In Britain, there are few people who think particularly highly of George W. Bush. Of those who do, many of those are people who supported the war in Iraq and the broader 'War on Terror' and are convinced that, whatever his failings, Bush is the best man to see that task through. I'd be surprised, however, if there are many of them left.

There has been much written on the subject of Iraq, which I will not repeat here (though I will recommend a recent guest blog piece on the subject). What worries me most now is the larger geopolitical situation; that, far from making us all safer, the Iraq war and the mishandling of its aftermath has left us all in greater danger, facing larger problems on the international stage.

Yesterday's piece in the Washington Post (found via QandO - their take is well worth reading) reported on a document which reveals the scale of strategic blundering in the US global strategy. It begins:

Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table -- including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.

But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran, former administration officials said.

Read that again: 'full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups'. And, in their infinite overconfidence, the Bush administration turned that deal down. I am genuinely unable to understand why; those terms are better than the ones being sought, with great difficult, by the current US negotiating team. This is what puzzles me: did Bush expect to get a better deal? We all know that Middle East intelligence has been flawed, but were the US administration so deluded as to believe that the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse?

In refusing the offer, they broke a cardinal rule of negotiation: always bargain from a position of strength. At their strongest point, having toppled Saddam in a matter of days, the US should have been able to agree a very favourable settlment with Iran. Instead, they rejected the Iranian offer and thus gave the Iranians time to regroup and plan. In that meantime, Iran elected Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man whose political career largely depends on his defiance of the US. A deal would have strengthened the moderate factions in Iran, it would have shown that peaceful negotiation provided a way forward. By rejecting a good offer, the US signalled that peaceful negotiation achieves nothing.

I take no pleasure in the irony that, were such a deal offered today, it would be trumpeted as a gigantic success. Regrettably, the idea now seems to be beyond the bounds of possibility; we're unlike to see another such offer for perhaps a generation. When historians come to consider this, they will probably wonder, just as I do: what was Bush thinking?