PEACE THROUGH VAGUENESS?

Jeff Jacoby, an isle of clarity at the Boston Globe, writes a stern piece decrying the death of the Bush Doctrine, a passing announced by Condi Rice, who seems to have been Carterized in her pursuit of Mideast "peace."  As Jacoby notes, President Bush once conditioned progress toward a Palestinian state on the end of Palestinian terror.  Since the terror didn't end, we just adjusted things.  Why, it's no different than having the sleeves shortened.  Jacoby writes:

Thus the president who once insisted that a "Palestinian state will never be created by terror" now insists that a Palestinian state be created regardless of terror. Once the Bush administration championed a "road map" whose first and foremost requirement was that the Palestinians "declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism" and shut down "all official . . . incitement against Israel." Now the administration says that Palestinian terrorism and incitement are nothing "to get hung up on."

And he properly asks:

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?

What happened was that the Bush 41 philosophers pushed out the Bush 43's.  Condi Rice is a Bush 41 graduate, and she's loyal to alma mater.

The issue goes far beyond the Arab-Israeli conflict.  If the United States is to have credibility, if its policies are to lead to genuine peace, it cannot simply create standards, then abandon them to the trendiness of the diplomats' dining room, no matter what is on the menu.  The firmness shown in Bush's first term, which enraged all the right people, has melted into niceties.  There are the occasional flourishes, but the punch is gone. 

Some people ridicule those who remind us of the lessons of the 1930s.  But our victory in the Cold War was based largely on learning those lessons.  Now, they are being forgotten.

The centrifuges spin in Iran.  The Iranians have just tested a new missile.  It's a commonplace that nothing important in international affairs occurs during American presidential campaigns.  The players are waiting and watch.  But the commonplace is wrong.  Science happens.  Technology happens.  And there's always a result.

Posted on January 17, 2008.