'Le Monde' Editorial: 'Bush's Mistakes'

By: "We are all Americans," France's Le Monde newspaper proclaimed on Sept. 12, 2001, speaking for millions worldwide in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States. Five years later, the respected daily carried a very different message Monday: Its lead editorial was titled "Bush's Mistakes."

The paper's assessment five years ago reflected a collective shock and sympathy felt in France and many nations that has given way to a much more complex view of the United States since then, particularly after the war in Iraq.

In its issue Monday, Le Monde called the war in Afghanistan a "relative" success and the war in Iraq "a major error" based on false pretenses.

"Since Sept. 11, America has not, it's true, been attacked on its territory, but the world has changed for the worse," it wrote.

"The goal remains to destroy al-Qaida and delegitimize its ideology. But the task is substantially tougher. In five years, the United States has pushed the world toward the clash of civilizations al-Qaida had wanted."

While France was rallying opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq in 2003, the writer responsible for Le Monde's sympathetic Sept. 11 piece excoriated what he called American hypocrisy.

"Saddam is certainly monstrous, but he is the same monster that the United States admirably accommodated for so long," Executive Editor Jean-Marie Colombani wrote at the time in 2003.

Swiss newspaper Le Temps had a harsh update Monday to Le Monde's 2001 headline. "Europe has long stopped saying, 'We are all Americans.' In London you can read, 'We're all Hezbollah.'"