January 16, 2008
Adrift without a moral compass
President Bush is determined to throw away the few remaining scraps of his once easily-understood foreign policy: You're with us or you're with the terrorists.
Derided at the time as a laughably simple-minded view of the world, it nonetheless had a bracing impact on our friends and enemies. Strength is respected in international affairs, and Pres. Bush was taking a strong stand, forcing foreign governments to pick a side in the aftermath of 9/11.
But Bush has lost his way, ripping up his roadmap for peace in the Middle East, forcing the Israelis to accept that the Palestinians will no longer have to end terrorist attacks on the Jewish nation before receiving U.S. recognition, U.S. funds, and a wet, sloppy kiss from the State Department hacks -- up to and including the ever-so-disappointing Condoleezza Rice.
Jeff Jacoby said of the repulsive spectacle that is the U.S.-sponsored peace talks:
Whatever happened to the moral clarity that informed the president's worldview in the wake of 9/11? Whatever happened to the conviction that was at the core of the Bush Doctrine: that terrorists must be anathematized and defeated, and the fever-swamps that breed them drained and detoxified?
Bush's support for the creation of a Palestinian state was always misguided - rarely has a society shown itself less suited for sovereignty - but at least he made it clear that American support came at a stiff price: "The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state," Bush said in his landmark June 2002 speech on the Israeli-Arab conflict, "until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure." He reinforced that condition two years later, confirming in a letter to Ariel Sharon that "the Palestinian leadership must act decisively against terror, including sustained, targeted, and effective operations to stop terrorism and dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure."
Now that policy has gone by the boards, replaced by one less focused on achieving peace than on maintaining a "peace process." No doubt it is difficult, as Rice says, to "move forward on the peace process" when the Palestinian Authority glorifies suicide bombers and encourages a murderous goal of eliminating the Jewish state. If the Bush Doctrine - "with us or with the terrorists" - were still in force, the peace process would be shelved. The administration would be treating the Palestinians as pariahs, allowing them no assistance of any kind, much less movement toward statehood, so long as their encouragement of terrorism persisted.
But it is the Bush Doctrine that has been shelved. In its hunger for Arab support against Iran - and perhaps in a quest for a historic "legacy" - the administration has dropped "with us or with the terrorists." It is hellbent instead on bestowing statehood upon a regime that stands unequivocally with the terrorists. "Frankly, it's time for the establishment of a Palestinian state," Rice says.
When George W. Bush succeeded Bill Clinton, he was determined not to replicate his predecessor's blunders in the Middle East, a determination that intensified after 9/11. Yet now he too has succumbed to the messianism that leads US presidents to imagine they can resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Clinton's legacy in this arena was the second intifada, which drenched the region in blood. To what fresh hell will Bush's diplomacy lead?
It's the latest in a series of disappointments from a second-term Bush Administration that seems adrift, meandering aimlessly in its final months, seemingly intent on undoing any good that it had accomplished during the preceding 7 years.
It's hard to believe that Bush would fall prey to the same pie-in-the-sky optimism of Clinton and Carter, the belief that his legacy depended on a deal -- any deal -- being inked between the Israelis and the Arabs, no matter how terrible the terms.
It seems, however, that there's something in the water, something that dissolves the stiffest of spines, turns wise men into fools.
I'm sickened by the spectacle of U.S. diplomats sowing the seeds of more death and destruction, a bitter crop to be watered with my taxes, my friends and family in Israel forced to live -- and die -- with the consequences.
George Bush should be ashamed.
Posted by Mike Lief at January 16, 2008 11:21 PM
| TrackBack