If George W. Bush respects world public opinion, he will not wage war on Iraq without the authorization of the United Nations, because most people in the world's most populous countries - China, India, Russia, Indonesia and Japan - do not support such a war.
This is because, after all, the victims of wars are the ordinary people. This is attested to by the suffering of the Chinese people in numerous wars in modern history.
The US is hard put to find a reason to convince the rest of the world that a war is necessary today. Its excuses for invading Iraq remind me of nothing more than a Chinese saying: If you are out to condemn somebody, you can always trump up a charge.
Iraq has never used weapons of mass destruction against the US, nor threatened to. Its use of chemical weapons in wars with Iran in the 1980s was not even condemned by the US. In fact, the US supplied information to Iraq at that time to fight the Iranians.
The excuse for a regime change is also absurd. According to US standards, many governments in the world should be changed because they are "repressive, not democratic, do not meet US standards and do not believe what George W. Bush believes."
If Bush could make a valid case for Iraq, he could also make such a case for at least the other countries he labelled as being members of the "axis of evil" and, possibly, two dozen other countries around the world.
But what Bush should know is that it is not up to the US, but the people of their own countries, to decide what type of government they live under.
Some Americans, like George W. Bush, always believe that the rest of the world should become more like Americans. They are not aware that despite the popularity of Hollywood movies, McDonald's and Starbucks, Asians will still be Asians and Chinese will still be Chinese.
While many countries dare not speak up today against the only superpower, backed by its mighty military, there is no need to deny that the US is a bully in the eyes of many Chinese because it often pursues "power politics" and behaves as a "privileged" member of the international community, not showing much respect for the United Nations and the rest of the world and not treating others as equals.
Its unilateralism and double standards in handling international affairs can hardly make people believe it always acts in the interests of the whole world, not just for itself.
No wonder that even the latest public opinion poll in Britain showed that the US is the biggest threat to peace, despite Tony Blair being a zealous Bush fan.
In Mao Zedong's days, we considered the whole of Western Europe as a "running dog" of American imperialism and not doing their own thinking. But today, it's exciting to see that Germany, France and Belgium dare to make their own voices heard.
I am not a fan of Saddam Hussein, but neither am I a fan of the cowboy who threatens war every day (despite the fact that I have been considered pro-American in my office).
