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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epsteinbd who wrote (56268)	11/8/2002 5:04:28 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

David Frum comments: You know the old joke--usually ascribed to Prince Schwarzenberg, prime minister of Austria in the 1850s--about the diplomat who hears that some cunning antagonist has died. “Hmmm. I wonder what he meant by that.” People have the same trouble with President Bush. In January of this year, he said about Iraq: "We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." What could be plainer than that? Yet all through the year, we have been hearing about the inscrutability and inconsistency of Bush’s Iraq policy. The New York Times and International Herald-Tribune interpreted every rasp in Bush’s voice, every shift in his shoulder blades, as a promise that yet another new Iraq policy was being produced. Even some of the president’s staunchest admirers--convinced themselves that he was just blowing steam, that his mind was not resolved, that he was being blown about this way or that way by one malign adviser or another. Now here we are, eleven months later, exactly where the president always intended for us to be: troops in place, the public persuaded, authority granted by both houses of Congress, a UN Security Council resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (that’s the one that counts--the anti-Israel resolutions are voted under Chapter VI, the blather chapter), and all right on time for the Persian Gulf fighting season, which begins in December. Can there be anyone left who doubts that the president means what he says? Apparently so. I heard a reporter on MSNBC immediately after Friday’s Rose Garden speech interpreting the president’s words as evidence that he has not given up on diplomacy. Strictly speaking, I suppose that’s true. If Saddam Hussein were to abjure all his instruments of power and contritely apologize for causing the world so much trouble, I am sure that Bush would be pleased to accept his surrender. But that’s not going to happen, and Bush never thought it would. So as the final pieces on the military chessboard are moved into position, Bush is giving peace one last chance--on the same terms he has always maintained. “America will be making only one determination: is Iraq meeting the terms of the Security Council resolution or not? The United States has agreed to discuss any material breach with the Security Council, but without jeopardizing our freedom of action to defend our country. If Iraq fails to fully comply, the United States and other nations will disarm Saddam Hussein.” And when he is disarmed, he will fall: the second Terror Master to be toppled--but not the last. nationalreview.com