approach. To all this must be added Iraq’s demonstrated capacity to convert those ingredients into highly lethal unconventional weapons . . . Iraq is entitled to no presumption of innocence . . . [12/10/02]

At this point in time, the Times and the Bush administration were on the same page. Clearly, the Times was not one of those “determined to avoid war at all costs.”

Now the Times, which had previously retargeted its ire from the U.S. to France, Russia, and China, re-aimed its verbal attacks to Iraq. After the Weapons Declaration was made public, the editors said

. . . the weapons declaration that Iraq recently submitted to the United Nations is marred by inconsistencies, contains little useful new information and leaves crucial questions unanswered. That judgment was rendered yesterday not by some hawkish Pentagon ideologue but by Hans Blix . . . Similar disappointment was expressed by Mohamed ElBaradei . . . Baghdad has not provided convincing documentation to back up its dubious claim to have eliminated all its illegal biological, chemical, nuclear and missile programs. [12/20/02]

The Times sounded the same note as the new year dawned:

Baghdad’s overall accounting of its unconventional arms programs has been circumscribed at best and deceptive at worst. The failure to provide a full description of its nuclear weapons projects is especially troubling. [1/2/03]

The Times was unconcerned by an early January inspectors’ report that a smoking gun hadn’t been found, pointing out that the burden of proof was on Iraq and again asserting that

In a country as large and tightly controlled as Iraq, the inspectors will never be able to assure themselves without active help from the government that deadly illegal weapons ingredients aren’t hidden somewhere. [1/10/03]

Unilateral Intervention Opposed

On January 22, the Times again accused Bush of rushing towards war and, despite their previous criticisms of the inspection process and the positions of France, Russia, and China, the editors said it would be better to follow their advice by giving the inspectors more time to complete their work:

. . . he has given international weapons inspectors time to gear up their investigations, test Iraqi intentions and satisfy other nations that force remains, as Mr. Bush has repeatedly said, a last resort. Now, with that process still incomplete, he seems increasingly impatient to abandon inspections and go to war, even if other Security Council members are not yet ready to do so. That would be a mistake. Washington is awash with war talk this week, as Mr. Bush and his top aides try to build support for a showdown with Iraq. It would be better to heed the advice of other Security Council members, including France, Russia and China, to allow more time for the inspectors to work . . . with inspection teams only now approaching full strength and beginning to make use of American and other intelligence leads, it is too soon to give up on all possibility of a peaceful solution . . . Given the risks of military action and the widespread public opposition in the United States and abroad to acting without Security Council support, Mr. Bush should not be in a rush to go to war.

Four days later, the editors, while not yet ready to state their opposition to the war, voiced their opposition to a unilateral intervention. Taking their hardest line yet, they claimed that Bush “had never been open with the American people,” nor had he been clear about “exactly why” the U.S. was preparing to fight. In addition, they cited lessons from Vietnam, including the lack of an exit strategy. For the first time, they said that, if the U.S. had to fight alone, the fight wasn’t worth it:

[T]he Bush administration seems to be . . . gearing up for an invasion it appears determined to conduct whether or not its allies approve . . . We urge the administration to brake the momentum toward war . . . this war should be waged only with broad international support. To go it alone, or nearly alone, is to court disaster both domestically and internationally. Mr. Bush has enough support among American voters to undertake the kind of clean, quickly successful military action his father directed in the Persian Gulf war of 1991. But every poll, every anecdotal reading of the American mood makes it clear that he has not sold the public on anything difficult or drawn out . . . This nation should never begin a fight it is not prepared to carry out to the bitter end, no matter what the cost. That isn’t true of this engagement, and the fault lies mainly with the president himself. Mr. Bush has never been open with the American people about the possible cost of this war. He has not even been clear about exactly why we are preparing to fight. Sometimes his aim appears to be disarming the Iraqis or punishing Baghdad for defying the United Nations; sometimes the goal is nothing short of deposing Mr. Hussein. The first lesson of the Vietnam era was that Americans should not be sent to die for aims the country only vaguely understands and accepts. The second lesson of Vietnam was that the country should never enter into a conflict without a clear exit strategy. We have nothing close to a plan for how, once in Iraq, we get back out again. There are some threats and some causes that require fighting even if America has to fight alone, but this isn’t one of them. And the world—like the American public—is not yet really convinced that a Hussein-free Middle East is a goal worth fighting a war for.

The Times’ position was reinforced by the “mixed” inspectors’ report of late January, which added more fuel to the paper’s demand that they be given more time. By so doing, they ignored their twice-stated warning (12/6/02, 1/10/03) that, without the active cooperation of “knowledgeable Iraqis,” it would be impossible for the inspectors to fulfill their mission:

Their findings argue strongly for giving the inspectors more time to pursue their efforts and satisfy international opinion that every reasonable step has been taken to solve this problem peacefully. Blix . . . told the Security Council that he had not yet uncovered hard evidence that conclusively proved that Iraq is developing prohibited weapons. [1/28/03]

The inspectors’ “mixed” report led the Times to conclude that the case against Iraq was “largely circumstantial”:

Mr. Bush’s best argument is that Iraq most likely possesses biological and chemical weapons, in defiance of U.N. prohibitions and warnings of serious consequences. But even here the case seems largely circumstantial, based on unaccounted-for stocks of anthrax, nerve gas and other ingredients. The United States also says Iraq is trying to build nuclear bombs, a view not shared by U.N. inspectors. [2/2/03]

Secretary Powell at the U.N.

The Times praised both Powell’s presentation and Bush’s decision to have him present the administration’s case. However, for the first time, the editors claimed that “[t]he character of America is at issue as much as its military might. In so doing, they endorsed the point of view of the members of the Security Council they had harshly criticized:

Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the United Nations . . . yesterday with the most powerful case to date that Saddam Hussein stands in defiance of Security Council resolutions and has no intention of revealing or surrendering whatever unconventional weapons he may have . . . The manner in which the United States wields its great power, and the regard it gives to the views of other nations, are vital matters as a showdown with Iraq draws near. The character of America is at issue as much as its military might . . . President Bush’s decision to dispatch Mr. Powell to present the administration’s case before the Security Council showed a wise concern for international opinion. Since Mr. Bush’s own address to the U.N. last September, he has kept faith with his commitment to work through the Security Council. As the crisis builds, he should make every possible effort to let the council take the lead.

Powell’s UN appearance was followed by a series of editorials reiterating the need for international support and claiming that he had not shown that Saddam did not represent an imminent danger to America’s vital interests:

An operation so complex, fateful and potentially bloody as an invasion of Iraq requires the broadest international approval. It simply cannot be perceived as ‘’America’s war.’’ However serious the crimes of Mr. Hussein, we do not find that the administration has made a compelling case that he poses an immediate danger to the vital interests of the United States [2/13/03] . . . The potential consequences of war with Iraq are far too serious to take on without broad international and domestic support [2/18/03] . . . Mr. Bush has repeatedly warned that the Security Council will become irrelevant if it does not come to grips with Iraq. He should not convert that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by turning America’s back on the Council. [2/19/03]

Although the paper had recently described the American case against Iraq as “largely circumstantial,” a February 18th editorial suggested otherwise. In their most hawkish editorial in months, the editors commented on still another inspectors’ report:

Just as they did last month, the inspectors offered a mixed picture that allowed all sides to draw sustenance for their arguments. What should not be missed is that the positive aspects of the reports dealt largely with secondary matters like process and access. On the essential issue of active Iraqi cooperation in the disclosure and destruction of prohibited unconventional weapons, the inspectors could find little encouraging to say . . . Mr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei cannot be left to play games of hide-and-seek . . . There is ample evidence that Iraq has produced highly toxic VX nerve gas and anthrax and has the capacity to produce a lot more. It has concealed these materials, lied about them, and more recently failed to account for them to the current inspectors. The Security Council doesn’t need to sit through more months of inconclusive reports. It needs full and immediate Iraqi disarmament. It needs to say so, backed by the threat of military force.

Five days later, they added this:

Iraq has drawn the United Nations into a game of find the handkerchief, in which the burden is on the inspectors to track down mobile laboratories or sniff out hidden weapons. All this puts an enormous weight on what Iraqi behavior Hans Blix, the chief U.N. inspector, chooses to stress . . . The inspectors should never be put in the position of deciding international foreign policy.

The previous day, the Times praised Bush for his efficacious diplomacy, issued a call to the U.N. to “enforce its own orders and make Iraq disarm, even if that required force,” and admitted that the U.S. might have to decide whether it should do the job on its own. The Times continued to be worried about the consequences of unilateral action:

If America acts virtually on its own, it is hard to imagine either the Bush administration or the American people having the staying power to make things right . . . An invasion of Iraq that is not supported by many traditional allies, or those powers that we need to be allied with in the best possible future, will send a message that we can do whatever we want. But it is not going to make the rest of the world want to root for us to succeed. The real test of American leadership is only incidentally about Iraq. It is whether we will further split the world into squabbling camps, united only by their jealousy of our power, or use our influence to unite it around a shared vision of progress, human rights and mutual responsibility.

Meanwhile, the editors hurled invectives at France:

France must cease acting as if the real problem were to contain the United States. The Europeans and the United Nations must recognize that Saddam Hussein does pose a clear and present danger to the peaceful international order that the United Nations purports to protect [2/13/03] . . . The Security Council, as we said the other day, needs to pass a new resolution that sets a deadline for unconditional Iraqi compliance and authorizes military action if Baghdad falls short. Without that, the French proposal that Mr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei report again in mid-March is the diplomatic equivalent of treading water. It practically invites President Bush to take the undesirable step of going to war without the support of the Security Council . . . One of the most frustrating aspects of Friday’s Security Council session was the implication by France’s foreign minister, Dominque de Villepin, that inspections were already working, and given enough time could successfully disarm Iraq without further coercive diplomacy. What this conveniently forgets is that without the coercive diplomacy of the past few months there would now be no inspections at all . . . [2/18/03] . . . As long as France, Russia and China balk at military action and a majority of other Council members hang back, Baghdad will continue to dance around the U.N.’s disarmament orders. [2/19/03] . . . Any lingering confusion about the fault line in the United Nations Security Council was erased yesterday by new American and French initiatives on Iraq. The United States wants a new resolution reaffirming the conclusion that Iraq has failed to disarm, effectively opening the way to a war sanctioned by the U.N. France, supported by Germany and Russia, prefers to give Hans Blix and his inspectors more time to see if they can disarm Iraq. The American resolution, introduced by Britain, deserves the Security Council’s support. [2/25/03]

The Straw That Broke the Times’ Back

In early March 2003, the UN weapons inspectors released what was to be their final report. Although the editors had recently said that “inspectors should never be put in the position of deciding international foreign policy,” they give great weight to this report, which emphasized improved Iraqi cooperation and contradicted claims of the Bush administration:

The main message from Hans Blix was that Iraqi cooperation has increased in recent days and weeks, and that Iraq has begun to move beyond access and procedural questions to the actual destruction of prohibited weapons, notably the bulldozing of missiles that exceed the range permitted by the United Nations. On the crucial question of nuclear weapons . . . Mohamed ElBaradei, went further, saying that so far he had found no evidence that Iraq had restarted the nuclear weapons programs it had been forced to abandon more than a decade ago. He also reported that claims made by Washington and others that Iraq had recently made illegal purchases of uranium and prohibited nuclear components had been investigated and found to be unsubstantiated. [3/8/03]

By the next day, the Times had concluded that the report was “devastating” to the American position and argued that it lent support to the call for an extension of inspections:

Even though Hans Blix . . . said that Saddam Hussein was not in complete compliance with United Nations orders to disarm, the report of the inspectors on Friday was generally devastating to the American position. They not only argued that progress was being made, they also discounted the idea that Iraq was actively attempting to manufacture nuclear weapons. History shows that inspectors can be misled, and that Mr. Hussein can never be trusted to disarm and stay disarmed on his own accord. But a far larger and more aggressive inspection program . . . could keep a permanent lid on Iraq’s weapons program.

That same day, the editors came out with an unambiguous declaration of opposition to a unilateral American invasion:

If it comes down to a question of yes or no to invasion without broad international support, our answer is no . . . There are circumstances under which the president would have to act militarily no matter what the Security Council said. If America was attacked, we would have to respond swiftly and fiercely. But despite endless efforts by the Bush administration to connect Iraq to Sept. 11, the evidence simply isn’t there. The administration has demonstrated that Iraq had members of Al Qaeda living within its borders, but that same accusation could be lodged against any number of American allies in the region . . . The second argument the Bush administration cites for invading Iraq is its refusal to obey U.N. orders that it disarm. That’s a good reason, but not when the U.N. itself believes disarmament is occurring and the weapons inspections can be made to work. If the United States ignores the Security Council and attacks on its own, the first victim in the conflict will be the United Nations itself. The whole scenario calls to mind that Vietnam-era catch phrase about how we had to destroy a village in order to save it . . . [Bush] obviously intends to go ahead [with the invasion] . . .The fact that the United Nations might be irreparably weakened would not much bother his conservative political base at home, nor would the outcry abroad. But in the long run, this country needs a strong international body to keep the peace and defuse tension in a dozen different potential crisis points around the world. It needs the support of its allies, particularly embattled states like Pakistan, to fight the war on terror. And it needs to demonstrate by example that there are certain rules that everybody has to follow, one of the most important of which is that you do not invade another country for any but the most compelling of reasons.

The Times didn’t reserve its criticism for the Bush administration:

With yesterday’s barely veiled French and Russian threat to veto a war resolution, the United Nations Security Council appears to be rapidly approaching a crippling deadlock over Iraq. That would be the worst of all possible outcomes. It would lift the diplomatic pressure on Iraq to disarm and sever the few remaining restraints that have kept the Bush administration from going to war with its motley ad hoc coalition of allies . . . the French helped create the current either-or standoff with their intransigence earlier on. After uniting with other nations behind Resolution 1441, the French sank into a position of intransigent opposition that made the current impasse almost inevitable . . . The French and the Russians are not the only ones who brought us to this point. [3/6/03]

As war neared, the Times took off its gloves, disparaging the Bush administration’s diplomacy that it had recently praised:

[T]he Bush administration’s erratic and often inept diplomacy has made matters immeasurably worse. By repeatedly switching its goals from disarmament to regime change to broadly transforming the Middle East, and its arguments from weapons to Al Qaeda to human rights, the White House made many countries more worried about America’s motives than Iraq’s weapons. Public arm-twisting of allies like Turkey and Mexico backfired, as did repeated sniping at Hans Blix . . . [3/16/03]

France’s diplomacy didn’t escape notice:

France has created enormous problems through its unwillingness to back up inspections with tight deadlines and a credible threat of force. [3/16/03]

On the day before the commencement of hostilities, the Times issued its final plea for ending the rush to war and a U.S.-authored resolution that would lead to “disarmament and consensus”:

This page remains persuaded of the vital need to disarm Iraq. But it is a process that should go through the United Nations. That is in the best interest both of the United States and of the U.N. With so few of the 14 other members of the Security Council convinced that war is the best immediate option, Washington would be wise to drop the talk of imminent hostilities and come up with a resolution that leads to disarmament and consensus. The current path is reckless. [3/17/03]

With the war underway, the Times turned all of its verbal guns on Bush, citing the abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol, the withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, the abrogation of the ABM Treaty, the expansion of NATO, the “stepping-back” from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the split in the Atlantic Alliance, and the “estrangement” of China:

Allies have been devalued and military force overvalued . . . This war crowns a period of terrible diplomatic failure . . . The hubris and mistakes that contributed to America’s current isolation began long before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. From the administration’s first days, it turned away from internationalism and the concerns of its European allies by abandoning the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdrawing America’s signature from the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. Russia was bluntly told to accept America’s withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the territory of the former Soviet Union. In the Middle East, Washington shortsightedly stepped backed from the worsening spiral of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, ignoring the pleas of Arab, Muslim and European countries. If other nations resist American leadership today, part of the reason lies in this unhappy history. The Atlantic alliance is now more deeply riven than at any time since its creation more than a half-century ago. A promising new era of cooperation with a democratizing Russia has been put at risk. China, whose constructive incorporation into global affairs is crucial to the peace of this century, has been needlessly estranged. Governments across the Muslim world, whose cooperation is so vital to the war against terrorism, are now warily navigating between popular anger and American power.