Dean has a huge foreign policy speech up on his site. Most of the speech is good stuff, but where he tries to draw distinction with Bush, he seems to not be seeing the same things I see:

Working more effectively with the UN, other institutions, and our friends and allies would have been a far better approach to the situation in Iraq.

Of course it would have, but when France, Germany, Russia and China don't cooperate, there isn't much we can do except go it alone, or scrap the idea and keep trying. This is a recurring theme in Dean's speech. The US should rely more on traditional alliances, and less on coalitions of the willing.

I agree, until our traditional allies don't share common goals with us anymore. We haven't been allies with Britian/France/etc because we liked eachother's food for all these years - we had common goals, common enemies. I don't think we have those things in common with some countries anymore and as such their cooperation isn't going to be as forthcoming as it traditionally has.

It is the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt insisting that human rights are not the entitlement of some, but the birthright of all.

I assume he includes the Iraqis in that sentiment. But how do you get other countries to oust Saddam with you to achieve the goal of human rights in Iraq when other countries do not share that goal. Here's what some of our traditional allies have done:

From the Telegraph, Not Dean...the new Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin, is worth quoting. "This shouldn't be just about who gets contracts," he said. "It ought to be about what is the best thing for the people of Iraq."

Good point. The best thing for the people of Iraq was to get rid of Saddam, and back in the spring Mr Martin didn't want to be a part of that. The best thing for the people of Iraq, according to Mr Martin and , and Herr Schroder and M de Villepin, was that Saddam should be allowed to go on killing and torturing them for another decade or three. Reasonable people are prone to reasonableness, and the reasonable thing to do is, invariably, nothing.

Thats why they wouldn't join us in ousting Saddam - many of our traditional allies simply do not share out current goals and enemies. Dean realized this back before he was a Presidential candidate.

From the Washington Post: Though Dean has repeatedly criticized Bush for failing to win international support for the Iraq war, for instance, in June 1998 he defended Clinton's bombing of Iraq by arguing on the Canadian program, "I don't think we could have built an international coalition to invade or have a substantial bombing of Saddam."

During another 1998 appearance on the show, "The Editors," Dean said it was not worth trying to woo French support on foreign policy initiatives. "The French will always do exactly the opposite on what the United States wants regardless of what happens, so we're never going to have a consistent policy," he said.

I think those excerpts speak for themselves. Dean also had a paragraph in his speech that just seemed odd.

There is a global struggle underway between peace-loving Muslims and this radical minority that seeks to hijack Islam for selfish and violent aims, that exploits resentment to persuade that murder is martyrdom, and hatred is somehow God's will.

I don't see this struggle being played out anywhere. I see the peace-loving Muslims largely ignoring the radicals among them. And the struggle is between the radicals and the 'West', not other Muslims.

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