- WASHINGTON (AFP) -- The United
States would now be safer and more popular overseas had Al Gore instead
of George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election, former secretary
of state Madeleine Albright said in remarks published yesterday.
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- Albright, who served with the ex-vice president in former
president Bill Clinton's administration, said the Bush administration had
needlessly antagonised many US allies by going to war with Iraq despite
heated opposition in Europe and the Muslim world.
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- By ignoring or trivialising their concerns, Albright
said Bush had squandered the well-spring of international sympathy for
and goodwill toward the United States that followed the September 11, 2001
terrorist attacks.
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- In an opinion piece published in the September/October
2003 issue of the scholarly journal Foreign Affairs, Albright also accused
the Bush administration of blundering by invading Iraq before Afghanistan
was truly stabilised, Osama bin Laden had been caught and his al-Qaeda
network smashed.
-
- "I remain convinced that had Al Gore been elected
president, and had the attacks of September 11 still happened, the United
States and NATO would have gone to war in Afghanistan together, then deployed
forces all around that country and stayed to rebuild it," she wrote.
-
- "Democrats, after all, confess support for nation
building, and also believe in finishing the jobs we start," Albright
said in a not-too-subtle jibe at the Republican Bush's campaign pledges
not to use US troops to bolster new democracies abroad.
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- "I also believe the United States and NATO together
would have remained focused on fighting al-Qaeda and would not have pretended
- and certainly would not have been allowed to get away with pretending
- that the ongoing failure to capture Osama bin Laden did not matter,"
she said.
-
- While Albright said she understood the need to take on
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for his repeated violations of UN disarmament
resolutions, she stressed the threat posed by Baghdad was not as immediate
or dire as Bush had maintained.
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- Gore, she said, would have acted more appropriately.
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- "As for Saddam, I believe the Gore team would have
read the intelligence information about his activities differently and
concluded that a war against Iraq, although justifiable, was not essential
in the short term to protect US security," Albright wrote.
-
- "A policy of containment would have been sufficient
while the administration pursued the criminals who had murdered thousands
on American soil," she said.
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- "The Bush administration's decision to broaden its
focus from opposing al-Qaeda to invading Iraq and threatening military
action against others has had unintended and unwelcome consequences,"
Albright said.
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- These consequences include growing international popular
resentment of the United States, particularly in the Arab world, and increasingly
strained relations with the governments of long-time allies like France
and Germany, she said.
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- Despite her complaints, particularly of Bush's black-and-white
declaration that countries were either "with" the United States
or "against" it in the global war on terrorism and his preference
for a policy of "pre-emption", Albright said there was still
hope for his administration.
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- "It is late, but not too late, for the Bush administration
to adjust its course," she said.
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- "It has already shed some of its more optimistic
illusions about Iraq, pledged presidential involvement in the Middle East,
mended some fences with Europe and reduced the level of self-congratulation
in its official pronouncements," Albright said.
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