UBER TEXAN MOLLY IVINS
How to fix this mess: Reader suggestions
for reversing Bush's worst ideas

We opened Arms and the Man earlier this evening, and from all reports, to borrow a phrase from the band Ween, the show is tighter than Steely Dan's butthole. That is, we're pretty darned good. More on that tomorrow. Right now, I'm a bit drunk and a lot tired. In the meantime, read this Molly Ivins essay.

From Working for Change:

The colossal ineptitude of Bush's diplomacy, if it can be called that, leading up to the Iraq war was somewhere between ludicrous and nuts. Bullying, bribing, threatening -- and these were our allies. The insanity of our approach to Turkey, one of America's oldest democratic allies in the Middle East, is textbook -- to be studied in international relations schools for years. In the name of bringing democracy to Iraq (actually, at the time we never mentioned that as a reason), we threatened to end it in Turkey. Good grief.

The administration's open contempt for the United Nations did us incalculable damage. It wasn't just the ugly, clumsy pre-war "diplomacy," but the petty, vindictive attempts at revenge afterward against those who were right all along. Trying to get Mohammad ElBaradei fired as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency -- how small and wrong. Making John Bolton ambassador to the United Nations -- oh, please.

So, a lot of cleanup is needed. Cards and letters (well, OK, e-mails) have rolled in from the Beloved Readers. We are getting gems daily. People are full of dandy ideas about how to fix this mess -- any and all parts of this mess -- but the foreign policy suggestions are especially interesting.

Click here for the rest.

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