WASHINGTON — Once spoken or written, words no longer belong to you. They can take on an existence of their own and propel you down paths barely glimpsed at their creation. That may be the destiny of two sentences George W. Bush uttered on Monday as he delivered the right speech in the wrong circumstances.
"It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation," the president said. And: "Permanent occupation threatens Israel’s identity and democracy."
Those are powerful, far-reaching sentiments not easily walked back. They put the prestige of the American presidency behind the goal of ending Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, and do so with a moral force not expressed by Bush’s predecessors. For Bush, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is now and forever untenable. Yasser Arafat’s fate got the headlines, but the word "untenable" was the news.
It happens to be a notion with which I agree. A Middle East policy speech that Bush was manipulated into making got it right on two other big points as well: He called for an Arab population to be allowed to live in democracy and reject despotic leaders. And he once again ruled out double-dealing in the war on a global terrorism.
But circumstances and short-term expediency — not principle or reason — dictated the timing and outlines of the speech, delivered in Bush’s increasingly unconvincing apocalyptic rhetoric. The president edged toward sweeping U.S. commitments to bring democracy and prosperity to the world’s most explosive region. But Bush called into question his own sincerity and grasp by failing to offer even modest indications of how his goals could be accomplished.
Neither Bush’s sense of history nor the existence of a diplomatic strategy ready to be implemented prompted Monday’s speech. He needed to get the address out of the way before traveling to Canada for the summit of the Group of Seven industrial democracies and Russia. Instead of discussing thorny detail there, Bush can simply refer to the speech and cut off debate. That tactic is becoming a hallmark of this presidency.
Also forcing Bush’s hand was a relentless campaign by some members of his own administration and by Arab governments to impose their common agenda and timing on a president not secure in his own view of the Middle East.
Bush has let publicly aired quarrels between Colin Powell’s State Department and Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department rage on and make him appear indecisive. Bush aides have undercut him by waging an orchestrated (and inaccurate) media campaign laying out what Bush would say before they could have known that.
In the end Bush chose bits from Powell’s Column A and pieces from Rumsfeld’s Column B. The object was to advance the president’s powerful April 4 Middle East speech — but not too far, as one participant in the debate said. The compromises reduced the impact of the earlier, more coherent statement.
Bush dropped any reference to Powell’s proposed ministerial peace conference, and he did not offer to send his chief diplomat out to the region to explain a speech that cried out for immediate follow-up. Bush offered a vision of a "provisional" Palestinian state so conditional and vague that neither Israelis nor Palestinians could decipher what he meant. That may have been the point.
Democracy in the Arab world and security for Israel will not come simply by shoving aside the shape-shifting Arafat and by showering money on downtrodden Palestinians as a reward for accepting new leadership. Why should democracy and American largesse be confined to one small group of Arabs? Because they have become proficient at blowing up Jews? That is one implication that will be drawn by some in the region.
In March, Palestinian and European diplomats consciously inserted into Security Council Resolution 1397 words that Bush had spoken in a Nov. 10, 2001, speech to the United Nations. They wanted protection against any U.S. backing off of the resolution’s endorsement of "a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side" in peace, and Bush’s words provided that protection.
The speech that Bush should have given on Monday would have addressed much more fully the ways in which the Arab world as a whole must adapt to modern political and economic democracy — and what the United States will do to help. That would have required discussion of Bush’s plans for dealing with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and other regional tyrants who rule by terror and support its use against Israel and Americans. Such plans have to be the starting point for the next presidential address on the future of the Middle East.
Jim Hoagland can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or hoaglandj@washpost.com.
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