WASHINGTON -
In separate speeches delivered an ocean apart, the two standard bearers of
the United States Republican Party on Thursday offered rosy visions of a future
designed to gladden the hearts of Israel-centered neo-conservatives without
offering any details about how their dreams will be achieved.
In an address before the Knesset in Jerusalem marking the 60th anniversary of
Israel's founding, President George W Bush predicted that 60 years from now the
Jewish state will co-exist with a Palestinian homeland in a democratic Middle
East where "al-Qaeda and Hezbollah and Hamas will be defeated" and "Iran
and Syria will be peaceful nations, with today's oppression a distant memory
..."
He
went on: "From Cairo to Riyadh to Baghdad and
Beirut, people will live in free and independent
societies, where a desire for
peace is reinforced by ties
of diplomacy and tourism and trade."
Such a "bold vision" will not "arrive easily overnight", he said. But it will
be possible "so long as a new generation of leaders has the courage to defeat
the enemies of freedom, to make the hard choices necessary for peace, and stand
firm on the solid rock of universal values."
Just a few hours later and some 11,000 kilometers away, Senator John McCain,
the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, told a partisan audience in
Columbus, Ohio that, if elected, he will have "won" the Iraq war by 2013 and
brought home "most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so
that America might be secure in her freedom."
By the end of his first term,
he went on, the threat from the Taliban in
Afghanistan will have been greatly reduced,
al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his key
lieutenants captured or killed, and Iran
"persuaded [by] a reluctant Russia and China to
cooperate in pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear
ambitions, and North Korea to discontinue its own."
In contrast to Bush, however, McCain failed to mention any progress on settling
the Israel-Palestinian conflict, suggesting that such an effort will not rate
particularly high on his foreign policy agenda.
That should be just fine with pro-Likud neo-conservatives who, despite their
appreciation for Bush's staunch support for former hard-line prime minister
Ariel Sharon (whom the president Thursday praised in his speech as "warrior for
the ages, a man of peace"), have been uneasy about his thus far feeble efforts
to prod the two sides towards a framework peace agreement by the time he leaves
office next January.
Indeed, Thursday's speeches served to underline how powerful and durable the
neo-conservative vision of the world, particularly for the Middle East,
remains, at least for the Republican Party, and how likely it would be that a
president McCain would "stay the course" set by Bush.
Bush's speech was pure neo-conservatism, beginning with his assurance that
Washington was "Israel's closest ally and best friend in the world" and
featuring a familiar depiction of the world as a struggle between the forces of
"good and evil", the latter embodied by the most immediate threats to Israel's
security - Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria.
"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and
radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong
all along," he declared in a thinly veiled slap at the presumptive Democratic
presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, who along with most of the US
foreign policy establishment has called for engagement with Tehran and
Damascus.
"We have heard this foolish delusion before," he said, referring to the failure
of Western powers to challenge the Nazis in the 1930s, a core neo-conservative
leitmotif. "We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort
of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history," he
continued, implicitly comparing the threats faced by Israel with Nazi Germany
and explicitly assuring his audience that "... the world must not allow Iran to
have a nuclear weapon."
But Bush offered no ideas as to how his hopeful vision of the Middle East,
particularly that of a "homeland [Palestinians] have long dreamed of and
deserved", in 2068 will be achieved. No ideas, that is, apart from confronting
"evil", presumably through military force if necessary, and steadfastly
promoting basic freedoms and democracy in the region - a policy some of his
neo-conservative backers believe Bush has largely abandoned as he has sought to
rally Sunni Arab leaders against Iran and its allies.
McCain similarly failed to explain how he would achieve his own vision of
victory in Iraq, substantial progress in Afghanistan, a defeat of al-Qaeda, and
Iran's abandonment of its alleged nuclear ambitions by 2013. His comments led
Rand Beers, a top counter-terrorism official under both George H W Bush and
Bill Clinton who resigned from the National Security Council in protest against
the younger Bush's decision to invade Iraq, to compare the speech to Richard
Nixon's "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War as a gimmick to win the 1968
presidential election.
McCain's vision for 2013 was more modest than Bush's for 2068. In addition to
omitting any mention of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, he made no
predictions about "transforming" the Middle East as a whole. But the basic
trajectory was consistent.
He described an Iraq at the end of his first term in office as "a functioning
democracy" in which violence would be "spasmodic [but] much reduced", militias
would be disbanded, al-Qaeda in Iraq defeated, the central government able to
impose its authority "in every province of Iraq", and the US military presence
"much smaller" and no longer engaged in combat.
And not only would the threat from the Taliban be "greatly reduced" and the
al-Qaeda leadership captured or killed, he said, but a newly formed "League of
Democracies" - another neo-conservative chestnut - would "apply stiff
diplomatic and economic pressure" on Sudan to stop genocide in Darfur and use
similar tools to end gross human rights abuses, such as human trafficking, in
other parts of the world.
The absence of detail regarding how these goals will be accomplished drew
mainly scorn from both Democrats and independent observers, with the former
president of the influential Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb,
describing McCain's vision as "kind of a wild-eyed, unsupported prediction".
"I think John McCain has been one of the most important voices on national
security policy for many years now, so it really surprises me to see him giving
speeches like the one today that are almost in la la land," Gelb told reporters
in a teleconference sponsored by the National Security Network.
At the same time, Senator Hillary Clinton, who is lagging behind Obama in the
race for the Democratic nomination, noted that "this is not the first time
Senator McCain has predicted victory in Iraq" and that his speech "promises
more of the same Bush policies ..."
McCain himself suggested that his world view was not so different from Bush's.
Asked later on Thursday about the president's assertion that negotiating with
"terrorists and radicals" today was similar to appeasing Adolf Hitler in the
1930s, McCain said he agreed with the analogy.
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy, and particularly the
neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
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peace is reinforced by ties
of diplomacy and tourism and trade."
cooperate in pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear
ambitions, and North Korea to discontinue its own."
