Posted on 08/14/2006 6:46:49 PM PDT by elhombrelibre
In recent months, we have been bombarded with reports of the death of the Bush Doctrine. Of course, there have been many such reports since the doctrine was first promulgated at the start of what I persist in calling World War IV (the cold war being World War III). Almost all of them were written by the realists and liberal internationalists within the old foreign-policy establishment, and they all turned out to resemble the reports of Mark Twain’s death—which, he famously said, had been “greatly exaggerated.” Nothing daunted by this, the critics and enemies of Bush are now at it yet again. This time, however, their ranks have been swollen by a number of traditional conservatives who were never comfortable with the doctrine bearing his name and who have now moved from discomfort to outright opposition.
But what is genuinely new, and more surprising, is the entry into this picture of a significant number of my fellow neoconservatives. As the Bush Doctrine’s greatest enthusiasts, they would be much happier if they could go on pointing to signs of life, but so disillusioned have they become that a British journalist can say that, to them, “the words ‘Rice’ and ‘Bush’ have all but become the Beltway equivalent of barnyard expletives.” No wonder that they have now taken to composing obituary notices of their own.
Are we then to conclude that the latest reports of the death of the Bush Doctrine are not “greatly,” if indeed at all, exaggerated, and that it has at long last really been put to rest?
So misrepresented has the Bush Doctrine been that the only way to begin answering that question is to remind ourselves of what it actually says (and does not say); and the best way to do that...
(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...
No, it just started.
Sorry to disagree, but it appears to be an ex-doctrine.
The Bush Doctrine lives as long as there is Islamofascism.
It is good vs evil.
"I must confess to being puzzled by the amazing spread of the idea that the Bush Doctrine has indeed failed the test of Iraq. After all, Iraq has been liberated from one of the worst tyrants in the Middle East; three elections have been held; a decent constitution has been written; a government is in place; and previously unimaginable liberties are being enjoyed. By what bizarre calculus does all this add up to failure? And by what even stranger logic is failure to be read into the fact that the forces opposed to democratization are fighting back with all their might?"
You may disagree. But that assumes that we have given up in our installation of allied democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that we are not going to confront Iran or Syria.
I recommend you read the article.
"Yet not even this is enough to satisfy a devoted friend of Israel like Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy. In “Cross Hairs” (New York Sun, August 1, 2006), Gaffney looks at the diplomatic maneuvering of the Bush administration in buying the Israelis more time and translates it into an insistence that they “negotiate with and try to appease [Islamofascist totalitarians] when they are in the Islamofascists’ cross hairs.” But this interpretation simply ignores the steadfastness of Bush and his people in refusing, against enormous pressure, to endorse a cease-fire except under the very conditions that the Israelis themselves proposed. Nor does Gaffney seem to notice that Bush was tacitly encouraging the Israelis to use the additional time he was buying them to be more, not less, aggressive in the fight against Hizballah. On this point, Shmuel Rosner, the Washington correspondent of the liberal Israeli daily Ha’aretz, asks and answers the right question: ..."
"Robert Kagan—a neoconservative who has not given up on Bush—puts this well in describing the negotiations as “giving futility its chance.” Kagan also entertains the possibility that the negotiations are not merely a ploy on Bush’s part, and that his “ideal outcome really would be a diplomatic solution in which Iran voluntarily and verifiably abandoned its [nuclear] program.” However that may be, once having played out the diplomatic string, Bush will be in a strong political position to say, along with Senator John McCain, that the only thing worse than bombing Iran would be allowing Iran to build a nuclear bomb—and not just to endorse that assessment but to act on it."
—August 7, 2006
Israel will be hard pressed to start up almost no matter what Hezbollah does and certainly if it just rearms- forget disarms.
I believe this cease fire at this very inopportune time reversed any good the Bush Doctrine ever accomplished.
Don't blame Bush for Israel's failure. He was giving them all the time they needed until he realized that Israel's leadership didn't have what it takes.
Let me preface my remarks by stating that I am 110% pro-Israel.
Now, Israel, being a sovereign nation, did not have to agree to or accept the cease fire. Are you implying that Israel is at the beck and call of the U.S.?
Israel's failure in Lebanon and Bush's failure at the UN are separate failures each deserving of blame.
I doubt Bush would appreciate if there was a higher authority who decided that the Iraq war ends tomorrow because Bush has not come to a satisfactory conclusion after three plus years.
Yes. When the US votes for a Security Counsel resolution it is an offer Israel can't refuse.
Why can't they refuse?
I doubt Israel asked for more time. My guess is that Israel wanted to limit the body count, and decided that plan B would stop the rockets for the forseeable future, and that Hezbollah rearming would now violate a UN resolution, and give it a longer leash in the future, if such is the case. One can criticize that, but then it is not our relatives at risk.
Lets look at this time and place.
The US is looking to get a UN resolution regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions.
If Israel refused to obey a UN resolution, the US would be forced to impose sanctions on Israel or render any such resolutions empty of purpose and meaning and they become an empty and useless gesture towards Iran.
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