We underestimate President Bush at our peril, Harvard Professor of Human Rights, Michael Ignatieff, tells Deaglán de Bréadún.
Michael Ignatieff is surprised. After delivering the annual Amnesty International lecture at Trinity College Dublin, the Canadian human rights expert and Harvard professor admits he was taken aback by the "waves of anti-American and anti-Bush feeling in an Irish audience".
It surprised him because he had "some naïve idea" that, because of emigration and other historical factors, the Irish were naturally the most pro-American constituency in Europe.
He knew the Americans were having difficulties on this side of the Atlantic, but believes they are really in trouble if they are in trouble in Dublin.
He detects a loathing and contempt for Mr Bush's style and personality, but believes the Irish and other Europeans are making "a fatal mistake" by underestimating the President.
"Bush is a major-league politician . . . He has wiped the floor with everybody in American politics," says Ignatieff.
Bush's success is partly due to his skill at "a kind of political cross-dressing". The President "passes himself as a plainspoken man of the people when he is the scion of one of the biggest East Coast dynasties in the history of American politics".
He stresses that it's not a partisan view: "I don't like him, I would not vote for him, but I'm saying Europe underestimates Bush at its peril."
Nevertheless he admits that, if Bush were about to invade Iraq right now, he would plead with him: "George, don't do it!" Ignatieff was one of The Liberals Who Supported The War, and now he's sorry.
As Professor of Human Rights at the Kennedy School of Government, broadcaster, columnist, adviser to the United Nations and author of many books, Ignatieff is a leading international intellectual who would not normally find himself on the same side of an issue as George Bush.
He says his backing for the invasion was based on Saddam's human rights abuses and the issue of weapons of mass destruction.
"I don't think anybody who supported the war doesn't have regrets. The weapons haven't turned up, and my case was never solely a human rights case, it was human rights plus WMD.
"I didn't think you could justify a military operation in Iraq on human rights grounds alone," he continues. "If I knew what I know now, the war shouldn't have happened."
Another factor was the lack of post-invasion planning by the US. "From the beginning there was no post-conflict occupation planning, and they started it ludicrously too late.
"[ US General George] Marshall was planning for the occupation of Germany three years before Germany capitulated. That's leadership."
Then, of course, there is the backlash on the ground in Iraq.
"I think everybody from the President on down has been stunned by the extent and viciousness of the insurgency," he said.
It was a serious US intelligence failure not to foresee that Saddam's supporters would play what boxers call "Rope-a-Dope", falling back on the ropes in the face of the initial American onslaught and bouncing back when the time came.
"Fighting an insurgency is very, very tough, and that's what drove the Americans into Abu Ghraib. They panicked, faced with the insurgency, and thought they had to increase their intelligence product and then they began letting the dogs loose on these people and that made it even worse, because they began to lose even more Iraqi hearts and minds."
The crucial issue, as he sees it, is the morale of the Iraqi government forces.
"Are there enough Iraqis on the other side, prepared to die fighting the insurgents? That's the only question that really matters here. We don't know the answer," he said.
The new administration in Baghdad must be supported, although he has strong reservations about the current Prime Minister and his background.
"Allawi is a very dubious character with CIA links. He will be very, very tough. Not the greatest democrat in the world, but I think he's better than Saddam by a country mile."
So what will the Bush administration do to get out of this mess?
"I think they will try and cut and run, through late 2005, early 2006, because they don't want to go into congressional elections in 2006 with this still hanging on."
He believes the Iraq experience has shown the restrictions on America's role in today's world.
"This is yet another demonstration of the decisive limits of American power, its inability to impose its will, to plan, to execute and to control the historical destiny of Iraq."
Nor does he expect the January 30th elections to solve anything.
"The President has to whistle past the graveyard, because he's the President, but I think the administration and the military are full of doubts about this. Behind the bravado there's a sense that the election may make things worse.
"Democratic elections often do. They don't build legitimacy, they just give everybody something to fight about and fight over."
The ideal solution to Iraq and similar global security problems would be a reformed and enlarged UN Security Council which would regulate and legitimise the use of force by majority vote in such conflicts, and where nobody would have a veto.
In such a situation, the Canadians could supply troops "or the Irish, if they weren't so damned neutral".
As Ignatieff sees it, Ireland cannot continue living on the past international achievements of Mary Robinson: "You want to be a country that continually steps up to the plate when difficult stuff has to be done internationally."
On the Irish precondition for a UN mandate, he takes the view that this means: "You never go anywhere there is genuine controversy and genuine risk".
Michael Ignatieff is credited with coining the phrase "Empire Lite" to describe the American approach to policing the world.
"The Americans want to do everything on the cheap internationally, and that's the problem."