Bush the Bystander

Opinion Watch

Brookings Institution scholar Ivo Daalder writes on TPMCafe: "A consensus seems to be emerging, at least in the mainstream media, that Bush has given up on the unilateralism of his first term and is now firmly committed to a multilateralist foreign policy."

But, Daalder writes: "While there has been a shift in foreign policy during Bush's second term . . . it's not so much a shift from unilateralism to multilateralism as it is a shift from relying on the use of force to doing nothing.

"The big change in the second term is that Bush has abandoned one of the defining characteristics of his first term foreign policy: the reliance on unilateral force as a means to change a regime's policies, if not the actual regime itself. It was this combination of unilateralism, preemptive force, and regime change that made Bush's foreign policy revolutionary. Abandon the idea of preemptive force, and you're left with nothing more than hoping for change. And hope, as Colin Powell was wont to say, is not much of a strategy."

Michael Hirsh writes for Newsweek: "Good foreign policy should be metronomic in pace--measured, steady, dependable. That's especially true when you're the world's only superpower, and you want to keep things that way. The key is to inspire respect, trust and faith in your judgment. That's called leadership. But for six years now, George W. Bush's foreign policy has resembled a pendulum swinging out of control, lurching wildly from hubris to 'help us.' . . .

"In Bush's first term, the pendulum swung too far toward in-your-face unilateralism. Now, in his second term it has swung dramatically back toward the most squeamish sort of multilateralism--the kind of thinking that says, 'Without partners, I don't dare make a move.' . . .

"Burned by his bitter Iraq experience, Bush is hiding behind the skirts of multilateralism as an excuse for not grappling with these problems personally."

But Hirsch notes that "without decisive American action in dealing with the Mideast, Iran and North Korea, things can quickly spin out of control."

Former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal writes in Salon: "President Bush was against diplomacy before he was for it. But with the collapse of U.S. foreign policy across the board, he has discarded talk of preemptive strikes and reluctantly claimed to have become a born-again realist. . . .

"Just two years ago, he appeared before the Republican Convention boasting of his 'swagger, which in Texas is called walking.' But in the face of the consequences of his failures, he has not adopted a new doctrine so much as swaggered into a corner. The cowboy's White House has become Fort Apache."

And David S. Broder writes in his Washington Post opinion column that the biggest international trouble spot, amongst many, is one of Bush's own making: Iraq.

"This country was transformed by Bush's war of choice, and it is increasingly doubtful that the change is for the better. Instead of the tyranny and brutality of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis are facing the daily carnage and bloodshed of an undeclared civil war between Shiite and Sunni militias.

"The fragile new government in Baghdad, on which the United States has pinned all its hopes, so far seems incapable of restoring order or guaranteeing its citizens a modest level of personal safety. The United States is becoming more and more a helpless bystander, not willing or able to impose its will on an occupied country."