Japan is willing to forgive Iraq’s debt to it, if other creditors are willing to do the same. In all the complaints about Bush’s unilateralism, it has gone unremarked that he has a wonderful relationship with Prime Minister Koizumi. Japan is an important country and a crucial ally, but its support for the Iraq intervention has rendered it invisible to all the multilateralist critics of Bush. For them, only the “allies” that oppose us are important. Meanwhile, James Baker seems to be doing a fantastic job on the debt-relief front. Maybe Bush should keep him on as a permanent roving ambassador to advocate for the administration’s positions abroad, since it often seems difficult for Bush to get that kind of work out of the State Department.