The Coalition of the Willing Expected A Plan

Last week, I was in Eastern Europe and Southwestern Asia (if that's where Armenia and Georgia reside) with Howard Dean. We were very well received everywhere, at very high levels. In Budapest, capital of a formerly major contributor to the Coalition of the Willing (I think they had 100 or so drivers in Iraq), a senior advisor to the opposition party, which is conservative, expressed her shock to me that Bush and his team do not have a plan to get out of Iraq. She seemed incredulous to the point of utter disbelief that the leader of the most powerful nation on earth could get into a complicated place like Iraq and have no clue how to get out.

So when we think about that coalition, think that not only has the U.S. lost enormous prestige abroad, but most notably, we have lost credibility, which is very hard to rebuild. By now, most of us in this country have accepted that Bush got into Iraq based solely on ideology rather than sound defense or planning. It's dawning on some of our allies, especially those who fought for decades under Soviet oppression to follow the beacon of American democracy, that Washington is lost in space somewhere and that following a blind, arrogant giant is worse than trodding a separate path. When we really need help for ANYTHING, where will the willing be?