In Tom Clancy’s novel, Executive Orders, a raw, new
President, Jack Ryan, faces a deliberate provocation by the
People’s Republic of China. The PRC shoots down a civilian airliner
in a military exercise in the China Strait, then tries to pin the
blame on the Republic of China, its bitter Taiwan-based rival. New
Secretary of State Scott Adler finds himself shuttling back and
forth between Taiwan and Beijing, sifting through the propaganda
and the lies and trying to figure out what it all means.
On a secure telephone call to his Secretary, President Ryan
gripes, “I’m inclined to support the ROC and tell the PRC to suck
wind.”
“The world doesn’t work like that,” Secretary Adler replies,
“and you know it.”
For the past month, ever since Secretary of State Colin Powell
(the real one, remember) made his trip to the Middle East,
conservative critics have been griping that the George W. Bush
should stand up and tell his opponents to suck wind. The criticism
ranges from measured, as when the lead editorial in National
Review’s May 20 print edition calls the President’s foreign
policy “disturbing” and assails its drift, to ironic and witty , in
the Wall Street Journal’s widely quoted April 13
editorial, “The Bush Two-Step,” to vituperative, on the Rush
Limbaugh show just about any day.
The arrows zip from other commentators, too. In the April 8
Newsweek, Howard Fineman wrote that Bush had become
“Washingtonized…The administration isn’t foundering, but it
has lost the laser focus its boss prefers.”
The Middle East situation certainly looks like it’s drifting.
Colin Powell goes over, and gets greeted almost instantly with a
suicide bomber. Yet he meets with Yasser Arafat and eats a piece of
two-day-old Norwegian chocolate cake. Powell appears to find
himself contradicted and undercut by statements from back home,
even from the President himself. Ariel Sharon looks like he’s
successfully flim-flamming the U.S., resisting “restraint” while he
prosecutes his campaign against “the terrorist infrastructure.” The
press worldwide keeps proclaiming Yasser Arafat a hero when in
truth he looks like a complete buffoon. The President keeps saying
that he will “take out” Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi regime, but
nobody knows when.
Set against a recent background of galling domestic Presidential
cave-ins — as it appears to the conservative wing — on such
issues as campaign finance reform, steel tariffs, and the farm
bill, Bush foreign policy actions look especially suspicious.
Two things need to be said here to the people who would like
President Bush to tell his enemies to suck wind. First, get a grip.
The world doesn’t work like that. Second, we know very little.
Truly, we know very little. We know that the administration is
temporizing for some reason, vamping like a radio announcer with
lots of time to fill. A number of possible reasons suggest
themselves. For a while, I pursued the notion that the military
needed to re-stock missiles and smart bombs. Col. David Hackworth
assures me that this is not so. “Got enuff to take Iraq and Iran at
the same time,” he wrote in one of his inimitable telegraphic
e-mails. Col. Hackworth ascribes the apparent delay and drift to
“Politics.. Palestine burning, threats of empty oil cans and Arab
unity. Saddam is playing brilliant chess while Bush and dull, slow
thinkers — less Rummy — are playing crude checkers.”
Views like that, absent the central figure of Saddam Hussein
pulling all the strings, get expressed on all the nightly news
shows. President Bush is supposedly pursuing “a political process”
toward peace in the Middle East while calming down “moderate Arab
allies” about a U.S. war against Iraq, which will take place “early
next year.”
We know very little. Either the administration is playing a
fantastically controlled Byzantine game, or it doesn’t know its
heinie from a hole in the ground. Either course would look much the
same.
But we can be assured of one thing: President Bush’s nature.
When he thinks something is important enough, he will definitely
tell his opponents to suck wind. He has already done so, in three
remarkably solid and courageous decisions, what might be called
“the three no’s” of Bush foreign policy: He has withdrawn the U.S.
from the SALT treaty, from the Kyoto accords, and, most recently,
from the International Criminal Court. These decisions mark out a
sea change in the definition of U.S. sovereignty, and in the
establishment of a new international position for American
power.
It is also President Bush’s nature to avoid conflict whenever he
can. Contrast the confirmation experiences of two cabinet nominees,
John Ashcroft and Linda Chavez. Insulted and reviled (there is no
other term) by his former Senate colleagues at his confirmation
hearing, Ashcroft calmly turned the other cheek and talked in
platitudes. He got confirmed. That’s the Bush way. Chavez held back
a key piece of information about her life from the President, then
stood up and fought about it, and Bush hung her out to dry. That’s
the Bush way, too.
And there’s another Bush way, widely ignored: backstairs
maneuvering. Example? The Republican National Committee just joined
the suit filed against the Campaign Finance Reform legislation, the
act the President signed to so much disappointment from his
conservative backers. As Rush Limbaugh alone pointed out, the
national committee of the President’s party is the President.
“George Bush is suing himself!” Rush exclaimed.
We truly know very little. Unfortunately, the nature of the
press is quotidian urgency. We have to write something every day.
We often look foolish when we do.
