US has lost 'moral authority'

2007-02-23 12:34

Walter Putnam

Atlanta - Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright said that the United States has lost its moral authority through the war in Iraq, and it will be up to the next US president to restore the "goodness of American power".

"I think that Iraq is going to go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy," Albright said on Thursday, with former president Jimmy Carter at her side in one of a series of "Conversations at the Carter Centre".

"We have lost the element of goodness in American power, and we have lost our moral authority," she said.

"The job of the next president will be to restore the goodness of American power."

Albright, who was part of Carter's national security team in the 1970s, long before she was the US ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of state under former president Bill Clinton, said many Americans believe that they should be loved around the world.

"We don't have to be loved," she said. "But we shouldn't be feared. We should be respected."

Carter, who also has been critical of US military action in Iraq, said that since Albright was secretary of state, "there has been a reduction almost all over the world in trust and esteem by foreigners toward Americans".

He said much of it is "because of an unprecedented policy toward the utilisation of military power".

Carter said all previous presidents have said the United States would go to war only if its security was endangered, but that President George W Bush made it clear that there is a new policy of pre-emptive war.

He said the "unwarranted invasion" of Iraq resulted in bombing that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

- AP