Edwards to Criticize Bush Foreign Policy

Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), who has been one of the most outspoken supporters of military action against Iraq, will today distance himself from the administration with a speech in which he accuses President Bush of conducting a foreign policy of "arrogance without purpose" that is marked by "gratuitous unilateralism."

Edwards, a prospective 2004 presidential candidate, also will call for the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency to supplant the work of the FBI, a change that he argues would do a better job of protecting domestic security while providing greater protections for civil liberties during the war on terrorism.

Edwards is a sponsor of an administration-backed resolution in the Senate authorizing Bush to go to war against Iraq, but in today's speech he will condemn the administration for treating U.S. allies with contempt, for seeing military action as a "first resort" and for confusing leadership with wanting to go it alone.

"Instead of demonstrating 'purpose without arrogance' as the president promised in his inaugural address, the administration's foreign policy projects the opposite: arrogance without purpose," Edwards says in a draft of the speech that was made available to The Washington Post yesterday. "We seem determined to act alone for the sake of acting alone, which may be the easy way to achieve our short-term ends, but will never result in long-term security."

Edwards will deliver the speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies a few hours before Bush speaks to the nation about the threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Edwards, along with two other possible presidential candidates, House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), the Democrats' 2000 vice presidential nominee, has been among the strongest allies in Bush's effort to gain congressional authorization for military action against Iraq, even if the United Nations balks.

But the bulk of his prepared remarks focuses on sharp differences with the administration's overall approach to foreign policy. He challenges Bush's newly enunciated doctrine of preemption, arguing that it has been "damaging and distracting" to the administration's effort to rally international support for a war against Iraq.