PRESIDENT BUSH rose to the occasion yesterday. As he did in his speech to Congress on September 20, in his State of the Union address on January 29, and in his West Point speech on June l, he rose above the morass of diplomatic double-speak and the in-fighting of his own administration, left behind the tired and failed formulas of the past, and charted a new course for American foreign policy. It is important to put yesterday’s speech in the context of the broader Bush Doctrine, which the speech complements and advances. The Bush Doctrine involves a thorough-going war on terror, a determination to prevent hostile dictators from holding the civilized world hostage to weapons of mass destruction, and–now, especially, after yesterday’s speech–a positive vision of American leadership on behalf of democratic and liberal principles for the sake of peace. Previously, the Middle East has been regarded as exempt from the requirements of liberal democracy. Previously, it was thought one could have a serious peace process without peaceful regimes. Now, the president has embraced the only realistic version of a Middle East peace process, though also, of course, a very ambitious one. In doing this, President Bush has delivered perhaps the most profound statement by any American president about the Middle East since Truman. At the same time, as with Truman, he has now committed himself to an active and bold role in this part of the world that will require all parts of his administration acting in concert to implement his vision. This vision of a democratic and peaceful swath of the Middle East, from Israel through Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq, has now become the governing objective of the Bush administration–and ambitious though it is, it is really the only realistic path to peace in the Middle East and to victory in the war on terror.
