Bush and chaos in the world

"The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter." UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, (Sept. 2004)
"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.” George W. Bush, (June 18, 2002, speech)
"I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history." George A. Akerlof, 2001 Nobel Prize laureate in economics, (July 29, 2003)
Coincidence or not, things started to go bad internationally soon after George W. Bush squeezed into power in January 2001, with the help of a one-member majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Days after his inauguration, the new president began uttering incendiary statements, seemingly designed to provoke the Muslim world, but also to bully America's allies.
Contrary to previous American presidents who tried to maintain at least the appearance of neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Bush chose instead to put his foot in his mouth by proclaiming his overt partiality: "We're going to correct the imbalances from the previous administration on the Mideast conflict. We're going to tilt it back toward Israel. And we're going to be consistent."
Then Bush declared his contempt for international treaties and for international law, joking smart-aleckly that his lawyer, future Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "didn't bring that up to me." Moreover, he proceeded to cancel unilaterally decades-old treaties and conventions.

To what extent the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11 were in response to Bush's provocations, we will probably never know. One thing is certain, however, and it is that they surely did not help.

The U.N.-sanctioned 2001 attacks against the al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan were accepted by the rest of the world as a necessary military mission to extirpate the virus of Islamist terrorism. Such was not the case with the unprovoked 2003 war against Iraq. There were no Islamist terrorists in Iraq before George W. Bush decided on his own to invade and occupy that country militarily.

It was all too clear that the balkanization of Iraq was part of George W. Bush's larger (neocon) agenda. By invading Iraq illegally and by destroying its government, the Bush-Cheney administration knew perfectly well that such a foreign intervention would precipitate a civil war between the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds, and bring forth a nationalist reaction.

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