April 21, 2002
CALL OFF THE DOGS, GEORGE'S STUMBLED INTO THE TRUTH, ONCE AGAIN :
Back on Track? ( Robert Kagan & William Kristol, 04/29/2002, Weekly Standard)Why were we worried about Secretary of State Colin Powell's trip to the Middle East? After all, for one crucial week, Powell ended up providing diplomatic cover for an ongoing Israeli military operation that has made significant strides against the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian territories. Powell kept the Europeans and Arabs and the American media bedazzled, or at least confused, while Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon carried out difficult operations against Nablus and Jenin and other hotbeds of radical terrorism, arresting hundreds of known terrorists and uncovering mountains of weaponry and suicide-bomb-making paraphernalia. When Powell left the region last week, Israeli forces remained entrenched in Ramallah and in Bethlehem, with significant forces poised on the outskirts of most other major Palestinian towns and refugee camps. Yasser Arafat remained under house arrest, with no prospects for release any time soon.Yes, we understand that helping Israel fight its war was not exactly the point of Secretary Powell's trip. Nor, unfortunately, was this President Bush's intention when he ordered Israel to stop and withdraw two weeks ago, saying "enough is enough." But Sharon saved the Bush administration from itself by not listening. More specifically, he saved the president from his advisers, who over the past month have behaved as amateurs in this moment of high stakes diplomacy. We'd love to know which of the president's top foreign policy advisers assured him that Sharon would obey a command to withdraw, and thereby set up Bush for his weakest moment since September 11.
Now it appears the president is following his own instincts again. Once Powell had returned, Bush swung back behind Israel, declaring Sharon a "man of peace," and implicitly endorsed the continued confinement of Arafat and the continued military occupation of Ramallah and other Palestinian areas. While praising Sharon, the president returned to his condemnation of Palestinian terrorism, blaming the Arab states and Yasser Arafat for doing too little--actually, nothing--to stop it. After four weeks of moral and strategic confusion that threatened real damage to American interests, the president seems to have found his way out of the wilderness. He has rediscovered the Bush doctrine.
On the original McLaughlin Group, with Pat Buchanan, Jack Germond, Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke,
John McLaughlin had Mort speak last all the time and then would say : Mort, you've stumbled into the truth once again. Of course, the key to the schtick was that Mort is a conservative Democrat and McLaughlin a moderate Republican, so they agreed on most issues. Mort would periodically protest that it couldn't be stumbling if he got there every time, but to no avail.
Mr. Kristol and Mr. Kagan have developed a variation on this routine, with George W. Bush cast in the role of Mort. Every few weeks they announce that Mr. Bush has abandoned everything he's ever believed in and is about to abandon the war on terror or lose in Afghanistan or stab Israel in the back. Then a few weeks later, when Mr. Bush achieves the end that they had sought, but which they'd apparently not understood him to be working towards, they portray him as having been either sideswiped by reality or compelled by the brilliance of their arguments and forced back to the proper policy. Of course, the difference between a leader and a follower is that the leader is trying to bring as many people as possible along with
him, so he sometimes has to compromise or seem to. Followers, on the other hand, can maintain ideological purity, regardless of whether that actually advances the cause or not. These followers might do well to note that, for all his perceived "stumbling", their leader keeps mysteriously getting them where they want to go.