By John Tabin on 1.24.07 @ 12:31AM
On Iraq, and Iran, Mr. Bush wasn't addressing the Democrats but the public, which isn't yet as eager to hasten a bloodbath.
Two weeks ago, President Bush was humble and
somber as he explained his planned troop surge. In last night's
State of the Union address, his confidence seemed to have returned.
He even looked a bit younger.
Of course, last night the stakes were much lower.
The laundry list of domestic initiatives that Bush rattled off
may or may not be good ideas. (David Hogberg tries to untangle some
of them here.) But
the fact is that the bills that pass Congress this term won't be
Bush's. The best he can hope for is to influence Democratic bills,
and his record suggests he can't even be relied on to consistently
push to the right. As far as domestic policy is concerned, it's
Nancy Pelosi's world -- Bush just lives in it.
The foreign policy half of the speech was low-pressure for the
opposite reason: The Democrats can stomp their feet all they want,
but they are not going to do anything to change policy in Iraq.
They got elected this November by being political creatures, and to
defund the war at this point would be political suicide. The public
is pessimistic about the prospects of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but
the mood of the country is not yet so dark that leaving the Iraqis
to slaughter each other is a winning position.
The public, of course, is the real target of Bush's pleas to
Democrats, for the Democrats will make their stop-the-war move as
soon as it polls well enough. Can Bush keep it from doing so?
He made a good effort last night. Even as he acknowledged that
free elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon in 2005 gave way
to violence in all three countries in 2006, the President made
clear that his commitment to keeping political reform in the Middle
East at the center of American foreign policy remains unshaken. And
the picture he paints of the enemy has gotten both more vivid and
more subtle over the years. Last night, he made a point to
distinguish Sunni and Shia terrorists, and to underline their
Janus-like nature:
Al Qaeda and its followers are Sunni extremists,
possessed by hatred and commanded by a harsh and narrow ideology.
Take almost any principle of civilization, and their goal is the
opposite....
These men are not given to idle words, and they are just one
camp in the Islamist radical movement. In recent times, it has also
become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists
who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to
dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the
regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like
Hezbollah -- a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives
it has taken.
The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same
totalitarian threat. Whatever slogans they chant, when they
slaughter the innocent, they have the same wicked purposes.
Bush is pointing the finger at Iran at a time when some Democrats
are talking seriously about taking steps to prevent an attack on
that country's nuclear program. Emphasizing that the Iranian
government is very much our enemy is always helpful, lest those
reassurances to the mullahs become too socially acceptable.
The key line of the speech referred to the troop surge, and once
again it was directed not so much at the Congress but at the public
-- 68% of whom, according to the latest Newsweek poll,
oppose the surge. Bush's message to them: "Our country is pursuing
a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to
work."
topics:
Foreign Policy, Nancy Pelosi, Islam, Iraq, Iran
