Wizblog

Bush The Radical

Can George Bush be a "neocon" and a progressive at the same time? Daniel Pipes suggests that his candor, clarity, and radicalism in matters of foreign policy are becoming his trademark, the rule as opposed to the exception.

"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe."

This sentence, spoken last week by George W. Bush, is about the most jaw-dropping repudiation of an established bipartisan policy ever made by a US president.

Not only does it break with a policy the US government has pursued since first becoming a major player in the Middle East, but the speech is audacious in ambition, grounded in history, and programmatically specific. It's the sort of challenge to existing ways one expects to hear from a columnist, essayist, or scholar – not from the leader of a great power...

..."this gamble is typical of a president exceptionally willing to take risks to shake up the status quo.

But it's risky, as Pipes admits:

Washington was rightly apprehensive that democracy would bring in more radicalized governments; this is what did happen in Iran in 1979 and nearly happened in Algeria in 1992....

...Bush's confidence in democracy – that despite the street's history of extremism and conspiracy-mindedness, it can mature and become a force of moderation and stability – is about to be tested.

So is it a good idea? Count Martin Kramer among the "doubters". Reflecting what might be called the "be careful what you ask for" school, Kramer warns:

A lot of the press coverage compares the President's idealism to Ronald Reagan's.... Frankly, the President's speech reminded me more of Jimmy Carter's human rights idealism, with its heavy overtones of missionary purpose. At the end of the day, Carter's human rights diplomacy in the Middle East undermined only one regime: the Shah's. The result was not a net gain for human rights or U.S. interests.

Andrew Sullivan echos Pipes on Bush's radicalism, and seems relieved that Bush still sees the "big picture":

The odd cruise missile strike; diplomatic initiatives to failed despots; appeasement of terror; and acquiescence in Euro-cynicism about the Arab potential for democracy - all these were made moot by 9/11. They were no longer viable options. We either aggressively engaged or we hunkered down and prayed that a calamity would not at some point strike us all. To its historic credit, the Bush administration resisted its own early isolationist impulses and took the high road. To their eternal shame, the French and Germans, the far rights, the far left, and many (but not all) of the Democrats opted for inaction or a replay of the failed policies of the past. What this president did was radical, progressive, risky....

...We are fighting for the defense of liberty in the world - again. And we are now trying to bring it to the one region and culture which has been untouched by it for so long: the Middle East...

...Islamism is a political ideology as dangerous and as evil as the totalitarianisms of he past century. It is abetted by tyranny; and requires a huge effort to defeat. What the president said yesterday was the first front in the task of spreading this message across the region...

...This isn't a replay of Vietnam. It's a replay of an earlier, nobler war that changed the world for the better. Those are still the stakes today. And we cannot let cynicism or partisanship prevent us from winning the fight.