War with Iraq loomed large as I was flying home to my district on February 6, reading glowing reports in the Washington Times of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations the day before.  Then, I turned the page and read these words from Canadian Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew: “I’m hearing a lot of things about the United States, . . . a lot of anti-Americanism, stronger than I’ve heard in the past, and that worries me a great deal.”  He made these remarks at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington.

Just a little over three weeks earlier, I had made my first visit to Australia, with a U.S. congressional delegation.  When I arrived on January 13, I opened that day’s Sydney Herald and found nine letters opposed to war with Iraq and none in favor.  Adam Lyons, for example, wrote: “When our [Australian] servicemen go overseas this time it will be with the clear interest to plunder Iraq.  It will not be to make the world a safer place; it will not be to protect a threatened nation.”  While I do not believe U.S. troops intend to plunder Iraq, this letter is typical of the depth of feeling in many other countries.

That same day, the Sydney Australian carried a column by Gabriel Kolko, research professor emeritus at York University in Toronto.  Professor Kolko wrote: “Things go wrong for every great nation whose ambitions exceed its power and reality, and the U.S. is no exception.”

During our stay in Australia, we met with the U.S. ambassador, a very nice man who once ran the Texas Rangers for a group of owners that included George W. Bush.  Our ambassador said that the Australian government was “ahead of the people” in supporting the war and that it was “very heavy lifting” and a “hard sell” for him and the Howard government to convince Australians to go along with it.

The nonpartisan National Journal mag-azine claimed, in its December 21, 2002, issue, that “signs of resistance to U.S. foreign policy leadership are growing, as is widespread resentment about the long shadow the American Goliath casts across the globe.”  Columnist William Schneider wrote: “Throughout the Middle East, anti-Americanism has grown along with U.S. influence.  So what has really changed in the Middle East since 1991?  The United States is in a stronger position strategically and a weaker position politically.  The lesson: Great power breeds great resentment.”

Even in South Korea, which the United States has defended for many years, anti-Americanism “deepens,” according to the Washington Post, and Newsweek wrote that “anti-U.S. protests have drawn thousands . . . ” On February 9, 60 Minutes ran a segment about this growing anti-American feeling in South Korea, saying that most South Koreans fear the United States more than they do North Korea, in spite of the fact that our taxpayers spend three billion dollars per year to “protect” them.

The National Journal article claimed that these anti-American sentiments are “deeply rooted and intensely held” through-out the world, even in Europe and South America.

I gain no pleasure from writing about anti-Americanism.  In fact, it is precisely because I love my country that I point out the problems that our interventionist foreign policy is causing for us around the world.

During his campaign, George W. Bush argued that the United States needs a more “humble” foreign policy.  I agree.  In recent years, U.S. taxpayers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on foreign countries, and no other nation has even come close to doing as much for others as ours has.

Why, then, do so many dislike us?  I believe it is because we have involved ourselves in far too many religious, ethnic, and political conflicts around the globe.  We gave money to Saddam Hussein in the 1980’s and Osama bin Laden in the 90’s.  And we ended up fighting people we had supported in the former Yugoslavia.

President Eisenhower warned us many years ago about the military-industrial complex.  He would be shocked by how far we have gone down that path.

Many multinational corporations promote a hawkish foreign policy through donations to think tanks and elected officials and payments to lobbyists.  They reap huge profits even during—or, perhaps, especially during—unnecessary wars.

Now, as Chris Matthews said on Hardball, the American people are being “herded into war” against Iraq.  Iraq is a third-rate power whose total military budget is approximately $1.4 billion, less than three tenths of one percent of ours.  Her manpower and weaponry is less than 40 percent of what it was at the time of the first Gulf War, when her troops surrendered to camera crews or anyone else who would take them.

A swift U.S. victory is about as certain as anything can be.  However, the Congressional Budget Office has warned that even a short war followed by a five-year occupation will cost American taxpayers $272 billion.  And, even if Hussein backs down, we have already spent billions mov-ing troops, planes, ships, and equipment into the region.

Those who favor this war have conducted a masterful p.r. campaign to convince the American public that the only ones who oppose it are peacenik leftists.  In a White House briefing, however, I told National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet that conservatives have traditionally opposed the notion that the United States should be the world’s policeman and have been against huge deficit spending.

It is also a traditional conservative belief that it is unfair to the U.S. taxpayers and to our servicemen to require them to carry almost the entire burden of enforcing U.N. resolutions.

Charley Reese, whom C-SPAN viewers selected as their favorite columnist, may have summed it up best when he wrote that a U.S. attack on Iraq “is a prescription for the decline and fall of the American empire.  Overextension—urged on by a bunch of rabid intellectuals who wouldn’t know one end of a gun from another—has doomed many an empire.  Just let the United States try to occupy the Middle East, which will be the practical result of a war against Iraq, and Americans will be bled dry by the costs both in blood and treasure.”