It is -- but it isn't just -- the international relations professionals who are making an assessment now that the state of U.S. foreign affairs abroad at this moment is the worst that it has been since World War II.

		Dan Simpson, a retired U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com).

There have been other dark moments since 1945. The first was probably when the United States realized that, having finished with Nazi Germany, Japan and Italy, instead of coasting comfortably it was being challenged across the globe by communism. It came in Europe as Joseph Stalin, known during the war as the benign, pipe-smoking Uncle Joe, was causing the Soviet Union to challenge us across Eastern and Central Europe. It came in Asia when Chairman Mao's Chinese Communists turfed American ally Chiang Kai-shek off the mainland, to hole up on Taiwan.

But at that point, the United States not only had Western European allies uniting in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it also had the hope -- to some degree false in the event -- of the United Nations, founded in San Francisco in 1945.

There were other nasty shocks, when the Soviets got the bomb, and when they got to space first. The Cuban missile crisis was a close shave in many ways, but the United States was never alone. In fact, America was considered the armored champion of the free world, fending off the Soviets and the Chinese, even successfully playing them off against each other under the devious Henry Kissinger, backed by the even more devious Richard M. Nixon.

Vietnam was hard on Americans, our first loss, as opposed to our first non-win in Korea, but it was followed quickly by the beginning of the rollback of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, with Solidarity in Poland and skillful U.S. use of human rights as an issue in the Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe -- "Helsinki" -- to rattle the Soviets' nerves and cages in the late 1970s. All of that with allies.

Now, by comparison, the picture is -- in a word -- ghastly.

We are bogged down with 134,000 troops in Iraq and no foreseeable practical honorable way out. By the way, the creation of an Iraqi government that was announced with such rejoicing by the White House on Saturday is fraudulent. The Iraqis were unable to agree on either a defense, interior (police) or national security minister, the moral equivalent in government terms of building a car but not being able to agree on whether to power it with a 4-cylinder, 6-cylinder or V-8 engine or with pedals.

It is also becoming increasingly clear -- see, for example, recent New York Times accounts of failed U.S. attempts to train an effective Iraqi police force -- that U.S. government and defense contractor bungling and probably corruption are in no small part responsible for U.S. failures in Iraq.

Our allies -- the erstwhile "coalition of the willing" -- are peeling out of Iraq like fans leaving PNC Park when the Pirates are losing 8-2 and the fourth relief pitcher is throwing balls instead of strikes.

In Afghanistan, instead of U.S.-financed reconstruction and development making the difference that makes the Karzai government effective, American forces find themselves once again playing defense against a resurgent Taliban, backed by al-Qaida forces, their fighting skills hewn by combat with the insurgents against U.S. forces in Iraq.

It may be that the worst debacle of all -- worse because it is long-term and because it involves a country, Israel, that the United States has mentored and protected since its establishment in the wake of World War II -- is the situation in which the United States has put Israel in the Middle East.

Pushed by the war hawk neoconservatives in the Bush administration, the United States invaded Iraq, one of Israel's more vocal if ineffective enemies, with the idea that American military might would roll right over Saddam Hussein's regime there and then be in a position to take on two other of Israel's enemies, Iran and Syria. Instead, Americans' patience and resources now find themselves three years later pushed to the limit in Iraq; it is unclear now what Americans' response would be if, asked by President Bush, they were called upon to fight Iran for Israel.

In the meantime, to a degree egged on by a Bush administration that seems to have abandoned the "road map" to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians that it was advocating before the Iraq invasion, some Israelis seem to be pushing for a final solution to the Palestinian problem, worked out unilaterally, without benefit of negotiations with the Palestinians.

Negotiations have been rendered virtually impossible by the chaos among the Palestinians that developments in Gaza have produced. Could anyone imagine that Israel and the United States cutting off the Palestinian Authority's money could have any other result?

Fortunately, there are still some cool heads among the Israeli leadership who realize that no long-term, stable, peaceful solution is possible there without some sort of viable state for the millions of Palestinians. Without that, the problem doesn't go away. Things move -- walls go up, settlers are shifted around, "final boundaries" are declared -- but no durable settlement is arrived at. That is just plain tragic, for the Israelis, for the Palestinians and for the rest of us.

We can leave out the problems in other areas, including Vice President Cheney's gratuitously jabbing the Russians and the Bush administration's having put U.S.-Chinese relations in an impossible situation through catastrophic budget and trade deficits that make U.S. economic well-being dependent on Chinese loans.

At home we are told that the Senate is going to confirm as head of the CIA a military officer who thinks bugging Americans' communications outside the law is acceptable. We also notice the number of incumbent members of Congress of both parties who are apparently crooked growing with each morning newspaper we open.

This can only be described as an awful mess. The November elections might help, if they add new voices to the discussion. This situation is going to take a lot of smelling the coffee and flowers to get through in one piece.