President George W. Bush until last week seemed to be riding high on his foreign policy, at least domestically. He had, after all, led the nation in winning two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But with the flap over his now controversial State of the Union speech and the nearly daily reports of American soldiers becoming casualties in Iraq, support for his foreign policy may be flagging.

In the speech, Bush claimed that Iraq attempted to get uranium from Africa for its nuclear weapons program. Observers across the world believe that the U.S. administration used this claim as part of its justification for the assault on Iraq. Some foreign policy critics, with an eye to next year's presidential elections, believe that Iraq has the potential to hurt Bush's re-election campaign.

With no clear Democratic contender yet singled out of the pack of hopefuls in the nascent election campaign, some opponents see opposition to Bush's foreign policy as the rallying point to deny him a second term.

"The public is going to have to start the parade and a candidate is going to have to hurry up and get in front of it," said William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute, referring to Democratic contenders.

"People are asking me what to do?" Hartung told United Press International in an interview at the United Nations where he was attending a UNICEF forum last week.

"I tell them, 'Anything.'"

Hartung, a member of the WPI's Foreign Policy in Focus, a self-described "think tank without walls," is also director of the Arms Trade Resource Center,

"Should I be sending out emails every morning?" Hartung asked, answering his own query with an emphatic, "Yes, at the grass roots level. That's where it counts. There's no sense in crying to my friends in New York and California."

However, he later admitted the two coasts were the places he would seek financial backing, especially in New York City.

As an example of garnering support, he said that grassroots reach-out was what he counseled a friend, teaching law courses at a small Midwest college, who wanted to do something about U.S. foreign policy.

"We've created a spectator sport of politics. Not in the stars, but of ourselves," said Hartung, bemoaning the lack of activism against Bush's foreign policy. "Bush should be concerned with home front defense rather than taking down governments with tenuous ties to al-Qaida.

"The people who stand up to him are the people who have their own power base, like the French," he said. "They have the courage of their conviction," a clear reference to President Jacques Chirac's threat to veto a "second resolution" that would have authorized military action against Iraq.

Hartung, writing in "Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy after Sept. 11," edited by John Feffer and published by Seven Stories Press, said, "Contrary to his own campaign pledge to be more 'humble' in pursuit of U.S. global interests, George W. Bush has adopted an aggressive unilateralist foreign policy that reflects unbridled imperial attitudes not seen since the peak period of direct U.S. interventionism in Latin America in the early decades of the 20th century.

"But this time around, the overriding U.S. policy objective is to establish dominance on a global rather than a regional scale, and it is being pursued in a nuclear-armed world in which uncheck escalation or military miscalculation could lead to unprecedented destruction," he said in the book, sponsored by Foreign Policy in Focus.

Hartung described himself as a "Progressive democrat."

However, at a seminar in the New School University held last month in connection with the launch of Feffer's book, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, who endorsed Hartung's remarks, said she has trouble with labels.

Vanden Heuvel said she has heard several times recently that, "What used to be called liberal is now called radical. What used to be called radical is now called insane. What used to be called reactionary is now called moderate. What used to be called insane is now called solid neo-conservative thinking," a reference to Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, the so-called "neo-cons."

At that same session, Hartung issued his rallying cry against Bush foreign policy.

After his own introduction, Hartung, who also questioned labels, said, "Republican, Democrat, socialist or communist. I really don't care. All I know is that this current crowd in Washington is really outside the main stream of what America is supposed to stand for and I'm not going to stand for it and I don't think New York is going to stand for it.

"When they come to our city and try to use us as a photo opportunity, I don't think any of us is going to stand for it," he said, referring to next year's national Republican convention to be held in New York. However, he saw it as a possible source of funding to unseat Bush because of his foreign policy.

With a twinkle in his eye as he speculated, Hartung mused, "I'll bet a lot of Democratic landlords donated to the fund to get the Republican convention here. We could hit them up for a tithe. So, 10 percent of a $500,000 contribution is a nice piece of change."

Hartung said he participated in two anti-Iraq war protests recently, the Feb. 15 anti-war demonstration in New York and the subsequent march down Broadway by hundreds of thousands of people in connection with similar marches in a dozen or so capitals around the world.

"Two anti-war demonstrations even before a war began," he said. "That has to say something about how people oppose his foreign policy."

In a chapter of the book Feffer wrote with Miriam Pemberton, a research fellow at IPS and Peace and Security editor of FPIF, they said, "The United States has been suffering gradual hearing loss for some time.

"The louder the world raises its objections, the more deafly the United States soldiers on," they said. "The historical moment created by the Sept. 11 (2001) attacks could have accomplished a minor medical miracle by restoring to the United States the ability to hear.

"In fact, the American government and the American people gratefully listened to the expressions of sympathy that came pouring from around the world and were surprised to hear from some unexpected quarters such as Libya's (leader) Muammar Qaddafi and Cuba's (President) Fidel Castro," Feffer and Pemberton said. "But the restoration of hearing was only partial. Our leaders still could not hear why so much of the world is unhappy with U.S. foreign policy."

Hartung and his like-minded fellows hope recent events will be a hearing aid to their cause.