Why do conservative commentators (among whom I place Anne, although she might disagree) persist in minimizing Bush's respnonsibllity?

Bush, and by extension America, is not unpopular because of a few inadvertent mistakes (who doesn't make mistakes, every now and then?), but because he has consistently made bad policy decisions, and stuck with them.

The granddaddy of them all, the Iraq war, was not a "blunder". It was a deliberate (but disastrous, of course) series of policy decisions.

One of the earliest was to blow off the rest of the world.

This aggressive unilateralism is a bad idea, but it is not a "blunder". It is central to Bush's foreign policy, even today. Indeed, the missile defence system is an example. As with the Iraq war, he has convinced a few governments to go along despite political opposition in the countries themselves. The reason that Blair, Berlusconi and, especially, Aznar are no longer with us is because the Iraq war was always deeply unpopular in Britain, Italy, and Spain.

On another point, why is Anne so sure that the missle defence is not aimed at Russia? "Star wars" was conceived to stop ballistic missles, which are well out of the reach of even the best financed terrorists or rogue states (but, wait, Russia has them). And terrorists and rogue states are some way from being able to target Europe, as distinct from, say, Israel or the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.

While the proposed European system falls well short of Reagan's "star wars" dreams (what doesn't?), they are part of the program, are located to stop Russia (not Iran), and, Russia might well argue, are the first step in constructing the system as originally imagined.

Perhaps, and this is my guess, Anne simply believes Bush when he says it is not aimed at Russia. She is one of those simple people who never learns.

"The reason that Blair, Berlusconi and, especially, Aznar are no longer with us is because the Iraq war was always deeply unpopular in Britain, Italy, and Spain."

Er, no.

Blair left office of his own free will after having won a post-Iraq general election. Aznar paid the price for his handling of the al-Qaida attack in Madrid (polls showed that he would have won the election had it not be for this). Berlusconi is a crook.

Saying that, I find it hilarious that having for years dismissed the pro-Iraq coalition as the US + a few joke countries, people like you now seek to elevate men like Aznar to key status. The truth is that Europe's governments have become more pro-US since Iraq, particularly those of France and Germany.

There is a simple reason for this. Intelligent Americans and Europeans realise that both have an interest in preserving the supply of oil from the Mid East. They have also realised that military dictatorship, once a common form of government, is no longer viable in a globalised economy. These two realisations explain why leaving Saddam Hussein in charge of the Mid East's most unstable country was liable to threaten our supply of oil, and that he needed to be replaced.

You should pay more attention to world affairs.

True, Blair was getting long in the tooth, so to speak, and was due for retirement. But, there can be no doubt that the war was his greatest political blunder (maybe his only one), had steadily weakened his position (even, or especially) in his own party, and made his departure before the next election a certainty.

True, Berlusconi is a shady gentleman, and the balance of power in Italy is, as usual, very delicate. His support for the war, and Bush more generally, helped tip that balance.

Aznar is, of course, the clearest case. It was not, precisely, the attacks that caused him to lose the election, but rather his handling of those attacks. Specifically, he blamed ETA rather than al Qaida. Why? Because he thought that an al Qaida attack would crystalize opposition to the war, dooming his chances. And, he was right. When the truth quickly emerged, he was swept away.

Apart from being easily amused, you misread the Europeans. First, they have never been especially anti-American (except the French, who love Americans and American things but are concerned about their relative decline in power). They are anti-Bush, and like the rest of us they are now trying to quietly wait out the last 600 days of Bush.

I agree with you except for one thing ; the French are not really concerned about their relative decline in power.

During the several debates I had about last elections whith my family, work colleagues and friends, that issue never came up, it just does not interests us.

As Elaine Sciolino writes about the debate over the election in France in the NYT “At times, the candidates seemed like they were more in a local race than vying for the presidency of a nuclear power with the sixth-largest economy. Iraq and France’s relationship with the United States, for example, never came up. Domestic issues, like the wisdom of the 35-hour workweek, public spending for the police and hospitals, and fighting crime took up much more time than France’s place in the world.”

Being European myself (whatever that means) I wish you were right about that last point. However, read "Anti-Americanism" by Jean-Francois Revel and you would change your mind.

When people describe Iraq as a mistake of Blair's they fail to assess what would have happened to him had he left the US to it and signed up with the "Axis of Weasel".

Blair's electoral success depended not on wooing his Labour party's traditional left-wing working-class support. It depended on stealing middle-class, centre-right voters. In other words, the people who would have deserted him in droves if he appeared to be lining up with fading European social democrats against the US over Iraq. The powerful Murdoch media would also have crucified him.

71 % of the French had a positive opinion of the Americans in 2002

In 2004 that number had fallen to 53 %

The rating of the United State as a country felt from 63 % positive opinion in 2002 to 37 % in 2004, European publics still draw a clear distinction between the U.S. as a nation and the American people (the Pew research Center)

Fair enough, in that the presidential election was not about France's position in the world. I would argue that this is because all political parties agree on this point: France deserves a prominent position.

I don't think the French (unlike the British, who obsessed on the question for two generations) even realize how their aspirations appear to the rest of the world: their obvious desire to make Europe into a greater France, the public insistance on "multi-polar" (read, European superpower, but see previous point) world, promotion of la Francophonie, the insistance on French in international organizations (even though nobody much speaks French anymore).

I would argue that the French are so concerned about their loss of influence, that they hardly realize it. The attitude just seems normal to them.

For the record, I like the French and France. I lived there for several years (in Paris, which may not be the same thing as France). It was a great opportunity to live in a great, great place. I would recommend it to anybody. I did not find the French to be rude, overbearing, or any of those other things that Americans typically attribute to them.

While I bow to your Europeanness (and judging by your pseudonym, Englishness), I think Blair could have easily sat out the Iraq war, and would certainly have been more popular for it. After all, not even the middle Englishers, who you correctly say were his target audience, ever much favored the war.

It remains, however, puzzling (to me) why he chose otherwise. Principle is one answer, but I do not find it very satisfying. He had little opposition, since the Tories also favored the war, so maybe he judged (wrongly, I think--but you may be right) that joining in was the least politically risky course of action. We now know from various leaks that it was not about WMDs, despite the infamous 75 (or however many) minutes. Still, I am puzzled.