I saw Colin Powell speak at a black church here in Atlanta. He was well-spoken but I came away with nothing of substance from his talk except about how he had come up through the military and for many black people, this must be inspiring.
However, he is a military man. For this, he has to believe in military solutions to problems. He parts company with Schwartzkoff and other military minds but is consistent with his mind-set. The problem we have today is that a military solution is a prescription for disaster regarding Iraq. No one will win. Democracy will not be instituted in Iraq mainly because the people don't want it. They may not want Saddam either but democracy can't be forced down anyone's throat. What we really need are effective cultural anthropologists to help our country understand other cultures and how they operate. It's a high context problem that attempts to be solved by low context thinking. The US administration doesn't understand Iraq. It is operating on a WWII mentality of "good guys versus Hitler" when that's anachronistic and inapplicable to present day geo-politics.
No one is looking at Assad of Syria, Iran (do we really know much about that country?) or what is going on in Afghanistan, being run by war lords. North Korea? The US is not talking to them. How can this present adminstration be trusted to have any credible position on the Middle East? The distinctions between say the Sunni and the Shi'ites would be lost in the Bush "Middle East policy". The prescription given as a military solution is adding fire to a burning building.
The United Nations is not perfect but is our only hope. Without it we have nothing to keep countries from going at it for what ever political reason they may have this week. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is just another military organization.
France and Germany I believe should be complimented for their restraint. They've been through world wars and know something that naive Americans haven't been able to fathom yet.
William "Tecumseh" Sherman said it best, "War is hell".