A costly excursion

David Frum lists the costs of President Bush’s decision to go to United Nations rather than initiating military action at the end of last year. He finds them to be considerable and suggests that they far outweigh the speculative benefit cited by Andrew Sullivan — the creation of some goodwill as a result of our efforts. Frum does acknowledge another incidental benefit of our U.N. excursion, the discrediting of France. As I have said before, this, along with the discrediting of the U.N. itself, is a quite a substantial benefit, provided that we have actually learned our lesson. Nonetheless, like Frum I wish that Bush had bypassed the U.N.