TIMOTHY GARTEN ASH ON IRAQ

In the Guardian: "America on Probation" (via The War in Context). From the end:

There's a lot of talk these days about America's new empire. But the biggest danger is not American imperialism; it's American inconstancy. On the very day victory is declared, President Bush turns the spotlight back to tax cuts. His political adviser Karl Rove is presumably telling him that he'll never win the election on foreign policy.

And so Iraq fades from the screens. Like a wounded giant, America struck out after the September 11 attacks - first at al-Qaida in Aghanistan, then at Iraq. But soon, true to form, the wounded giant retreats to his distant home, muttering "It's the economy, stupid". The neoconservative ideologues of democratic imperialism, to whom we pay so much attention in Europe, are sidelined.

America has never been the Great Satan. It has sometimes been the Great Gatsby: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness..."

One of Britain's jobs as America's best friend, but a task also for all the Europeans gathered at the Acropolis yesterday, is to keep reminding Tom and Daisy that they now have promises to keep.

Only after these questions have been answered about American involvement in Iraq will it really be prudent to draw the lines in our moral and prudential calculations.