Column: Bush's Bold New Vision

As we pursue mostly unidentified evildoers in accord with the bold new vision of the “Bush Doctrine,” let us pause to review our successes. The list is most impressive.

We have killed perhaps hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children. But the Pentagon is dreadfully sorry, so that figure really isn’t as bad as it seems.

We have liquidated maybe and exactly one senior member of Al Qaeda, whose majority membership is housed pretty much anywhere but Afghanistan.

With the same precise military thinking that guides some of our missiles, we are air-dropping 35,000 daily meals to feed 6,000,000 starving Afghans.

We have managed to achieve the impossible with respect to Osama bin Laden’s reputation in the Islamic world. It’s better than ever.

We are rapidly moving nuclear-weapon-owning Pakistan into the hands of radical Islamists, which, on the other hand, poses exciting new challenges for a billion bored Indians.

As I said, the list is most impressive. And these are just our foreign policy accomplishments. Domestically we have done every bit as well. First, the attorney general appears to be brushing up on Germany’s Enabling Act of 1933, which of course was a godsend for all, as we now know. Second, what began as a bioterrorist threat has transmogrified instead into a splendid public-health awareness program, teaching the value of knowing and hoarding your antibiotics. Third, we have made a profound scientific discovery: wrestling coaches who enter politics lose their--and I’ll mask this in French so as not to offend anyone--testicules.

Still, some regard these achievements as dubious, especially those evolving before our eyes in the field of foreign policy. The Bush Doctrine is said to have supplanted for good the Powell Doctrine, which grew out of the lessons of Vietnam. In other words, rashness has supplanted patience, and the probable endless commitment of American forces overseas has supplanted campaign lectures on the indispensability of “well-defined” exit strategies. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confirmed in a New York Times’ editorial, “Forget about ‘exit strategies’--we’re looking at a sustained engagement that carries no deadlines.”

Yet whether any given White House has an exit strategy or not, there is always the stickler of an entry strategy. Immediate post-September 11th appearances were that Bush was mindful of campaign rhetoric; that he held actual, determined principles on resolving international conflicts; and had hired Colin Powell for more than merely a name. Our entry strategy would be measured, thoughtful, and militarily restrained. So much for that malarkey. But I must give Bush credit, for he is, in fact, being happily consistent. He pitched that campaign promise as he has virtually everything else he said in 2000. And just think, if Bush were still on drugs and booze, he might on occasion seem a trifle self-conflicted--a sure sign of poor leadership.

There were, or are, better ways, though the “are” is slipping away further each day. To begin with, there is absolutely no doubt throughout most of the world that root problems giving rise and succor to the terrorist mentality must be addressed. Not tomorrow but today, diplomatically speaking. I’m referring principally, of course, to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The United States--because of all it has invested politically, economically, diplomatically--must announce enough is enough. If the peace must be imposed by an international coalition with the U.S. leading the way, then so be it. The current struggle kills more and more Palestinians, more and more Israelis, ceaselessly--and now it’s taking its toll on Americans at home.

The Islamic world justly regards Israel’s illegal military occupation and settlement of Palestinian territory--and all the slaughter that has come with them--as immoral and terroristic. They recall, for instance, the 1982 massacre of 700-800 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon, for which then Defense Minister and current Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was implicated by his own government. They likewise regard the United States’ tolerance of such acts to be an abetment of state-supported terrorism. That is a stubborn fact; one that contributes to Islamic hatred of the United States and breeds sympathy for an otherwise-detested bin Laden.

Israelis will not be secure until their government is made to end its policy of occupation and a Palestinian state is established with all the rights of self-determination. For roughly two and a half decades the international consensus has been that of a two-state settlement based on pre-1967 boundaries, with guarantees of security for both nations, both peoples. The United States must join world consensus. The solution won’t be an easy one for many Israelis to swallow, but there’s no way around the truth that it must come. The alternative is lethal for all concerned.

Many Islamists also regard U.S. sanctions against Iraq as merely a prolonged ravagement of civilians and, paradoxically, as supportive of Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime. Sanctions that starve the innocent while serving up a whipping boy for Hussein are sanctions that should be lifted. To so much of the Islamic world, this is yet another issue of fundamental morality, with America on the wrong side of it. Islamists can’t figure out why we can’t figure that out. (Nor can they forget the U.S. militarily supported Hussein in the 1980s, all the way through his chemical warfare against the Kurdish minority.) If we are to change our reputation as a regional bully, we should stop starving women and children. Again, refusing to do so only feeds Islamic passions and a sympathetic view of extremists.

Additionally, the United States needs to halt its verbal war against the establishment of the International Criminal Court. Its mission will be the prosecution of individuals charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Our opposition to it has again made us an ideological outcast from the world, whose 43 of the necessary 60 ratifying nations include our best friends and allies. Continued opposition--in the face of concurrent calls for bringing the criminals of September 11th to justice--only serves to enhance our image in the Islamic world and elsewhere as a defiant and incorrigible child who doesn’t play well with others, always insisting on his own way or no way.

These beginnings toward peace, regional stability, international cooperation, and a much-needed international make-over are not leftist policy proposals. Nor are they properly liberal, partisan, anti-Israel, unpatriotic, or any of the other garbage that is routinely and reflexively thrown in their face. They are, as many people and more every day believe, simply steps in the right direction for protecting American interests as well as those of the world.

P. M. Carpenter is a writer, student of history, and professional artist. His artwork site is: http://www.geocities.com/pmcarpen2000.