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Posted on 11/17/2001 2:59:00 PM PST by Pokey78

With amazing swiftness and surprising finality, the enemy caved in last week. I refer not to the Taliban but to the chattering classes — especially its left-liberal sections. Never before in the field of human conflict have so many armchair generals been exposed as idiots in such a short period of time.

They will not learn, of course. The Guardian and other liberal organs will move on — barely pausing for breath — to attack the “naive” president and his “gung ho” aides. But the sudden turn in the war surely suggests that another reassessment is due: not simply of the war but of George W Bush.

Simply put: the success of this war so far is incompatible with the image of the president so beloved of the press corps in America and Britain. Let’s take the teetering clichés, one by one.

First, the notion that Bush is a unilateralist cowboy; that he shoots from the hip and knows nothing about diplomacy.

Everything since September 11 shows the contrary. There was no sudden lashing out. There was an elaborate attempt to build a coalition. There was a slow and steady build-up of forces, and an orchestrated message for domestic and foreign consumption.

The critical allies in this were somewhat unlikely ones for a Texas cowboy: a new Labour prime minister, a Pakistani dictator, a Russian president. Yet each piece was carefully assembled, and manipulated for maximum effect. If this is what cowboys do, then the Wild West is a deeply civilised place.

The second cliché is that Bush is controlled by his aides, a puppet without his own ideas, agenda or strategy. Vice-president Dick Cheney was the appointed eminence grise. But Cheney has receded from view these past few weeks. If you look at Bush’s team, you will see that it has a variety of wings and interests, each of which can only act with the president’s approval.

There is Cheney, who remains central, but there is also Colin Powell, whose alleged estrangement from the president is overblown. Powell (and his supporters in the National Security Council and the State Department) has clearly had a voice in strategy.

It was Powell who in the past month cautioned against too heavy a reliance on the Northern Alliance. Bush agreed. It was Powell who brought Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf into the coalition. Bush signed on. It was Powell who went on diplomatic missions to say soothing things to scared Arab dictators; Powell and Musharraf who persuaded Bush last weekend to say that he did not want the Northern Alliance to enter Kabul.

On the other side, you have Cheney’s chum, Donald Rumsfeld, the indefatigable and hilariously frank defence secretary. Rumsfeld has been a consistent supporter of decisive military action, of war as an instrument of diplomacy. As the days went by, and diplomacy failed to marshal a new Afghan government in advance of victory, Rumsfeld gained the upper hand. Since the lightning success of the past week, his hand has strengthened.

But Powell is still in play. The State Department is now warning of the need to ensure that the Northern Alliance plays a “very subordinate role” in any future post-Taliban Afghan government. The diplomats are worried about Pakistan’s stability. Rumsfeld’s people, on the other hand, are still complaining about the State Department. “What you’re seeing now is the same (State Department) hand-wringing that held up the bombing,” a senior administration official complained to the hawkish New Republic last week.

And who decides between these camps? The president, of course. This is the first president to have a business degree and he knows what management is. He doesn’t regard Powell as a “wet”. He regards him as an important part of the hand of cards he has to play. Depending on circumstances, Bush sides with one camp, then the other. He plays these various voices like an expert fiddler. Unlike his father, he keeps both hawks and doves inside the tent.

He gave diplomacy a chance two weeks ago, and tried micro-managing the war with Powell’s help. Then he let slip the dogs of war. Bush has also been amazingly disciplined — about work, but also rest. Unlike Tony Blair, whose workaholism has made him look close to collapse, Bush has delegated and prepared himself for a long, long campaign. He’s still on the treadmill for up to an hour a day and gets to bed by 9.30pm. The only thing that is non-negotiable is the destruction of global terrorism.

The third cliché about Bush is that he is an ingenue, muddling his way through matters he doesn’t understand. True, Bush didn’t know the name of the Pakistani president a year ago. The happy corollary is that he does not come to the table with pre-cooked ideas about the world.

Bush shrewdly sizes up people and opportunities as they arise. He has a deeply Tory approach to foreign affairs: an assessment of potential adversaries, an awareness of national self-interest and a constant capacity for improvisation. He had no strong preconceptions, for example, about Russia before he came into office.

Long before September 11, Bush decided that Vladimir Putin was key to American foreign policy in the new century. He made that decision simply by meeting the Russian leader.

Last week’s Crawford summit was a sign of that engagement.After September 11, it seems an intelligent prelude to the most significant geopolitical shift of the past two months: Russia’s radical move toward the West.

Don’t think Russia’s clash with Opec last week was purely accidental. As the price of oil sinks towards $10 a barrel, and the American economy is given a stimulus just when it was needed, Putin knows he is building up credit. And what could be more important for the West’s long-term economic and political stability than the development of oil supplies from sources outside the Middle East? Where might those supplies be found? Ah, yes, Russia. It takes a shrewd pragmatist to seize opportunities like these.

Bush now faces the hardest decision of all: Iraq. In Washington, the jockeying is intensifying. Right now the focus is on Afghanistan. But the battle over the second phase of the war is about to commence.

Powell’s State Department, in alliance with London and Islamabad, is urging appeasement. Paul Wolfowitz, the hawkish under-secretary of state whose role can only be enhanced by military victory, will marshal the arguments for action, with Rumsfeld and Cheney in cautious support.

The only certainty is that one man will make the final decision: the same shrewd, quiet and still underestimated figure who has been calling the shots all along. Think of the last man whom western liberals derided as a cowboy, Ronald Reagan.

Or better still, think of the last ingenue president from the middle of nowhere who figured out problems as they came along and ended up shaping the world for generations. Think Truman.

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