PORTO, Portugal More than nine months into the Iraq crisis, meetings between West Europeans and Americans of goodwill remain strained nondialogues in which most of the American participants find it hard to admit that the catastrophic loss of America's reputation abroad has anything to do with them.
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But every nation has a story - a narrative it tells to explain its place in the flow of history and to give meaning to its actions. The American story since 1942 (and before) is well known, and is considered by Americans and others a story reflecting responsibility and high-mindedness.
Despite aberrations in Vietnam and Latin America, the American story of responsible world leadership has been accepted among democracies as an essentially valid account of the role modern America played during the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The problem today is that, in the view of many others, the story has changed. Another one has taken its place, even though most Americans deny that this is so.
Because of the powerful Calvinist influence - predestinarian and theocratic - in American Protestantism, the American story has always described a confrontation between the Elect and the Evil.
When the Soviet Union no longer fulfilled the latter role, Washington tried out several possible successors, finally settling on "rogue nations" - those professing radically un- American ideas and that give evidence of wanting to possess nuclear deterrents.
Their feebleness, however, tended to diminish their credibility when cast in the role of global Evil.
Then came Sept. 11, and the problem was solved. The rogue nations now became the Axis of Evil. They were integral to a vast international threat, capable of striking the United States itself. Moreover, this threat more or less resembled (less, actually, than more) the clash between civilizations that Samuel Huntington had warned would be the "next world war."
Americans declared that "everything has changed, and nothing can be the same." The nation was at war with "terror."
Terror expressed itself through Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Palestinian suicide-bombers, South American narco- terrorists, Chechen separatists and Moro separatists in the southern Philippines. Terror was a ubiquitous force that could ultimately manifest itself in weapons of mass destruction, supplied by the rogue states.
Hence, preventive wars were necessary; Afghanistan and Iraq had to be invaded to seize terror's leaders and their nuclear and biological weapons. International law must step aside.
But what actually has happened during the past nine months is something Americans have yet to grasp, and that others have yet to say out loud: People outside the United States have stopped believing the American story.
They don't think terrorism is an Evil force the United States is going to defeat. They say instead that terrorism is a way people wage war when they don't have F-16's or armored divisions.
They say that Chechens, Moros, Taliban, Colombian insurgents, Palestinian bombers and Iraqi enemies of the U.S. occupation do not really make up a single global phenomenon that the world must mobilize to defeat.
They say that, actually, they had never really believed the American story in the first place. They had listened to it because Washington said it, and they respected Washington. Now they don't.
This is the reason why there is trouble between the United States and the countries that have been its allies. And this is why it may indeed prove true that between them, things "will never be the same."
Years ago, I was asked to write a speech for President Nixon.
I didn't do that, but I wish President Bush would ask me to write a speech for him now.
Here's what I'd write if he asked me to - which is unlikely:
My fellow Americans - (the word "fellow" includes women in political speeches):
My fellow Americans. One of the reasons we invaded Iraq was because I suggested Saddam Hussein had something to do with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. No evidence that's so, I wish I hadn't said it.
I said we were going to get Saddam Hussein. To be honest, we don't know whether we got him or not. Probably not.
I said we'd get Osama bin Laden and wipe out al Qaeda. We haven't been able to do that, either. I'm as disappointed as you are.
I probably shouldn't have said Iraq had nuclear weapons. Our guys and the U.N. have looked under every bed in Iraq and can't find one.
In one speech, I told you Saddam Hussein tried to buy the makings of nuclear bombs from Africa. That was a mistake and I wish I hadn't said that. I get bad information sometimes just like you do.
On May 1, I declared major combat was over and gave you the impression the war was over. I shouldn't have declared that. Since then, 215 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq. As the person who sent them there, how terrible do you think that makes me feel?
I promised to leave no child behind when it comes to education. Then I asked for an additional $87 billion for Iraq. It has to come from somewhere. I hope the kids aren't going to have to pay for it - now in school or later when they're your age.
When I landed on the deck of the carrier, I wish they hadn't put up the sign saying MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. It isn't accomplished.
Maybe it should have been MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.
I've made some mistakes and I regret it. Let me just read you excerpts from something my father wrote five years ago in his book, “A World Transformed.”
I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad ...To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant, into a latter-day Arab hero …
This is my father writing this.
...assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war.
We should all take our father's advice.
That's the speech I'd write for President Bush. No charge.
